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Tidal reportedly enabling bit-perfect playback to USB DAC on Android

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Beershaun

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Update: Instead of replacing my dragonfly with a new dongle dac I replaced it with a used LG V40 full smartphone with a headphone jack for $150. so now I just carry the LG with a 200gb microsd card. Download the heck out of everything to the SD card and walk out the door and plug my headphones into the jack and all is well...with 2 phones in my pocket...:facepalm:
 

Danjen22

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Update: Instead of replacing my dragonfly with a new dongle dac I replaced it with a used LG V40 full smartphone with a headphone jack for $150. so now I just carry the LG with a 200gb microsd card. Download the heck out of everything to the SD card and walk out the door and plug my headphones into the jack and all is well...with 2 phones in my pocket...:facepalm:

Does this give you bit perfect playback via the tidal app? Does Tidal recognise the V40 Quad DAC? Just curious as I have an LG V50 on Android 10 and Tidal does not come up with the prompt to enable bit perfect. I would much rather be able to use the Tidal app over UAPP.
 
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norcalscott

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When my Hidizs S3 Pro comes in I'll test MQA with that and update here...I look forward to seeing your test results too :)
S3 Pro MQA Streaming DAC Dongle | Hidizs
Hidizs S3PRO Next Generation Ultra Portable HiRes DAC Dongle by Hidizs — Kickstarter

FYI, I received the notice that the S3 Pro is Live on Kickstarter a few hours ago, and the first 1000 backers get:
Big Surprise!! - The first 1,000 backers will get a HiBy Music Membership (valued $9.99), valid for lifetime.

I just backed the Hidizs on Kickstarter as well. There are plenty left and this seems to be a good value if it lives up to most of Hidizs' other products. I'm going to try and use this as the DAC that is driven from a Raspberry Pi running Volumio, with the Virtuoso plan to pass Tidal MQA. I am curious to see how this performs compared to running it through my Topping E30, which doesn't do MQA (but sounds really good anyway)
 

norcalscott

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Does this give you bit perfect playback via the tidal app? Does Tidal recognise the V40 Quad DAC? Just curious as I have an LG V50 on Android 10 and Tidal does not come up with the prompt to enable bit perfect. I would much rather be able to use the Tidal app over UAPP.
I tested this on my LG G7, which is stuck on Android 10 but is running the latest version of the Tidal app. I now only use this device as a DAP, mainly using UAPP. I also did not get a prompt but it shows "Master" when I play a master track. I don't think this is meaningful because if I play the same track on the Tidal app on my Samsung S21 it still indicates "Master". I wonder if there is any way to determine if this is bit-perfect on the LG G7?
 
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Beershaun

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Does this give you bit perfect playback via the tidal app? Does Tidal recognise the V40 Quad DAC? Just curious as I have an LG V50 on Android 10 and Tidal does not come up with the prompt to enable bit perfect. I would much rather be able to use the Tidal app over UAPP.
I don't expect the prompt to show up for the internal DAC. The prompt is for confirmation of an external USB DAC and giving Tidal control of it. I need to find some confirmation of John Darkos statement in the video I posted. He states that Bob Stuart worked with LG on the v30 and newer phones to enable bit perfect playback and MQA support at the hardware level. But I haven't been able to independently confirm this yet.
 

Jimbob54

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I don't expect the prompt to show up for the internal DAC. The prompt is for confirmation of an external USB DAC and giving Tidal control of it. I need to find some confirmation of John Darkos statement in the video I posted. He states that Bob Stuart worked with LG on the v30 and newer phones to enable bit perfect playback and MQA support at the hardware level. But I haven't been able to independently confirm this yet.

Give it the sniff test ;-)
 

Rice4Breakfast

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Hello. I made an account on here just to join this discussion.

I have a OnePlus 9 pro and a dragonfly black with the dragon tail. When my Dad connected it to his Pixel 4a, I don't believe he got a pop up from Tidal, but he got the purple light right away

However, when I connect it to my phone, I get no pop up and it stays blue. Nothing in the settings of my phone or the Tidal app fixed this.
I then proceeded to buy UAPP. I've never used it before but definitely beard of it. Sure enough, after buying a second piece of software I was getting a purple light on the dragonfly using Tidal through UAPP. I got this popup:
Screenshot_20210804-221532.jpg
Screenshot_20210804-221532.jpg
Switching back to Tidal after this still yielded a blue light unfortunately. I'm not sure if any of this is of any help to you guys. I hope it is!

Here's to hoping maybe with an update to Tidal the "bit-perfect" playback will be enabled for the new OnePlus phones?
 
