"swish" sound with Hidizs S9 on Android

[vext01]

Hi there,

I have a Hidizs S9 that I bought ages ago for use with my phone, but I haven't used it much because I've never really managed to get it working right. It has a lot of hiss at low volumes when not using exclusive audio mode apps.

It's a kind of swish noise that fades up as the track starts, and then remains underneath the music. Most noticable in quiet bits.

Yes, this can be solved by using exclusive audio access in something like Hiby Music, UAPP or Fiio Music, but I don't like those apps. I find the user interfaces fiddly and the volume increments can be too coarse when using exclusive USB access. I'd really like to use it with Poweramp. I can already hear people crying "it's the Android audio subsystem doing resampling!". It can't be resampling if it happens even with 48Khz source files, can it? Also the problem doesn't present with other USB dongles, e.g. the Whizzer DA1 is fine using the Android audio subsystem and Poweramp -- completely silent background...

Does anyone know what might be causing that hiss?

Thanks!

 

[staticV3]

I've experienced the same when the dongle was so loud that I had to turn down Android to almost zero for comfortable volume.

The solution in my case was to open UAPP, reduce the dongle's UAC2 hardware volume, quit UAPP, then increase the Android system volume to compensate.

By doing that, the weird noise floor/noise gate of Android system audio was pushed way below the music in volume, to where it was no longer audible.

Tell me please: if you say that the S9 has that weird "swish" sound, but the DA1 is fine, is that at roughly the same Android system volume?

Or is it possible that the S9 needs much lower Android volume for the same effective loudness?

 

[vext01]

Hi,

You've only gone and nailed it!

When I first plugged in the dongle, Poweramp at 12% was already getting too loud for iems. I then went to Hiby Music and turned on exclusive mode, there 4 (out of 32 for some reason) is already too loud (and 3 is too quiet).

But anyway, after that I disabled exclusive mode and went back to poweramp and hit play, heard nothing until I put the volume up to 100%. But it sounds just fine! No swish! If I repeat, setting the hardware volume to 15, and a lower volume in Poweramp it sounds very good indeed, and I get much more incremental control over volume.

So I think what's happening here is: the dac starts at 100% hardware volume, and I was then using the android mixer to attenuate it down to a usable level, but in the process amplifying a lot of low-level noise.

For comparison, with the DA1 I usually set the android volume to 100% and then vary the hardware volume with the buttons on the dac itself. I guess that's equivalent to the dance I did above with Hiby Music + Poweramp.

Sadly the S9 doesn't remember its volume setting when you unplug it, so the dance would have to be repeated. All the more reason to buy a dongle with hardware buttons that control the hardware volume control.

Thanks!

 

[vext01]

I don't suppose anyone knows of an android app that could help to automate the process of setting the hardware volume on the dac when it is plugged in?

 

[staticV3]

I don't suppose anyone knows of an android app that could help to automate the process of setting the hardware volume on the dac when it is plugged in?

UAPP has two handy features for this:
1. On startup, it automatically restores hardware volume to the last set values
2. With Settings->System->Release USB audio driver, you just have to minimize the App and can continue playing YouTube etc.

This trivializes the process of setting hardware volume:
https://youtube.com/watch/FFJFsl6VfKI

 

[vext01]

Sadly UAPP is unable to release the USB device. I've tried swiping up to go home, swiping left until exit, and tapping exit on the side-bar.

None of the above seem to work. Poweramp plays silence.

It was worth a shot.

(This is the first time I've used UAPP. It's OK. The UI isn't as good as Poweramp, and it's a bit sluggish at times, but I do like the separate software/hardware control settings)