[Joe Bloggs]

First and foremost, I am your customer, like it or not.

Secondly, this is my thread. You can start your own if you wish.

Lastly, I am entitled to either priase or crap on any product I spent my money on as long as it is my honest opinion / user's experience, and that is not against the forum's rules.

Tell me I am wrong.

We have stated that either your copy is faulty, or we are unable to support your device combination (having tried on the closest combination to reproduce the issue and failing) and have offered you a full refund. There is plentiful evidence above supporting my statement.

You are right only in the marginal sense that you are purposefully deciding to be out $300 (through no fault of ours, there's no strings attached to your refund, no need to even return it or cease using it) in exchange for the apparent right to crap on our product. That to me sounds more like someone with an agenda than any disgruntled customer looking for a solution.

 

[Joe Bloggs]

If I'm not using Tidal or playing any high res tracks should I update the firmware? it's PITA to update it so should I bother?

There does not appear to be anything affecting your use case in the previous firmware. You may wait and see and check the changelog of any further firmware to see if they may suit your purpose. In the meantime the documentation for the firmware update has been corrected, following the present instructions should not be that hard.

 

[ClieOS]

Don't really want to come to this.

People who know me long enough knowns that I used to get many samples and write review in return (as clearly stated in every review I wrote that involved free samples). Keeping good relationship with manufacturers is essential for getting more samples, but as a reviewer you also need to be as truthful as humanly possible. So saying bad thing about products is somewhat a taboo for a non-independent reviewer. But I don't really write many full length review anymore for the last 6~7 years as I neither have the time nor the energy. Plus, I am at a point in my life where I can clearly tell what kind of gears I'll enjoy and chasing all the random stuff is much less entertaining as it used to be. One of the thing I do kinda enjoy for the last few years is to collect different style of high performance USB dongle - not for review, just purely to listen to and keep a good collection of. For that reason, I never asked any free sample from anyone nor promised to get one in exchange for review.. I got them with my own money because I simply love to own a good collection of USB dongles - FC6 is no exception as it is the rarer R-2R type with some extra Hiby's engineering spin and should have fitted quite nicely to my growing collection of USB dongle. Well, what did I get? A buggy one instead.

Now let's start from the beginning.. I was first reached out by Joe over PM regarding FC6 as more or less a courtesy call, since I did start their FC6 discussion thread and probably one fo the first in the forum to pre-order one. Joe asked me to give him some feedback if I encountered any issue.. which I did over PM on March 6th (*which I recalled was the afternoon of first days I received my FC6). As you can see, Joe said he was 'on it'. With a positive response from Joe, I decided to post about it in the FC6 thread on the next morning (March 7th)

The following is how Joe responded on the issue on FC6 thread that day where he promised to keep looking into it NOTE: I didn't get any further response / explanation / refund request / communication over PM from Joe regarding this issue

The next response I got from Joe is the following in the FC6 thread after I started to complain on the lack of update AFTER >TWO MONTHS OF SILENCE where Joe is mostly missing in the FC6 thread and seems to be fairly cureless on what issue I was talking about.

Then the best advise he could give me is to tell me to ask Qualcomm to fix the issue for them, even though over 20+ of my other USB dongles do not suffer a similar problem.

But then again, he also keeps assuring that Hiby is not giving up on my issue yet. Remember - this was still May 20th, the same day Joe responded to my complaint.

After the above exchange, I were more than ready put the heated exchange aside and leave FC6 alone as it would seems Hiby wasn't really going anywhere on my FC6 issue with all the seemingly empty answer and promise. While I weren't trying to actively crap all over it on the forum, I certainly weren't going to actively avoiding FC6 discussion either if it comes up in any thread I visited..

Then I was greeted with the following (well, a forum member will get notified when another quoted his/her user name), where somehow I seems to be the Bond villain because I didn't accept a full refund "since day 1".

