Guys, doing a deep dive on the M11 Plus LTD, and I have to say, I’m getting a bit suspicious.
I know that some here (in answer to my earlier question about this) have stated that the player is capable of rendering streaming tracks bit-perfectly, but how exactly is that known? I can’t find anything from Fiio confirming this. There is plenty of stuff regarding it’s modified Android OS being able to play Tidal MQA tracks bit-perfectly… but remember, Tidal themselves released an update that allowed their app to bypass Android’s restrictions and unpack MQA tracks. Amazon HD, Apple Lossless, Qobuz etc etc have released no such updates.
Additionally, many of these apps can trigger high resolution “false flags” with many DAPs and DACs when playing… I love Amazon HD, but it is particularly notorious with regards to this… triggering the high-rez 24/192 light on my Mojo and other DACs even when the track being played is 44.1/16 (with upscaling turned off). So an illuminated “high-rez” light or a specific high-rez value being displayed is not always an accurate representation of what is actually being played.
I have seen nothing from Fiio officially stating that the M11 Pro or Plus LTD employs DTA (Direct Transport Audio) architecture which will defeat the Android SRC (Sample Rate Conversion) which downgrades audio from apps that do not employ MQA such as the aforementioned Amazon Music HD, Apple Lossless, Qobuz, et al…
HyBy employs DTA on their R6 2020, and as would be expected, has much to say about this… They emphasize that the player is capable of streaming tracks from all apps bit-perfectly; it’s a major selling point of the player. It seems odd that Fiio would not aggresively market this selling point as well, if its player was in fact able to stream all apps bit-perfectly.
I’m not trying to troll or get flamed here, and believe me, I’d be really, really happy to be wrong about this. I’m hoping that my Google-fu just sucks and there is plenty about this out there that I just missed. As I said in the post before this, I just bought an M11 Plus LTD. So I have a vested interest in it having this feature and my being wrong.
But I need some sort of official statement from Fiio. And I think right now I need to cancel my order until I can get that kind of confirmation. If anyone can point me in the direction of a statement from Fiio confirming that the M11 Plus LTD can stream tracks from all apps bit-perfectly, I’d be very, very grateful. Thanks!