[m-i-c-k-e-y]

So I was excited to try the new firmware with PCM768 support on its I2S.

Bought Carmen Gomes's Ray! in 24/768 from Sound Liaison. Setup my camera for a shot on its screen to post. Reconfigured JRiver and hit play to test. And...ERROR! Disintegrated/crackling playback and was resampled to 192. I had the album's DXD version and it played well.... CMON! What's wrong???
Read again the specs of my DDC, Singxer SU-6's specification...its up to 384Khz only.....It was the SU-2 that was 768Khz....Oh well, save it for later...
Continued listening at some favorite tracks to bent out my frustration...

 

[m-i-c-k-e-y]

OK...hopefully mine (HUB) will arrive Tuesday.

 

[otijhuis]

OK...hopefully mine (HUB) will arrive Tuesday.

Nice!

My whole Hydra stack is on its way back to the distributor to get the relay switching sound fixed. For some reason the also wanted me to include the Hub. Luckily I still have a Chord Qutest. Before I sent the stack for repair I went back and forth a little between the 2. It was very interesting. When going from the Qutest to the Vox there was more air, a bit more detail and a better soundstage. I did miss the fuller sound at times though, it just had more body with the Qutest. With the Hub in the mix it definitely has more body to it and where I could easily tell the difference between the Qutest and the Vox in that regard, I no longer miss anything about the Qutest. The difference in soundstage is the most obvious to me. My speakers are about 1 meter from the side walls. With the Qutest it almost seems as if there's an invisible boundary between the speakers and the wall. The Hydra stack fills the whole space.

One thing I've noticed lately is that I find listening to the full Hydra stack really addictive. I want to listen to music all the time. I don't have that with either the Qutest or just the Vox. I'm not sure what it is about the Hub that makes listening to my system so enjoyable. It's probably several smaller things combined. If they could only do such a good job with everything else (software, communication and so on).

 

[FOUNDERZERO]

Question for anyone with the full stack: Have you encountered any latency issues with games in either PCM or DSD upsampling via the Hub? Just curious since I'm pretty interested in getting this stack sometime within the year.

 

[AmanK]

Hi Everyone, I have been following this thread closely. Wanted to update on my experience so far.

My setup is: Mini-pc (running Euphony Stylus) -> usb -> Hub -> spdif -> Vox -> Plinius sa-102 amp -> Dynaudio C1 speakers

Adding the Hub has made quite a bit of improvement in all areas of the sound. I now find myself listening to my system for much longer. There is a sense of ease but with more details.

My biggest issue is that the i2s connection between Hub and Vox is not working. I get noise with a bit of music. Tried many solutions (different cables, different sampling rates etc.), but still it is not working.

I will be sending my stack back to the dealer for checking. Issue could be that my Vox was purchased 2 years ago, so it might have some defects in the i2s input.

My only other issue is that that Hub is full black in colour, while my Zap/Vox are with black and silver. So the entire stack is not uniform colour.

I really hope my i2s issue can be resolved, as this was one of the major reasons I bought the Hydra stack.

 

[m-i-c-k-e-y]

We have THE SAME ISSUES. Sending back my unit. Nicolae will be sending another for replacement.

But when working (SPDIF) the sound is very addicting. The resolution, separation, layering are realistically good.

 

[otijhuis]

@FOUNDERZERO unfortunately can't really help you there since I use my system for music only. When I used a high upsampling rate in Roon (software upsampling) there definitely was a delay but I don't notice any delay with the Hub regarding upsampling. But that's all I can say.

@AmanK totally agree on the sense of ease and wanting to keep listening. A shame that the i2s connection isn't working. I assume you've updated the Vox to the latest firmware? Hopefully you can get it fixed soon!

 

[otijhuis]

We have THE SAME ISSUES. Sending back my unit. Nicolae will be sending another for replacement.

But when working (SPDIF) the sound is very addicting. The resolution, separation, layering are realistically good.

Glad you got your Hub but sorry to hear you have those i2s issues as well. Besides the 768k issue with the Vox that was fixed with the firmware update I haven't had any problems with the i2s connection itself. Maybe a bad batch? I got mine about 1.5 years ago I think.

Hopefully everyone has a stack without issues soon. It seems we all agree on the sound improvement the Hub brings to the table.

