[elementze]

The latest, v1.21

 

[Joe Bloggs]

The latest, v1.21

what was your previous version of firmware?

 

[elementze]

Not sure, whatever the previously released version was. maybe v1.20? I don't remember exactly

 

[gLer]

What firmware version are you on? @gLer

1.21_20231019-1522

 

[OhmsClaw]

Cross-post from the Watercooler thread:
So I wanted to check back in with some results/ruminations about by mini source-odyssey.

I was quite smitten with the RS8 for many months, as you may know. And then I got the itch.

The culprit was the Cayin RU7. It opened my eyes as to what a dongle could achieve - to such an extent that I began to wonder if I needed a full-sized DAP at all, especially given my more mobile-oriented listening time. Anyway, I fell completely in love with the RU7-Dunu Falcon Ultra combo for travel situations, played out of my iPhone. I can get a tight seal and it has excellent bass with the gold nozzles, which works quite well in the car or bus or train or plane. As mentioned before, the bass lift helps mitigate the ambient noise of those transportation modes. The depth and layering of the combo is outstanding.

But, as much as the RU7 itself, I realized I had fallen in love with the Cayin house-sound, or at least the 1-bit version of it, so I bought an N7 and put it through its paces both as a stand-alone streamer and as a tethered USB/Dac.

I was quite under-impressed with it vis-a-vis the RU7. Which is more praise for the dongle than a diss of the DAP.

The N7 seemed to bring much the same level of warmth and detail to the picture, maybe a bit more dynamism, a slightly blacker background, but its staging and depth actually seemed less. So whereas I had originally thought that if the N7 was "good enough," I would sell the RS8 and pocket the difference for some new IEMs, I was now wondering if the RU7 might be enough for both mobile and desk listening and I could pocket a much larger difference and put all that toward a TOTL iem.

All this comparative listening was done with the Noble Ronin, by the way, perhaps not the best match for the 1-bit sound, but it's what I have on me and it's my favorite IEM of all. I went back and forth between the N7 and RU7 until I decided that there was not enough of a difference to justify keeping the N7.

Then I thought about the L&P W4 and some of the praise it's been getting, along with my new-found respect for dongles, so I ordered one and went through the same comps with N7 and RU7. But again, I decided that the RU7 was my favorite, espeically at its price. The W4 just didn't have that fuller, richer timbre, centered on the mid-bass, that I had come to love on the RU7. It was a tad cleaner. But I am not a clean guy.

Then I happened to read something about the Hiby Music Pro app in the N30LE thread and that it allowed for Qobuz streaming, not just Tidal, and that the sound through the app was better than using the Qobuz app alone. This led me to investigate. I realized I had an older version of Hiby Music Pro on my N7 and promptly upgraded. Then, with some difficulty, I found how to stream Qobuz through the app. It's a tiny bit buggy, but it did sound better. Yet the biggest advantage of this by far was that I could now use the Hiby app-embedded verions of their plug-ins and MSEB, which I had come to love on the RS8. More specifically, the Sound Field and Spatialize plug-ins.

Whoa!

Playing around with these two plug-ins utterly transformed what I heard from the N7. The imaging and depth were suddenly outstanding and I felt greater dynamics, a clearer, fuller midrange (though still quite warm) and just enough treble sparkle added to balance out the overall darkness of the 1-bit sound. This worked on local files through the app as well.

So I changed my mind yet again and decided the N7 was a keeper for this reason alone. Qobuz is what I listen to most of the time. I could never get the N7 to sound great using HQPlayer and Roon but now I didn't have to. It could be a stand-alone, and it wasn't anywhere near as heavy as the RS8, so I might actually haul it around.

So now the plan was, I would sell the W4 and the RS8 and use that cash for a very good set of IEMs.

I was getting excited about this direction, actively reading up on more technical, reference, V-shaped IEMs to complement my Ronins, when I thought about the Hiby plug-ins and MSEB and remembered how good they had sounded on the RS8. All this time, the RS8 had reamined boxed up and for sale.

