Joe Bloggs
Sponsor: HiByMember of the Trade: EFO Technologies Co, YanYin TechnologyHis Porta Corda walked the Green Mile
Darn, CactusPete was one step of us eh 
https://www.hiby.com/cpcc/index_49.aspx?itemid=147&lcid=12
HiBy R6 ad copy, faithfully translated to English by yours truly
"Hmm, that sure went over his head" --HiBy engineers regarding hi-res lossless music and stock Android
Now for a bit more about the "non-destructive" business, yes it means lossless music, but here it means more than just playing back lossless music, it means piping that lossless music losslessly past Android to the DAC as well.
That might not sound like much news by itself, since many devices have supported bit-perfect playback via the bundled custom designed music player or a handful of players that support it somewhat universally, such as Neutron and... Neutron? (Poweramp alpha supports high-res playback but does not support locking output frequency to source frequency)
What HiBy has achieved, on the other hand, is a custom Android architecture that supports bit-perfect non-resampling output from all apps, as long as the app itself lays its hands off audio resampling. We call this the Direct Transport Audio architecture (DTA).
Before DTA, you had essentially 3 classes of audio apps with the following behaviour (excluding bundled audio apps with special privileges):
1. Apps that didn't give a whit about digital audio quality on its end, trusting Android with it (majority of apps): audio gets sent as is to the Android audio stack where it is digested and sent back out at the "native sample rate" of the device (usually 48kHz, but 44.1kHz is also common), along with a bit more messing about with track mixing.
2. Apps that cannot bypass the resampling process but nevertheless want to have control over the quality, by resampling the audio on its end before sending it to Android: audio gets resampled by the app's (presumably premium) resampling processes before being sent to Android. Audio mixing is still an issue.
3. Apps that utilize various more-or-less proprietary methods employed by different ROMs to bypass resampling. These apps produced bit-perfect output on supported devices, which unfortunately more often than not tended to be smartphones rather than DAPs with their special architectures. There were also quite few of these apps.
With the advent of DTA, the landscape changes for all these apps:
Class (1) is where the most of the action takes place, because we have takena apart the standard Android audio stack and turned it around its head, making it work bit-perfectly with no resampling taking place. Hence many, many apps previously expected to be of throwaway quality become bit-perfect transports. This includes streaming apps like Tidal and such, giving you maximum benefit from high-res lossless streaming.
Class (2) unfortunately benefits less from the new architecture, because DTA must still report a "device standard" sampling rate, even though it is in fact not tied down to any particular rate: these apps would take the superfluous step of resampling to 48kHz before sending it to DTA, where it nevertheless benefits from the removal of mixing processes.
Class (3) also benefits from DTA, because we have taken every step necessary to make it compatible with the other bit-perfect hacks used on the Android market before.
Other interesting tech points include the generally advanced hardware specs (processing wise, versus other DAPs) and good-if-not-totally-exceptional audio specs (which one may argue nevertheless gets a head start over the competition thanks to DTA).
As usual, when it comes to sound quality and signature the manufacturer keeps mum, letting future customers form their own opinion. Here is where Fanoble the HiBy CEO (and Joe Bloggs) throw their unique spanner into the works, with this mysterious piece of work in progress:
(shhh...)
Not to be overlooked are external features such as the large 300dpi touchscreen (there's screens with less dpi labelled "Retina"...) and the 316L stainless steel chassis, prone to make a crater on someone's wooden floor rather than the other way around
----------------------------
Subscribe to our newsletter by going to www.hibymusic.net (you can unsubscribe anytime afterwards) to be the first to know when this hits the market internationally.
This will first go on an indiegogo campaign slated for early next month (December 2017), where backers will get early bird discounts to the unit. Again, subscribe at www.hibymusic.net to be notified of the details pronto.
You may also come warm up our facebook page https://www.facebook.com/hibycom/ and enjoy other latest news we post there and the next audiophilic wisecracks from Joe
If you don't want to subscribe, there's also this post, which will be updated with the relevant details as soon as they come out...
Until then...
Happy Listening!