 

[AmanK]

@FOUNDERZERO unfortunately can't really help you there since I use my system for music only. When I used a high upsampling rate in Roon (software upsampling) there definitely was a delay but I don't notice any delay with the Hub regarding upsampling. But that's all I can say.

@AmanK totally agree on the sense of ease and wanting to keep listening. A shame that the i2s connection isn't working. I assume you've updated the Vox to the latest firmware? Hopefully you can get it fixed soon!

I believe I have the latest firmware version:
Vox: 1.53 2.76 1.19
Hub: 1.02 1.03 1.04 1.00

Via i2s, the signal is being recognized by the Vox (it shows the sample rate on the screen). However, there is mostly noise coming from the speakers. When I increase the upsampling to DSD 256 or DSD 512, there is slightly more music but it is accompanied with a high frequency noise.

I really hope my dealer can work out a solution with Nicolae. I am based in India, so am afraid this is going to take some time. Frustrating as we all waited for so long to get the Hub.

Any idea if Nicolae is going to implement a volume control on the Hub?

 

[Miracle1980]

@AmanK and @m-i-c-k-e-y
I had an I2S cable with different pins scheme than the one used from Rockna/Audiobyte. When I tried this cable between Hub and Wavedream I also got noise with some music buried in background.
I tried to change the pins order via software (Wavedream can switch between Ps-Audio and Rockna) but it didn't help.
As the cable is very good (silver one) I sent it back to the seller to change the pins order. I'm still waiting for the cable to be modified and shipped...

Attached you can find the pins order that, supposedly, should be used with Rockna/Audiobyte.

Using a standard AQ Pearl cable fixed my issue and the music is flowing fine. If I switch to Ps-Audio instead of ROCKNA on the Wavedream...I have the channels (left/right) inverted. Using Rockna on WD is working perfectly fine.

So I think the issue might be fixed with an ad-hoc HDMI cable...if only Nicolae will confirm which pins order he used in those "affected" HUBs. Maybe he could simply send you their HDMI cables... properly modified on Hub end.

I'm pretty sure the issue is with the pins on the HDMI socket of the HUB.

 

[otijhuis]

@AmanK and @m-i-c-k-e-y
I had an I2S cable with different pins scheme than the one used from Rockna/Audiobyte. When I tried this cable between Hub and Wavedream I also got noise with some music buried in background.
I tried to change the pins order via software (Wavedream can switch between Ps-Audio and Rockna) but it didn't help.
As the cable is very good (silver one) I sent it back to the seller to change the pins order. I'm still waiting for the cable to be modified and shipped...

Attached you can find the pins order that, supposedly, should be used with Rockna/Audiobyte.

Using a standard AQ Pearl cable fixed my issue and the music is flowing fine. If I switch to Ps-Audio instead of ROCKNA on the Wavedream...I have the channels (left/right) inverted. Using Rockna on WD is working perfectly fine.

So I think the issue might be fixed with an ad-hoc HDMI cable...if only Nicolae will confirm which pins order he used in those "affected" HUBs. Maybe he could simply send you their HDMI cables... properly modified on Hub end.

I'm pretty sure the issue is with the pins on the HDMI socket of the HUB.

It indeed does sound similar to a pin problem. Had the same type of issue when the Singxer SU-6 DDC i2s configuration switches weren't correct.

@AmanK looks like you have the latest firmware and if I remember correctly they have plans for a remote for the stack.
I don't have the stack at the moment but I think you can set the i2s mode on both the Hub and the Vox. If that's possible maybe try different combinations.

 

[m-i-c-k-e-y]

But two devices of the same manufacturer shouldn't have those i2S pin-out/protocol problems right?

 

[Miracle1980]

If you use a cable that it has different pins than the ones used by the 2 devices (like in my case)... it's an issue.

Obviously your HUB or ZAP has wrong pins scheme... because, to my understanding, with Rockna/Audiobyte a standard HDMI cable should work fine.

 

[AmanK]

I tried different i2s settings in Vox (Rockna, PS-Audio, Other) - the sound changes with each setting, but the noise persists.

I'm using the Rockna i2s cable (1.2 meters), so I assume the pinout should work for Hub/Vox.

I also tried some generic HDMI cables but there was no improvement

 

[otijhuis]

But two devices of the same manufacturer shouldn't have those i2S pin-out/protocol problems right?

True. Like @Miracle1980 said. A standard HDMI cable has all the pins connected so that should definitely work. If you can get it to work with a different i2s mode configuration then it's definitely a pin issue.