So I pulled a Scuby.

I decided to fire up the RS8 one more time, as a sort of farewell verification that I had made the right choice.

Wrong move.

I got Qobuz set up through the Hiby Music app (which I had never done before on the RS8) and I was able to go beyond the app-specific versions of the plug-ins and MSEB and use the global versions that come with the DAP.

And my socks were knocked off.

The only way I can make any sense of it is that I had not listened to Qubuz through HMP on the RS8 before, I had not properly played around with Soundfield and Mastermind and Dynamics plug-ins, and my ears had grown used to the 1-bit sound on the Cayin devices, forgetting the R2R sound of the RS8.

But that forgetting, it seems, was important.

What greeted my ears was a massively more powerful and dynamic low-end, wider and deeper, yet more textured and coming out of a dark chasm of silence. Then a clear, forward midrange with great note weight yet sharper transients; a wider soundfield with more precise imaging (which you can really crank up with the Dynamics plug-in) and width/depth/layering that gave me goosebumps, as if I were inside a perfectly treated listening room with full-sized speakers activating all the air around me. And I could continue to tweak the sound as I saw fit.

It was night and day compared to the N7. In addition, the RS8 works extremely well as a DAC/amp, where I can use HQPlayer to upsample to the highest PCM rate before the RS8 does its magic. The result is so far beyond anything I have heard throughout this odyssey that I cannot fathom anything sounding better.

So my N7 is for sale along with my W4 and my lovely RU7 is my travel companion, nothing more.

The RS8 just secured its spot as my go-to source.

Anyway, i just wanted to share this journey with the 'Cooler. I thought many of you could identify with it, especially with the back-and-forth and rediscovery aspects of it. Also wanted to praise Hiby for what they have done with the RS8 - its incredible combination of that smooth, analogue R2R tonality with the near-infinate maleability of the signal through the plug-ins and MSEB. Hard to imagine it not giving me many more years of joy to come.

Great write up! I'm super curious about the darwin 2 architecture and this DAP! As for your V shape itch... Legend Evo. Source: Trust me bro (no actually I own it xD)

 

[armstrj2]

I am not sure if this is common knowledge or not, but I will share it in case it is not.

My RS8 developed an issue a while back where it wouldn't boot past the splash screen, and I couldn't enter recovery.

I had to send the unit back to Hiby in China for repair. The cause of the issue was a capacitor which had to be replaced. I asked what they believed happened and what I could do to prevent it from happening again.

The response was to not use chargers that had a higher output than 12 volts. Lots of modern chargers would have USB C ports aimed for charging laptops, etc, that would output well in excess of that, so it is worth keeping an eye on what you are using to charge your RS8.

On a side note, Hiby were superb to deal with. Top-class service from start to finish. Never good having to send something away for repair, but they made the process very easy.

 

[WDitters]

I am not sure if this is common knowledge or not, but I will share it in case it is not.

My RS8 developed an issue a while back where it wouldn't boot past the splash screen, and I couldn't enter recovery.

I had to send the unit back to Hiby in China for repair. The cause of the issue was a capacitor which had to be replaced. I asked what they believed happened and what I could do to prevent it from happening again.

The response was to not use chargers that had a higher output than 12 volts. Lots of modern chargers would have USB C ports aimed for charging laptops, etc, that would output well in excess of that, so it is worth keeping an eye on what you are using to charge your RS8.

On a side note, Hiby were superb to deal with. Top-class service from start to finish. Never good having to send something away for repair, but they made the process very easy.

Interesting … because if my memory serves me right, as part of the USB-C standard a handshake protocol is supposed to be in place to ensure that the charger does not offer more than the target device can handle. This became more relevant especially as Power Delivery chargers became more common … The issue with your RS8 technically Speaking should not have occurred because of that safety measure

 

[MusicalDoc8]

I am not sure if this is common knowledge or not, but I will share it in case it is not.

My RS8 developed an issue a while back where it wouldn't boot past the splash screen, and I couldn't enter recovery.