(are FiiO still using this as their standard closing? Well I started the tradition for them when I worked there so I'm not copying them )
Joseph Yeung
HiBy Music Product Manager
M(5{JC37.png)
https://www.hiby.com/cpcc/index_49.aspx?itemid=147&lcid=12
HiBy R6 ad copy, faithfully translated to English by yours truly
"Hmm, that sure went over his head" --HiBy engineers regarding hi-res lossless music and stock Android
Now for a bit more about the "non-destructive" business, yes it means lossless music, but here it means more than just playing back lossless music, it means piping that lossless music losslessly past Android to the DAC as well.
That might not sound like much news by itself, since many devices have supported bit-perfect playback via the bundled custom designed music player or a handful of players that support it somewhat universally, such as Neutron and... Neutron? (Poweramp alpha supports high-res playback but does not support locking output frequency to source frequency)
What HiBy has achieved, on the other hand, is a custom Android architecture that supports bit-perfect non-resampling output from all apps, as long as the app itself lays its hands off audio resampling. We call this the Direct Transport Audio architecture (DTA).
Before DTA, you had essentially 3 classes of audio apps with the following behaviour (excluding bundled audio apps with special privileges):
1. Apps that didn't give a whit about digital audio quality on its end, trusting Android with it (majority of apps): audio gets sent as is to the Android audio stack where it is digested and sent back out at the "native sample rate" of the device (usually 48kHz, but 44.1kHz is also common), along with a bit more messing about with track mixing.
2. Apps that cannot bypass the resampling process but nevertheless want to have control over the quality, by resampling the audio on its end before sending it to Android: audio gets resampled by the app's (presumably premium) resampling processes before being sent to Android. Audio mixing is still an issue.
3. Apps that utilize various more-or-less proprietary methods employed by different ROMs to bypass resampling. These apps produced bit-perfect output on supported devices, which unfortunately more often than not tended to be smartphones rather than DAPs with their special architectures. There were also quite few of these apps.
With the advent of DTA, the landscape changes for all these apps:
Class (1) is where the most of the action takes place, because we have takena apart the standard Android audio stack and turned it around its head, making it work bit-perfectly with no resampling taking place. Hence many, many apps previously expected to be of throwaway quality become bit-perfect transports. This includes streaming apps like Tidal and such, giving you maximum benefit from high-res lossless streaming.
Class (2) unfortunately benefits less from the new architecture, because DTA must still report a "device standard" sampling rate, even though it is in fact not tied down to any particular rate: these apps would take the superfluous step of resampling to 48kHz before sending it to DTA, where it nevertheless benefits from the removal of mixing processes.
Class (3) also benefits from DTA, because we have taken every step necessary to make it compatible with the other bit-perfect hacks used on the Android market before.
Other interesting tech points include the generally advanced hardware specs (processing wise, versus other DAPs) and good-if-not-totally-exceptional audio specs (which one may argue nevertheless gets a head start over the competition thanks to DTA).
As usual, when it comes to sound quality and signature the manufacturer keeps mum, letting future customers form their own opinion. Here is where Fanoble the HiBy CEO (and Joe Bloggs) throw their unique spanner into the works, with this mysterious piece of work in progress:
(shhh...)
Not to be overlooked are external features such as the large 300dpi touchscreen (there's screens with less dpi labelled "Retina"...) and the 316L stainless steel chassis, prone to make a crater on someone's wooden floor rather than the other way around
----------------------------
What sales pitch would be complete without a way to buy the darn thing??
Subscribe to our newsletter by going to www.hibymusic.net (you can unsubscribe anytime afterwards) to be the first to know when this hits the market internationally.
This will first go on an indiegogo campaign slated for early next month (December 2017), where backers will get early bird discounts to the unit. Again, subscribe at www.hibymusic.net to be notified of the details pronto.
You may also come warm up our facebook page https://www.facebook.com/hibycom/ and enjoy other latest news we post there and the next audiophilic wisecracks from Joe
If you don't want to subscribe, there's also this post, which will be updated with the relevant details as soon as they come out...
Until then...
Happy Listening!
(are FiiO still using this as their standard closing? Well I started the tradition for them when I worked there so I'm not copying them
)Joseph Yeung
HiBy Music Product Manager
Last edited:
