Review: iHiFi 812 v2 portable player - an interesting "budget high-end" portable - Page 3

Sadly, I think the 960 is still limited to 16/48. That's the one aspect I'm not pleased with on a conceptual level (well, the price could always be lower, and the UI more advanced, and the size smaller, and the battery life improved.... But I'm realistic about what is and what isn't possible in a device like this).

First order of business is to connect it to one of my various DACs that displays incoming sample rate, to verify the digital output. I assume it will be an upsampled 192kHz stream but then again it's possible the digital signal gets routed prior to ASRC and then it would be a native rate.

 

Since you seem to be "in the know", do you have any idea what the 960 does for digital output? I'm wondering if it applies upsampling before or after the digital out. Maybe you saw mention of that info on some other forum?

 

I ask because my plan was to use the 960 with the UM Platform Pure 6, feeding a digital signal. But the PP6 supposedly tops out at 96kHz for all inputs, so if the 960 sends out a 192kHz signal then my plan won't work. 

I just figured you were active on Erji.net or some other place that might have more discussion. That's ok though, I'll find out soon enough and report my findings. Thanks anyway!

 

I see. I do the same thing from time to time, using the same translation. I was hoping you were that Chinese brother, but apparently I was wrong!

 

It just arrived last week. I've been so busy I haven't had much time to play with it. Right from the start I can tell it has much improved build quality and ergonomics though - little things like the volume knob being somewhat shorter and harder to turn, so it doesn't accidentally crank the volume while in your pocket. So it's definitely a "premium" looking and feeling device, but we'll see about the sound.

 

I did test it with optical output to my Cambridge 840C, which shows me the digital output is being sent at 24-bit/44.1kHz resolution. I find that interesting - the internal ASRC upsamples everything to 24/192, so I figured digital out would either be a 24/192 signal (post ARSC) or a native 16/44.1 signal (pre ASRC). For some reason the word length is being padded to 24-bit but the sample rate remains native. Not that it should matter, since the conversion from 16 to 24 bit does no harm. 

 

Already owning the 812, you probably understand what I mean - it's well built and everything, but there are areas that can be improved. The volume knob thing that I already mentioned is one example. Another is the screen - the 812 is exposed, the 960 has a glass cover. I'm sure I'll never use my 812 in such a way as to damage the screen, but it's still nice to have the better coverage of the 960. Also the buttons feel more solid on the 960, even down to the clicking noise they make.

 

As for sound, my initial impressions are that it is very much in the same family but better extension on both ends, better soundstage and imaging, and slightly better detail retrieval. I'm not yet sure it is a huge upgrade just on sound alone (need to do a lot more listening to determine that) but as an overall package it is worth the upgrade price.