Tips for the Hidizs S8 headphone amp / DAC

[mshea0001]

Based on the recommendations here I picked up a Hidizs S8 directly from their site for my portable audiophile kit. I wanted to share a couple of things that took me some digging to figure out.

First, out of the box, it didn't seem very loud. I tried it with Hifiman Sundaras, Sennheiser 580s, Etymotic ER4 XRs, and Koss Portapros. With all of them I had to jack the volume up pretty high.

Then I heard about the high-gain trick. To do this you have to plug in a 1/8" adapter into the S8 and leave the other end empty until AFTER you've plugged it into your source. This tricks the S8 into going into high gain mode. THEN you plug in your headphones and it stays in high-gain mode. At this point it sounded AWESOME.

I used this little adapter for the trick; $5 on Amazon:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B016AHYRNW/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o02_s00

It's a 1/8" adapter intended to fit into small holes on an old iPhone case I think. Though it adds yet another dongle to my string of dongles (affectionately now known as "dongletown") it works really well and is easy to fit into my kit.

Another thing I learned is that, on a MacBook Pro, the S8 would only register as a 48khz max device. Then I figured out that you can modify this in the midi settings on the MacBook Pro. Bring up the search box (Command Space on my machine) and search for "midi". This brings up "Audio MIDI setup.app" Open that up and find "SONATA USB Audio". In the "output" tab, select "format" and you can go down to 192khz "2 ch, 24 bit integer". Then it registers properly in applications like Amazon Music HD. Sounds awesome!!

Anyway, I wanted to share what I found so others might find it if serching for the same thing.

 

[AdamG]

Based on the recommendations here I picked up a Hidizs S8 directly from their site for my portable audiophile kit. I wanted to share a couple of things that took me some digging to figure out.

First, out of the box, it didn't seem very loud. I tried it with Hifiman Sundaras, Sennheiser 580s, Etymotic ER4 XRs, and Koss Portapros. With all of them I had to jack the volume up pretty high.

Then I heard about the high-gain trick. To do this you have to plug in a 1/8" adapter into the S8 and leave the other end empty until AFTER you've plugged it into your source. This tricks the S8 into going into high gain mode. THEN you plug in your headphones and it stays in high-gain mode. At this point it sounded AWESOME.

I used this little adapter for the trick; $5 on Amazon:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B016AHYRNW/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o02_s00

It's a 1/8" adapter intended to fit into small holes on an old iPhone case I think. Though it adds yet another dongle to my string of dongles (affectionately now known as "dongletown") it works really well and is easy to fit into my kit.

Another thing I learned is that, on a MacBook Pro, the S8 would only register as a 48khz max device. Then I figured out that you can modify this in the midi settings on the MacBook Pro. Bring up the search box (Command Space on my machine) and search for "midi". This brings up "Audio MIDI setup.app" Open that up and find "SONATA USB Audio". In the "output" tab, select "format" and you can go down to 192khz "2 ch, 24 bit integer". Then it registers properly in applications like Amazon Music HD. Sounds awesome!!

Anyway, I wanted to share what I found so others might find it if serching for the same thing.

Welcome Aboard @mshea0001.

 

[Saidera]

Very insightful especially about MacBooks and their 48kHz limitation which has a workaround which only goes up to 192kHz...

 

[JanesJr1]

Based on the recommendations here I picked up a Hidizs S8 directly from their site for my portable audiophile kit. I wanted to share a couple of things that took me some digging to figure out.

First, out of the box, it didn't seem very loud. I tried it with Hifiman Sundaras, Sennheiser 580s, Etymotic ER4 XRs, and Koss Portapros. With all of them I had to jack the volume up pretty high.

Then I heard about the high-gain trick. To do this you have to plug in a 1/8" adapter into the S8 and leave the other end empty until AFTER you've plugged it into your source. This tricks the S8 into going into high gain mode. THEN you plug in your headphones and it stays in high-gain mode. At this point it sounded AWESOME.

I used this little adapter for the trick; $5 on Amazon:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B016AHYRNW/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o02_s00

It's a 1/8" adapter intended to fit into small holes on an old iPhone case I think. Though it adds yet another dongle to my string of dongles (affectionately now known as "dongletown") it works really well and is easy to fit into my kit.

Another thing I learned is that, on a MacBook Pro, the S8 would only register as a 48khz max device. Then I figured out that you can modify this in the midi settings on the MacBook Pro. Bring up the search box (Command Space on my machine) and search for "midi". This brings up "Audio MIDI setup.app" Open that up and find "SONATA USB Audio". In the "output" tab, select "format" and you can go down to 192khz "2 ch, 24 bit integer". Then it registers properly in applications like Amazon Music HD. Sounds awesome!!

Anyway, I wanted to share what I found so others might find it if serching for the same thing.

I think the S8 manufacturer instructions are to make sure the device is attached to the input cord before connecting to the source, or the Hidicz device will not be correctly recognized. Maybe you don't need a separate 1/8" dongle but just attach the cord to the S8 before connecting to the source. I use the S8 with ER4Xr's that way and have never had a problem with gain.