[Andykong]

When using the TIDAL app I am getting some noise during the first second or two of an MQA song. This appears to be related to switching into MQA mode - for example when the previous song was 16/44.1.

Setup is N6ii with E01 module.

This happens if your playlist contains both MQA and non-MQA songs. It only happens when switching into MQA mode.

Does anyone else experience this?

I just conducted some tests wrt the "noise at PCM/MQA or vice versa switching" issue. In summary, I got the noise in a very few but not all instances, and - honestly - it was not overly distracting for me.

Setup: N6ii with E02 -> balanced into Beyerdynamic Xelento, listening at my usual 32HdB and up to 40 or more HdB
Players: Original Tidal Android App, and Tidal integrated within UAPP
Created two playlists: Each one is alternating CD and MQA quality tracks a couple of times; one playlist with streaming only, one with offlined contents only. (Admittedly, one could think of a playlist that also alternates between streaming and offlined.)

In the original Tidal App, I did get this noise when switching from 16/44.1 to MQA, actually in the offline playlist. A fraction of a second (<0.5 sec) of something that sounds like mild static, low in volume. But with the streaming playlist in the Tidal App and with both playlists in UAPP, the disturbances were hardly noticeable.

I must say that all those little clicks and mutings at track/quality switchovers are much more noticeable than that noise ("white" or "static"). I suspect that with the E02 the mutings might be long enough to cover that noise; in fact, the mutings are long enough to cover the first actual sounds at a track's beginning.

Remark 1: When trying to find out whether these noises occur in Tidal streaming or offlining, I guess one should keep in mind that a streamed track gets cached while being played for the very first time (at least that's what I think to happen), and thus it will be similar to an offlined track at replays thereafter.

Remark 2: Using Tidal within UAPP brought up a lot of weird issues, UAPP stalled and even crashed on me quite often. It seems the app doesn't like to do fast forwards and other actions with the slider bar when streaming, i.e. buffering new contents and picking up at the desired position again. In this test, I wanted to listen to the first few seconds of a track and then slide forward to its last seconds.

Remark 3: Actually, I am not at all the Playlist type of person, I am the Play-an-entire-album person. So I would never have noticed this noise issue... Similar to me noticing the mute at a track's beginning only after quite some time with the N6ii. [In former days, I even had some OCD with music I cherish - I wouldn't stop a track without a manual slow fade-out, and I would listen to all four sides of a 2-LP album in a row... - getting sidetracked.]

I was very worried when I read Taz777's initial complaint, I created a folder to test non-MQA to MQA transition with A02 and T01, I heard faint noise in the first half second, which is not as bad as I anticipated. Noise extended into first two seconds of a song will be really disturbing. Then I bring the follow up messages to our Engineer and go through the problem together.

I have to admit, N6ii is in a less ideal situation when we need to deal with this kind of timing-related problem.

In a normal standalone DAP, the common solution to solve similar problem is to set the idle time between tracks long enough for the mute relay to function correctly, making sure the noise will die down before we start next track. There is a limit on how long we can extend the idle time between tracks because we can only specify an idle time for all tracks, we can't develop a complicated table to allocate different idle time for different scenario, but at least, this is theoretically feasible.

Unfortunately the modular nature of N6ii has make things a lot more complicated. These type of timing-related problem involve synchronisation of different processing, but the clock sync and associated FPGA instructions are resided in the N6ii main chassis. In other word, we can only specify an idle time for ALL Motherboards and all tracks. So you can imagine the difficulties involve when we need to design a sync-and-mute solution to compensate the noise and pop-distortion among different DAC. Fortunately we are experienced with AK4497 (N8), PCM1792A (N6), and ES9038Pro (CS-100DAC), so the solution we have developed are kind of satisfactory for existing motherboards. Unfortunately we only have limited exposure to MQA when we develop the N6ii core system, and that eventually lead to a less than perfect MQA implementation that Taz777 has identified. We can't go back and revise the idle time setting now because the parameter is hard-coded into the EPROM, and we are reluctant to extend the idle time of subsequent production by 1 or 2 second because this will affect all Motherboards in all playback scenarios.