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Beershaun

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Hello. I made an account on here just to join this discussion.

I have a OnePlus 9 pro and a dragonfly black with the dragon tail. When my Dad connected it to his Pixel 4a, I don't believe he got a pop up from Tidal, but he got the purple light right away

However, when I connect it to my phone, I get no pop up and it stays blue. Nothing in the settings of my phone or the Tidal app fixed this.
I then proceeded to buy UAPP. I've never used it before but definitely beard of it. Sure enough, after buying a second piece of software I was getting a purple light on the dragonfly using Tidal through UAPP. I got this popup: View attachment 145560View attachment 145560
Switching back to Tidal after this still yielded a blue light unfortunately. I'm not sure if any of this is of any help to you guys. I hope it is!

Here's to hoping maybe with an update to Tidal the "bit-perfect" playback will be enabled for the new OnePlus phones?
Thanks for posting your findings.

Do you both have the same version of the app? Do both have the audio quality set to Master in the app?
 

mycose

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I can also confirm it "just works" on Android 11, even their Most Questionable Audio stuff without having the user do anything.

It's such a shame they force DRM garbage on all their users. Imagine if they instead served pure flacs, oh boy.
 

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Beershaun

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Yes, 2.43.0
Both are also set to master
Thanks. It seems like there is some inconsistency then with the Dragonfly Black and Red from device to device. I wonder if it's because they are a bit older and somehow out of date...I checked their website and the last firmware update was v1.07 back in 2019 and my dragonfly has it. So latest firmware doesn't seem to make a difference.
Just so we are on the same page on colors and what they mean Magenta vs. Purple for example:
Dragonfly_colours.jpg
 
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Beershaun

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Give it the sniff test ;-)
Found this on the LG spec. page. It indicates the DAC specs and the support for MQA built in.
https://www.lg.com/us/cell-phones/lg-LMV405UA

So only question is whether or not Android is resampling for the internal DAC/amp to headphone jack path. I'm just going to say "no" because it's not going out the USB? But I have no source of information that backs up my assertion. It does make me feel better about myself though. :)
 

Esss

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Hi all - Post number One !!

I do get the pop-up (Motorola Edge, Xiaomi Redmi Note 10 Pro) on Tidal when firing up the app with the DAC in (Zen DAC V1 and Zen DAC Signature). In both DACs and both phones, Tidal crashes as soon as I press "play". UAPP works fine, Tidal on laptop works fine. So this is likely a Tidal issue - otherwise it would affect UAPP as well I suppose.
 
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Beershaun

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Thanks! updating original post with this setup as "broken" since Tidal crashes.
 

coin777

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Hi. I just made an account to say, that it doesn't work on samsung galaxy s8. It's always upsamples to 192khz.
 
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Beershaun

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Hi. I just made an account to say, that it doesn't work on samsung galaxy s8. It's always upsamples to 192khz.
Thanks.
What external dac are you using?
Can you share how you confirmed it's upsampling to 192? I've not heard of that before and would like to know how to check that myself in the future.
 

Jet Black

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I got a xiaomi redmi note 7 pro smartphone and an ibasso dc03 dongle dac. It will work if I deny access to USB when tidal prompt ask for it, but if I allow access it just stalls and hangs the app. The app is probably still new to this feature and probably is buggy. It will also probably work to mqa certified dongles as well, i hope it also caters to non-mqa devices.
 

norcalscott

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I got a xiaomi redmi note 7 pro smartphone and an ibasso dc03 dongle dac. It will work if I deny access to USB when tidal prompt ask for it, but if I allow access it just stalls and hangs the app. The app is probably still new to this feature and probably is buggy. It will also probably work to mqa certified dongles as well, i hope it also caters to non-mqa devices.
I suspect that doing it this way denies Tidal direct control of the DAC and forces audio through the Android system. If you could monitor it, the sample rate probably stays at 48. I believe that Tidal would have to specifically add support for that and other DACs (like USB Audio Player Pro has done) - I wonder how much of that Tidal will be willing to take on...
 

Esss

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Folks - you will recall, Tidal crashed when using Zen DACs. I tried SMSL SU9 - Tidal works fine, albeit with one small caveat. It sees the DAC as renderer (Purple light) and not as full decoder (Desktop Tidal sees it as full decoder - green or blue light) This doesn't bother me much, I am happy that the DAC displays the same sample rate as source. But, what this means is that the issue may not be with Tidal, it could be with the DAC firmware. So I am keen to hear if there is anyone here who is having Tidal crashes on the SMSL SU9 DAC. If there is, then my theory is down the toy-let.
 
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