So here the following is what that DAY 1 (*and why didn't anyone told me that's day 1 and not 2 and a half month before that?) looks like - I got a PM from Joe on May 20th, the exact same day I made my complaint and were told to ask Qualcomm for a fix or hope that Hiby can deliver a miracle cure. I never got any real explanation of any kind, but somehow I were supposed to know everything he said on May 27th

I never did responded to the refund PM - why? Fist of all, as I have mentioned, my goal is to collect USB dongle. So what I want is a fully functional USB dongle worthy of its asking price that I can enjoy using. If I ever care that much about money, I wouldn't have kept such an expensive a hobby as being an audiophile. If you have made an USB dongle that meant my expectation, there wouldn't be any issue to begin with. Secondly, while Joe never did mention to me on anything about possibly faulty whatever chip in my FC6., I would think the first thing any manufacturer dealing with possible hardware issue on their products will be to either offer exchange or repair. Straight up offering money just doesn't sound right. Do you want to know the first thing that came to my mind when I got this PM? Hmm, it really seems like I was offer something in exchange for silence - that or maybe my understanding of English just completely failed me.

This has kinda going for too long, so I am just gonna stop at this.

 

[povidlo]

Two questions

1. What's the model of your smartphone and models of earphones under which you hear the background noise
2. Are you using exclusive mode or not (as I read an early post of yours saying you can't)

I experience the issue with various set ups. It's not always audile but when it is audible it is disturbing to listening experience.

Here's an example when it's bad. S23 with Tidal app in exclusive mode, connected to FC6 with ddhifi tc09s. Listening with IER-M9.

The first 10 seconds of this track has very bad static noise in OS. The same passage is dead silent in NOS mode with zero static.
https://tidal.com/browse/track/253653590

Hope this helps to pin the issue down.

 

[Joe Bloggs]

Don't really want to come to this.

People who know me long enough knowns that I used to get many samples and write review in return (as clearly stated in every review I wrote that involved free samples). Keeping good relationship with manufacturers is essential for getting more samples, but as a reviewer you also need to be as truthful as humanly possible. So saying bad thing about products is somewhat a taboo for a non-independent reviewer. But I don't really write many full length review anymore for the last 6~7 years as I neither have the time nor the energy. Plus, I am at a point in my life where I can clearly tell what kind of gears I'll enjoy and chasing all the random stuff is much less entertaining as it used to be. One of the thing I do kinda enjoy for the last few years is to collect different style of high performance USB dongle - not for review, just purely to listen to and keep a good collection of. For that reason, I never asked any free sample from anyone nor promised to get one in exchange for review.. I got them with my own money because I simply love to own a good collection of USB dongles - FC6 is no exception as it is the rarer R-2R type with some extra Hiby's engineering spin and should have fitted quite nicely to my growing collection of USB dongle. Well, what did I get? A buggy one instead.

Now let's start from the beginning.. I was first reached out by Joe over PM regarding FC6 as more or less a courtesy call, since I did start their FC6 discussion thread and probably one fo the first in the forum to pre-order one. Joe asked me to give him some feedback if I encountered any issue.. which I did over PM on March 6th (*which I recalled was the afternoon of first days I received my FC6). As you can see, Joe said he was 'on it'. With a positive response from Joe, I decided to post about it in the FC6 thread on the next morning (March 7th)



The following is how Joe responded on the issue on FC6 thread that day where he promised to keep looking into it NOTE: I didn't get any further response / explanation / refund request / communication over PM from Joe regarding this issue



The next response I got from Joe is the following in the FC6 thread after I started to complain on the lack of update AFTER >TWO MONTHS OF SILENCE where Joe is mostly missing in the FC6 thread and seems to be fairly cureless on what issue I was talking about.



Then the best advise he could give me is to tell me to ask Qualcomm to fix the issue for them, even though over 20+ of my other USB dongles do not suffer a similar problem.



But then again, he also keeps assuring that Hiby is not giving up on my issue yet. Remember - this was still May 20th, the same day Joe responded to my complaint.



After the above exchange, I were more than ready put the heated exchange aside and leave FC6 alone as it would seems Hiby wasn't really going anywhere on my FC6 issue with all the seemingly empty answer and promise. While I weren't trying to actively crap all over it on the forum, I certainly weren't going to actively avoiding FC6 discussion either if it comes up in any thread I visited..

Then I was greeted with the following (well, a forum member will get notified when another quoted his/her user name), where somehow I seems to be the Bond villain because I didn't accept a full refund "since day 1".



