[batyann]

Kind of.

I created only the software, from scratch, and used a cheap Wio terminal for the hardware, driving USB DACs.
Until now it's been tested with

• iFi goBlu (UAC1)
• Shanling UA1+ (UAC2)
• Colorfly M1P (UAC2)

Coming soon:

• 7Hz 71

The UI is far from being as nice as commercially available models, because I put all the effort on making it fast and efficient.
It's able to playback RIFF/WAV and FLAC at 44.1kHz/16b with a (downclocked) 64MHz microcontroller and 192kB of RAM, and can handle up to ~10000 audio files from an exFAT sdcard - currently I'm using a 512GB sdcard that's half full with 7.7k+ audio files and a few thousands various non audio files.

I started this project after I read a long time ago (8 years maybe) that high end DAPs would need up to 2 minutes to parse a 32GB sdcard when inserted for the first time.
I was wondering what took so long, when you have an ARM Cortex-A type of CPU running at 800+MHz, 120 seconds is a huge amount of CPU cycles.

My device is able to parse, filter and sort ~250GB of audio files in less than 6 seconds at startup.
The speed of a modern high quality sdcard is probably helping a lot, granted, however it's accessed through SPI bus which is not the fastest.

Given how cheap and relatively good quality DAPs can be found nowadays, it's probably not very relevant to do so, but it's been fun !



Note: most of the sofware is my own creation except the FLAC decoding library which is slightly modified fork of libfoxenflac

Cheers

 

[Usr7530]

Awesome ! Could this be made pocketable and powered by AA/AAA batteries ?
This makes me think of a bare bone "Rockbox" D.I.Y. digital audio player !
Congratulations, THIS is something we need to see more often...

 

[batyann]

Merci

It's already pocketable. The Wio Terminal has an optional battery pack that I'm using, you can see it (or maybe guess it) in the video.

It's similar to Rockbox indeed, however Rockbox replaces the software on "real" DAPs, and I think it requires at least 1MB of RAM, which is a huge amount compared to the 192kB available on the Wio.

And I'm not sure Rockbox runs on any DAP allowing you to plug an usb DAC of your choice.

 

[bassct]

Really cool! You can switch between different USB DACs and get different sound and output (2.5, 3.5, 4.4). Looks like it is working very fast, both scanning and selecting and playing songs.

 

[batyann]

Hi, yes I can switch between DACs, it's plug and play. In theory it should work with any USB DAC but I haven't been able to test with that many.
Right now, if I unplug a DAC, the playback will pause, and will resume after another DAC is plugged in.
And yes, it's pretty quick, I made sure it's all very optimized, with no lag at all.
It should be gapless, too.
It requires a good quality relatively recent SDcard, but that's not a problem given how cheap they are - I got a 512G samsung for 25 bucks on A**zon a few weeks ago, that's the one used in the video.

 

[batyann]

Update: 7Hz 71 will not work, because this DAC does not support FS (Full Speed, max 12Mbits/s) hosts, according to Linsoul's tech support.
I'm not sure why, because other DACs work just fine, but there's nothing I can do. The Wio USB controller is limited to FS (USB2 compliant though).
Next step: HiBy FC4, which I received yesterday, but it does not even work on my macbook, so I'm not very confident ...

 

[batyann]

Looks like I have some competition

That's really the kind of device I would have loved to build - congrats to the Tangara team - but I don't have any of the hardware related skills.

I would have made it with a swapable DAC module though (probably driven through I2S) on top of the USB host capability, so that third parties could design HiFi DACs/AMP combos to be plugged inside to fit anyone's taste - do you prefer ESS? Cirus? AKM? Wolfson ? TI ? R2R ?

Anyways, well done to them !

 

[musicday]

Looks like I have some competition

That's really the kind of device I would have loved to build - congrats to the Tangara team - but I don't have any of the hardware related skills.

I would have made it with a swapable DAC module though (probably driven through I2S) on top of the USB host capability, so that third parties could design HiFi DACs/AMP combos to be plugged inside to fit anyone's taste - do you prefer ESS? Cirus? AKM? Wolfson ? TI ? R2R ?

Anyways, well done to them !

Why not getting in touch with some companies and Rockbox team and try to create something simple together?

 

[batyann]

Hi,

out of curiosity, does anyone have an idea about how long it takes on a modern DAP to scan a large SDCard with thousands of audio files - RIFF and FLAC - when inserted for the first time ?

Just wondering how fast is my implementation.

Cheers

 

[slumberman]

Hi,

out of curiosity, does anyone have an idea about how long it takes on a modern DAP to scan a large SDCard with thousands of audio files - RIFF and FLAC - when inserted for the first time ?

Just wondering how fast is my implementation.

Cheers

it depends on the DAP , OS and size of card.
There isn’t a single answer to this I’m afraid

 

[batyann]

it depends on the DAP , OS and size of card.
There isn’t a single answer to this I’m afraid

sure, I understand that very well. Just wanted to gather a few examples.

 

[slumberman]

sure, I understand that very well. Just wanted to gather a few examples.

On my WM1A, on 1TB card, it takes about 15 minutes.

 

[batyann]

On my WM1A, on 1TB card, it takes about 15 minutes.

Wow, that's a gigantic amount of time ! Thanks for the feedback.