[redi1972]

Hey all, I just got myself a Dragonfly Cobalt to use with PC/laptop and my Android phone. Regarding the latter, I found good information hard to find, but as far as I can tell any USB DAC on Android will have the problem of Android upsampling 44.1kHz files (i.e. all mp3 files in general) to 48kHz, which introduces very noticeable clicks during playback. I have already a couple of music apps that have their own USB driver to get around this, however Spotify playback cannot be fixed by this as opposed to Tidal, for example. Since Spotify's collection is bigger and I've already found that a substantial number of my Spotify favourites are not in the Tidal collection, moving to Tidal is not really a great solution for me right now.

I did find some forum posting about fixing this 48kHz upsampling issue in Android but it involves rooting your phone and editing system files. Has anyone tried this? Can anyone confirm that this is really a fix?

If anyone has more info or tips about using the Cobalt on an Android phone, please share!

 

[bland125]

You hear "clicks" while music is playing? Can you try to define those noises better? I am not aware of any clicking sound over music due to upsampling and getting aroud this is no walk in the park. I did use a Cobalt with my Android phone with Spotify though I don't have the Cobalt anymore.

 

[redi1972]

You hear "clicks" while music is playing? Can you try to define those noises better? I am not aware of any clicking sound over music due to upsampling and getting aroud this is no walk in the park. I did use a Cobalt with my Android phone with Spotify though I don't have the Cobalt anymore.

It's as if I'm listening to vinyl playback. Random pops and clicks, depending on what song. Some songs are clean, others have them every 5 seconds or so. I haven't found out yet what makes it come or go, but when listening to the same Spotify songs on Tidal (via USB Audio Player Pro to properly use the Cobalt) they are absolutely free of pops and clicks.

There's also a very distinct start-up effect when starting to play a Spotify song (or a stored mp3 file via a regular music playback app) via the Cobalt after connecting it. It sounds like the noise you get when you haven't tuned in 100% on the right frequency of a radio channel. It disappears after a few seconds, and it only happens on the first track played after connecting.

It could be that it's this 48kHz upsampling combined with some quirk in the specific implementation (hardware and/or software) that Sony chose for my specific phone.
I will try on my PC where I can set the sampling frequency manually, to see if the clicks and pops also happen there.

 

[bland125]

I would tend to discard hardware issues for now since the problem is inconsistent and can be bypassed by giving USB control to specific apps when possible. Have you gone through the first steps of uninstalling Spotify and reinstalling, testing through Tidal directly without giving it USB control and so on? You seem on the good path, something seems to be going on on the sound processing side. I certainly did not have such issues on my Razor Phone 2 and Cobalt through Spotify.

 

[redi1972]

Inconsistent is indeed the key word. Now playing songs on Spotify on my phone and no problems. I'm starting to suspect that maybe a conflict of audio players could play a role. At least on my PC with the sampling set to 48kHz I had no clicks and pops at all so it's definitely not something hardware-related with the Dragonfly.

Next time I get them clicks and pops again I'll close down everything, reconnect and restart the player to see if that resolves it (which would then hint at some software conflict). My mood has improved now that it seems that it's not a systematic problem I'll have to live with

 

[bland125]

Very possible, IOS users with AQ dongles have reported issues as well with the new IOS version but it has to do with power delivery and can be bypassed with the camera kit.

AQ's website provides a bit of info:

Yes. DragonFly Black, Red, and Cobalt will work with most Android devices running on Lollipop OS (and some Android devices running on KitKat), provided that the device manufacturer has adhered to the USB specification and implementation, and supports audio over USB.

To verify that your Android device complies with isochronous USB audio, download and run USB Host Check.

You can check the whole thing here: https://www.audioquest.com/page/aq-dragonfly-series-faq.html in the Android related section.

 

[redi1972]

Well there you go, USB Host Check says that all of this USB functionality is not enabled on my phone

 

[bland125]

Oh no, is that a justification for a brand new phone I see?

Isn't Christmas soon? Hehe

 

[redi1972]

Oh no, is that a justification for a brand new phone I see?

Maybe, but how do I make sure the new one is fully compliant to the USB specification... And will that guarantee fault-free USB playback, since the 48 kHz upsampling is the Android standard...
And switching to iPhone will surely bring its own share of issues

 

[bland125]

Which phone do you have? I mean I suspect we would have heard a lot more about that non USB compliant issue if it was common but while maybe not as rare as I would think, it doesn't look that common. I would not switch over to an iPhone unless you wanted to do so to begin with, at least not because of this particular issue.

 

[redi1972]

It's a Sony Xperia XZ1. USB Host Check says 3 files it is looking for are not there (but then again my phone is not rooted). Another tool called USB OTG Check or something like that said everything regarding USB, including USB Host functionality was OK. So massive confusion alert.

 

[bland125]

Yeah that is a good phone, I doubt the issue is with the phone. I still only does that randomly in Spotify? Did you make sure to empty the app cache, delete it and redownload it?