So here the following is what that DAY 1 (*and why didn't anyone told me that's day 1 and not 2 and a half month before that?) looks like - I got a PM from Joe on May 20th, the exact same day I made my complaint and were told to ask Qualcomm for a fix or hope that Hiby can deliver a miracle cure. I never got any real explanation of any kind, but somehow I were supposed to know everything he said on May 27th




I never did responded to the refund PM - why? Fist of all, as I have mentioned, my goal is to collect USB dongle. So what I want is a fully functional USB dongle worthy of its asking price that I can enjoy using. If I ever care that much about money, I wouldn't have kept such an expensive a hobby as being an audiophile. If you have made an USB dongle that meant my expectation, there wouldn't be any issue to begin with. Secondly, while Joe never did mention to me on anything about possibly faulty whatever chip in my FC6., I would think the first thing any manufacturer dealing with possible hardware issue on their products will be to either offer exchange or repair. Straight up offering money just doesn't sound right. Do you want to know the first thing that came to my mind when I got this PM? Hmm, it really seems like I was offer something in exchange for silence - that or maybe my understanding of English just completely failed me.

This has kinda going for too long, so I am just gonna stop at this.

I don't think that a post where a so-called reviewer digs up every "personal message" (they're called that for a reason) sent to him in an attempt to dig up dirt warrants any response ever, so I won't.

The only thing I'd say is that, neither he nor I had the full picture regarding the fault on "day 1"; what is true is that I offered him a full refund on "day 1". There is no mention of any condition whatsoever. It's one thing for him to have a hobby of collecting dongles; this is a dongle that by our own admission either doesn't work, won't ever work, with his phone, or is broken, period. What drives him to keep it at full price, only he can guess at. If he thinks he doesn't have a full picture on "day 1", he certainly does now.

I would think the first thing any manufacturer dealing with possible hardware issue on their products will be to either offer exchange or repair. Straight up offering money just doesn't sound right.

Not everything is repairable, and not everything can be made to work with every other thing. The world of USB dongles is endemic with examples of things that just don't work with each other, I don't know what kind of collector you are, to not have come across this yet. I come across such reports, of dongles of any brand with smartphones, computers, etc. of any brand, every day. The same can be said, for example, with AV receivers connecting / not connecting to TVs via eARC. It's what happens when a so-called standard is fragmented. It would be disingenuous, for me to pretend that we will definitely come across a fix to your issue, yet that is exactly what you want me to do, it seems. We've also had plenty of people demand straight refunds instead of exchange / repair of our products, when our policy in other cases stipulated the latter (when we believed the issues could be fixed) so I suppose I should just consider it my bad luck that when I offered a straight refund in this instance, seeing it to be the preferred solution in previous customers, you should take offence from it instead.

I experience the issue with various set ups. It's not always audile but when it is audible it is disturbing to listening experience.

Here's an example when it's bad. S23 with Tidal app in exclusive mode, connected to FC6 with ddhifi tc09s. Listening with IER-M9.

The first 10 seconds of this track has very bad static noise in OS. The same passage is dead silent in NOS mode with zero static.
https://tidal.com/browse/track/253653590

Hope this helps to pin the issue down.

I'll try it with the copy I received today.

 

[Joe Bloggs]

I experience the issue with various set ups. It's not always audile but when it is audible it is disturbing to listening experience.

Here's an example when it's bad. S23 with Tidal app in exclusive mode, connected to FC6 with ddhifi tc09s. Listening with IER-M9.

The first 10 seconds of this track has very bad static noise in OS. The same passage is dead silent in NOS mode with zero static.
https://tidal.com/browse/track/253653590

Hope this helps to pin the issue down.

Can I confirm that you are referring to the "Drake & Josh" track?

Do you hear it in a silence track? https://www.dropbox.com/s/kgq6wdhkpd3q8zx/silence.wav?dl=0

 

[povidlo]

Can I confirm that you are referring to the "Drake & Josh" track?

Do you hear it in a silence track? https://www.dropbox.com/s/kgq6wdhkpd3q8zx/silence.wav?dl=0

Yes, that track. I also noticed the same static occurence in os mode with this track with Tidal through UAPP in exclusive mode. And same static with ier-z1r as well as m9.