 

[Andykong]

Agreed, problem is I have the N6ii already. I'm not sure if I should sell the N6ii and get something else, but what else would be as good as an N6ii + A02 for driving the C9?

I could sell the N6ii and get an N6ii+A02 if they are still available or something else but that's gonna cost.

I really like the N6ii though, decisions, decisions. 1st world problems I will probably just enjoy what I have for the rest of this year.

If your main objective is to acquire a DAP to maximise your C9, you should look for a player with clean, unamplified, genuine Balanced Line Out. From what I know, N8, N6ii (E02), DX220Max, AK Kann Cube (via Mini XLR), Hiby R8 and New R6 offer a real deal on Balanced Line out. I am not familiar with Lotoo and L&P DAPs so you need to find that out. TBH, there isn't a lot of choice when balanced line out is your priority. Since you have N6ii already, getting a E02 module is probably the most cost effective solution. E02 don't have the selectable LPF like A02, but that is a feature unique to A02, so you won't find this feature in other DAP either. Both Alex of Twister6 and Marcus of Headfonics used N6ii(E02) as one of their main source in their C9 review respectively, you can check out these review to find out whether E02 is a satisfactory source to C9.

 

[Whitigir]

A T02 was exactly what I was thinking too when I posted my reply above, we can dream but I don't think it will happen.

I am assuming T01 ? Lol or E02. The differences is that T01 is a pseudo Line out, which isn’t bad really, just not as dedicated as A02. The E02 is a dedicated Line out but it won’t offer Low pass filters as the A02.

There are other players though....whatever float your boat really

 

[Whitigir]

Fortunately we are experienced with AK4497 (N8), PCM1792A (N6), and ES9038Pro

Should I be expecting new TOTL DAP that has 2X ES9038Pro with dedicated line out and powerful output stage with new SOC like Snapdragon 888 , 512Gb, 6Gb Ram, and so on ?
Nice to dream though

 

[bluestorm1992]

Should I be expecting new TOTL DAP that has 2X ES9038Pro with dedicated line out and powerful output stage with new SOC like Snapdragon 888 , 512Gb, 6Gb Ram, and so on ?
Nice to dream though

Sign me up for that!!

 

[justsomesonyfan]

Should I be expecting new TOTL DAP that has 2X ES9038Pro with dedicated line out and powerful output stage with new SOC like Snapdragon 888 , 512Gb, 6Gb Ram, and so on ?
Nice to dream though

please no lol all the big brick daps have this dac combo, we need to spice it up with multibit r2r.. right?

also if you were wondering which bricks, kann cube, dx220max, fiio m17

 

[MarkParity]

I am assuming T01 ? Lol or E02. The differences is that T01 is a pseudo Line out, which isn’t bad really, just not as dedicated as A02. The E02 is a dedicated Line out but it won’t offer Low pass filters as the A02.

There are other players though....whatever float your boat really

No we were referring to a totally new (doesn't exist yet and never will) T02 module with lineout and pre-out only like the A02 but with Burr-Brown DAC chips.

 

[jonstatt]

I was very worried when I read Taz777's initial complaint, I created a folder to test non-MQA to MQA transition with A02 and T01, I heard faint noise in the first half second, which is not as bad as I anticipated. Noise extended into first two seconds of a song will be really disturbing. Then I bring the follow up messages to our Engineer and go through the problem together.

I have to admit, N6ii is in a less ideal situation when we need to deal with this kind of timing-related problem.

In a normal standalone DAP, the common solution to solve similar problem is to set the idle time between tracks long enough for the mute relay to function correctly, making sure the noise will die down before we start next track. There is a limit on how long we can extend the idle time between tracks because we can only specify an idle time for all tracks, we can't develop a complicated table to allocate different idle time for different scenario, but at least, this is theoretically feasible.

Unfortunately the modular nature of N6ii has make things a lot more complicated. These type of timing-related problem involve synchronisation of different processing, but the clock sync and associated FPGA instructions are resided in the N6ii main chassis. In other word, we can only specify an idle time for ALL Motherboards and all tracks. So you can imagine the difficulties involve when we need to design a sync-and-mute solution to compensate the noise and pop-distortion among different DAC. Fortunately we are experienced with AK4497 (N8), PCM1792A (N6), and ES9038Pro (CS-100DAC), so the solution we have developed are kind of satisfactory for existing motherboards. Unfortunately we only have limited exposure to MQA when we develop the N6ii core system, and that eventually lead to a less than perfect MQA implementation that Taz777 has identified. We can't go back and revise the idle time setting now because the parameter is hard-coded into the EPROM, and we are reluctant to extend the idle time of subsequent production by 1 or 2 second because this will affect all Motherboards in all playback scenarios.

The noise is worse on my N6ii A02 into a C9 than you describe. When using the Tidal app and with a playlist that has a mix of Tidal master MQA and hifi FLAC, the noise can be quite loud and last for more than a second. Are you saying there is no way to fix this?

 

[justsomesonyfan]

No we were referring to a totally new (doesn't exist yet and never will) T02 module with lineout and pre-out only like the A02 but with Burr-Brown DAC chips.

a real dream would be the old r2r multibit dacs like 1702 or 1704k but that'll never happen

 

[Whitigir]

a real dream would be the old r2r multibit dacs like 1702 or 1704k but that'll never happen

Who knows ? Lol

 

[Taz777]

The noise is worse on my N6ii A02 into a C9 than you describe. When using the Tidal app and with a playlist that has a mix of Tidal master MQA and hifi FLAC, the noise can be quite loud and last for more than a second. Are you saying there is no way to fix this?

That's how I understood the response. I'm going to try a workaround: sort my playlists into MQA Masters tracks first, then FLAC songs. I don't know how to do that yet, but I'll see if I can figure it out in the TIDAL app or UAPP.

 

[zen87192]

Just a 'heads up' for anyone wanting an N6ii with A02 Motherboard. This 'combo' is now in stock and available at Musicteck. I'm not sure if individual A02 Boards are available, as these are not listed, but it may be worth asking.

 

[Whitigir]

Just a 'heads up' for anyone wanting an N6ii with A02 Motherboard. This 'combo' is now in stock and available at Musicteck. I'm not sure if individual A02 Boards are available, as these are not listed, but it may be worth asking.

I doubt it as this is already sealed as a combination with N6II. Instead of A01, this one comes A02 standard. Unless you pay so much over the A02 MSRP alone that warrant an open box N6ii at a discounted price then sure.

 

[gonzfi]

Can anyone comment on how offline Qobuz works with this player when saving to an SD card? Any issues?

 

[111MilesToGo]

Can anyone comment on how offline Qobuz works with this player when saving to an SD card? Any issues?

Yes, let me comment on how Qobuz works regarding offline storage as well as streaming cache - at least on Android devices, I don't know about other operating systems.

In general, I should say that offlining does work, except for the following:

However, in very short terms, Qobuz opted for a "less than ideal" way of storing in order to achieve piracy protection. This currently results in "less than optimum" performance, one might even say "dreadful" (as coined by several other users) performance when the amount of offlined contents or cached streaming contents increases. It is worthwhile to point out that this is a general issue with any Android device, not particularly with the N6ii.

Please refer to the "Official Qobuz Issues Thread" on AudiophileStyle.com:
https://audiophilestyle.com/forums/...issues-thread/?do=findComment&comment=1110738
https://audiophilestyle.com/forums/...issues-thread/?do=findComment&comment=1110812
https://audiophilestyle.com/forums/...issues-thread/?do=findComment&comment=1110836
https://audiophilestyle.com/forums/...issues-thread/?do=findComment&comment=1114017
https://audiophilestyle.com/forums/...issues-thread/?do=findComment&comment=1114019
https://audiophilestyle.com/forums/...issues-thread/?do=findComment&comment=1115792
https://audiophilestyle.com/forums/...issues-thread/?do=findComment&comment=1115821
https://audiophilestyle.com/forums/...issues-thread/?do=findComment&comment=1115884
https://audiophilestyle.com/forums/...issues-thread/?do=findComment&comment=1115891

As can be read in the last posts quoted, there is reason to hope for improvement when Qobuz refactors their Android App soon.

PS: Thanks to @DarginMahkum for help in getting proper attention from Qobuz!