I had to send the unit back to Hiby in China for repair. The cause of the issue was a capacitor which had to be replaced. I asked what they believed happened and what I could do to prevent it from happening again.

The response was to not use chargers that had a higher output than 12 volts. Lots of modern chargers would have USB C ports aimed for charging laptops, etc, that would output well in excess of that, so it is worth keeping an eye on what you are using to charge your RS8.

On a side note, Hiby were superb to deal with. Top-class service from start to finish. Never good having to send something away for repair, but they made the process very easy.

That's why i chose hiby, though i bought it from an authorized reseller so i didn't even have to ship it too far. He even insisted shipping first a new unit before i shipped mine back!

 

[armstrj2]

Interesting … because if my memory serves me right, as part of the USB-C standard a handshake protocol is supposed to be in place to ensure that the charger does not offer more than the target device can handle. This became more relevant especially as Power Delivery chargers became more common … The issue with your RS8 technically Speaking should not have occurred because of that safety measure

I guess you are at the mercy of the quality of the charger in that case. The only way to know for sure the handshake was happening/ working would be to use some sort of inline device to measure the voltage being passed to the device.

 

[MusicalDoc8]

I guess you are at the mercy of the quality of the charger in that case. The only way to know for sure the handshake was happening/ working would be to use some sort of inline device to measure the voltage being passed to the device.

If you want to go maximum "gentle charging" you could use a 2 meters or more cable....that way it will charge at a snail's pace but i would think the overall "strain" on the battery is minimum!

 

[HK_sends]

I am not sure if this is common knowledge or not, but I will share it in case it is not.

My RS8 developed an issue a while back where it wouldn't boot past the splash screen, and I couldn't enter recovery.

I had to send the unit back to Hiby in China for repair. The cause of the issue was a capacitor which had to be replaced. I asked what they believed happened and what I could do to prevent it from happening again.

The response was to not use chargers that had a higher output than 12 volts. Lots of modern chargers would have USB C ports aimed for charging laptops, etc, that would output well in excess of that, so it is worth keeping an eye on what you are using to charge your RS8.

On a side note, Hiby were superb to deal with. Top-class service from start to finish. Never good having to send something away for repair, but they made the process very easy.

Thanks for the info, it's very helpful to me!

Cheers and All the Best!
-HK sends

 

[gryphonos]

I have a question for you that may be relevant to the topic discussed previously:

How much battery charge does your RS8 lose per day if it remains switched off?
I've noticed that my RS8 loses up to 6% charge per day, which is probably too much!?

 

[elementze]

I've had this happen to me as well. I was trying to understand / debug the issue when my unit ended up with a much bigger issue (very loud popping/clocking/whooshing sound when unplugging headphones or making a sample rate change). I sent my unit off to Hiby to have this fixed (currently waiting for it to return). I don't know if these issues are related or not. But I did have them occur conspicuously close in time to eachother. I would recommend getting in touch with your vendor or Hiby on the issue if you are getting close to running out of warranty.

 

[gryphonos]

I've had this happen to me as well. I was trying to understand / debug the issue when my unit ended up with a much bigger issue (very loud popping/clocking/whooshing sound when unplugging headphones or making a sample rate change). I sent my unit off to Hiby to have this fixed (currently waiting for it to return). I don't know if these issues are related or not. But I did have them occur conspicuously close in time to eachother. I would recommend getting in touch with your vendor or Hiby on the issue if you are getting close to running out of warranty.

Thanks for your contribution !

I have contacted at first Joe Bloggs and afterwards Hiby service via mail.

 

[Newsee]

If you want to go maximum "gentle charging" you could use a 2 meters or more cable....that way it will charge at a snail's pace but i would think the overall "strain" on the battery is minimum!

I would guess the longer the cable the better the chance is that the communication handshake goes south.

For 20 Volts it does not matter the cable length, it remains 20 Volts. (Well, if you have Lots of Ampers, it may go down a Little)