No, I don't hear the static with the silence track .

Do you hear anything through 10 seconds of this track with iems you have? Do you have tidal subscription?

To reiterate, it's pitch black in nos, but lots of static in os.

Is it going to be possible to toggle hdr on/off with a future firmware update to test what you mentioned earlier in terms of the issue might being related to similar issue with your r2r dap?

 

[Joe Bloggs]

Yes, that track. I also noticed the same static occurence in os mode with this track with Tidal through UAPP in exclusive mode. And same static with ier-z1r as well as m9.

No, I don't hear the static with the silence track .

Do you hear anything through 10 seconds of this track with iems you have? Do you have tidal subscription?

To reiterate, it's pitch black in nos, but lots of static in os.

Is it going to be possible to toggle hdr on/off with a future firmware update to test what you mentioned earlier in terms of the issue might being related to similar issue with your r2r dap?

I do have a tidal subscription and have been testing with an all-BA set with significantly high HF response. I don't hear any difference in that respect so far.

Not sure what's "pitch black" in NOS as it's pretty noisy music even in the first ten seconds.

I seem to see that it is a 44.1kHz track without MQA, is that correct? Is the dongle playing at 44.1kHz?

Which particular OS filter are you using, does it make any difference?

 

[jsmiller58]

Priced around US$300 with single-ended 3.5mm output. Already placed an order, let see how this stack up against RU6, which is cheaper and also has balanced output.

Conclusion: Overpriced, roll-off treble, glitch, so AVOID, AVOID, AVOID.

Thank you for saving me a lot of money!!!

 

[Andrew_WOT]

Thank you for saving me a lot of money!!!

Second that, thanks for a great community service Mr. ClieOS.
Really pathetic display from HiBy support.

 

[tL47]

One track which triggers the error on my side with static and artifacts in highs is this one (4. Between Us). After 3:30 there is an effect in the track which brings then the static until the end of the track. Same pattern observed while listening to vinyl rips with some clicks in them. Hope this helps to nail down the issue.

 

[povidlo]

I do have a tidal subscription and have been testing with an all-BA set with significantly high HF response. I don't hear any difference in that respect so far.

Not sure what's "pitch black" in NOS as it's pretty noisy music even in the first ten seconds.

I seem to see that it is a 44.1kHz track without MQA, is that correct? Is the dongle playing at 44.1kHz?

Which particular OS filter are you using, does it make any difference?

Yes, it shows 44.1khz PCM with yellow light. Fast normal filter, but same issue with other filters.

Look, I appreciate this being looked into but I don't have time to continuously qa this for you. Concrete information with specific examples provided already, by myself and other users, should give you and your team a pretty good idea of troubleshooting os static issue in the right direction.

Personally, I'm not looking for a refund. Fc6 sounds great to me in nos mode. But I prefer os for modern electronic genres so looking forward to this issue being resolved and being able to use os. Currently, os mode seriously pisses me off and I don't use it at all anymore except when helping to troubleshoot this issue. Listening to new music frequently, I just don't know when static is going to pop up next...

 

[Chessblitzer2017]

Im about too pull the trigger on this. It was between this and dc03 pro but seen a guy say this makes that seem dull/tame. Has anyone tried with Xelento? I listen too vocal deep house and want emotive forward vocals, weighted notes/instruments and open soundstage and this seems from everything I've read reviews this thread it's exactly what I'm looking for

 

[nishan99]

Im about too pull the trigger on this. It was between this and dc03 pro but seen a guy say this makes that seem dull/tame. Has anyone tried with Xelento? I listen too vocal deep house and want emotive forward vocals, weighted notes/instruments and open soundstage and this seems from everything I've read reviews this thread it's exactly what I'm looking for

FC6 does not has forward vocals, it's neutral sounding dongle in OS mode (NOS is too harsh for me) and also does not has open soundstage it's quite the opposite actually, it's rolled off on the edges but the stage itself is big enough for a dongle. Notes weight is good especially in OS mode.

 

[Chessblitzer2017]

Lets go, just bought the fc6 and dc03 pro and the CB18 cable too beef things up. I'm sure I'll be returning the latter. Can't wait too hear this bad boy Power my Xelento. Will post impressions soon.