[archy121]

Yes, I do almost entirely listen to classical. Mostly 20th and late 19th Century (Shostakovich, Stravinsky, Rochberg, Bartok, Sibelius, Ravel, Nielsen, Mahler, Brahms). My earlier recommendations are not so much representative of the music I prefer, they were picked for recording excellence.

I am a poor schmuck, so I don't talk much about my equipment... Most of my listening is on these: Stage Right by Monoprice Multimedia Studio Reference Monitor Headphones 53mm (Closed-back) paired with this cable.

The headphones are incredible, almost unbelievable -- for the price, that is. Surprisingly resolving, bit warm, otherwise very flat and neutral. But obviously no match compared to the gear of most people here

My respect for you has increased by many folds for enjoying music without being caught up in the madness of the costly audiophile hobby.
I think some here are caught up forever evaluating new hardware rather than actually making time to enjoy music.

 

[Dannemand]

My respect for you has increased by many folds for enjoying music without being caught up in the madness of the costly audiophile hobby.
I think some here are caught up forever evaluating new hardware rather than actually making time to enjoy music.

Thank you, I appreciate that!

I can tell you if I had the money (which I used to back in the days) I would be caught up in that madness! With the exception that I have always objected to overpaying for brand and fashion and only ever been willing to pay for quality. Sometimes there is a correlation, other times not. Monoprice is a great source of "pretty good-to great" audio products for people on a shoestring. Many of their low cost offerings are obvious gateway drugs to their high end offerings. And I'm OK with that.

I've been eyeing their M1060 Open Back Planar Magnetics and almost jumped on them when they were $199 for a day in December. But it was already an expensive month for us, and I expected they would come out with a new version with updated drivers (like their newer 1060C Closed Back variant).

 

[archy121]

Thank you, I appreciate that!

I can tell you if I had the money (which I used to back in the days) I would be caught up in that madness! With the exception that I have always objected to overpaying for brand and fashion and only ever been willing to pay for quality. Sometimes there is a correlation, other times not. Monoprice is a great source of "pretty good-to great" audio products for people on a shoestring. Many of their low cost offerings are obvious gateway drugs to their high end offerings. And I'm OK with that.

I've been eyeing their M1060 Open Back Planar Magnetics and almost jumped on them when they were $199 for a day in December. But it was already an expensive month for us, and I expected they would come out with a new version with updated drivers (like their newer 1060C Closed Back variant).

Those look sweet !
Maybe you will get a great deal again next Black Friday and the older model could be well discounted.

Also considered any of the so called ChiFi headphones ? Chinese are producing some incredible audiophile headphones at fraction of the prices of western brands e.g my DM6 earphones.
I’m Im sure you have already looked into this.

 

[jsmiller58]

Hmmm

I abandoned iPhone a while ago and pathetically went running back after a month.(Galaxy S6 I think)

I was upset that a lot of the bells and whistles on Gmail were only available to folks in the USA.

Any hi res audio fans here ditch iPhone to get the HiRes audio thing going on an LGV30?

Right now I carry a FiiO M9 for hi res

Count me as one. For the DAC, for the headphone jack, and for the more open ecosystem. Sometimes I miss being a part of the iCollective, though. Still have my iPad - no taking that from me.

 

[jsmiller58]

Yes, it does.

I have also found it does - or at least says it does.

Question - does Qobuz use the LG V30’s DAC, or go through Android? Hopefully that question comes across sensibly...

Edit: never mind. Saw this already answered. UAPP is the answer to all questions...!

 

[jsmiller58]

Try The Eagles track assuming you are subscribed to the correct Tidal sub.

Don’t forget you have the benefit of excellent sound for your local files from UAPP.

Thank you! Perfect, and I get exactly the result you’re showing...!

 

[jsmiller58]

Archy beat me to it, but here are a few excellent MQA recordings on Tidal:

Copland: Symphony No. 3 (Transferred from the Original Everest Records Master Tapes)


2L The Nordic Sound


Notice that the latter is actually a 352kHz file, but UAPP reports it as playing in 176kHz. According to @Davy Wentzler (the UAPP dev) that "Direct" number is merely a guess when playing MQA files on V30, since there is no way for the app to know the result when the file (or stream) is fully unfolded by the DAC hardware. That's different from UAPP's own decoding, where of course the app knows the outcome.

Make sure the MQA flag is set under UAPP Settings -> Internal HiRes audio -> HiRes driver flags. According to recent recommendations from Davy, ONLY the MQA flag should be set on V30, no other flags in that menu.

And finally, if you bought the UAPP MQA decoder by mistake, and have no other use for it, I would suspect you can get a refund. Doesn't hurt to ask.

Great suggestions - also used these to confirm I had things properly set up!

As to asking for a refund... nah, (a) I love to encourage independent developers of great products that benefit me, and (b) who knows where my audiophile journey will take me and what music I will buy vs “rent” in the future!

 

[jsmiller58]

My respect for you has increased by many folds for enjoying music without being caught up in the madness of the costly audiophile hobby.
I think some here are caught up forever evaluating new hardware rather than actually making time to enjoy music.

Take it from me... not that long ago I owned 13 headphones (not including many IEMs) and more amps and DACs than I could think of... how did I spend my time? I had rigged up switches that would allow me to test multiple DAC/amp combos with multiple headphones so I could check out the differences in the sound... not much time leaft to actually enjoy the music. Slimmed down my collection and now spend much more time simply enjoying the music...

 

[archy121]

Take it from me... not that long ago I owned 13 headphones (not including many IEMs) and more amps and DACs than I could think of... how did I spend my time? I had rigged up switches that would allow me to test multiple DAC/amp combos with multiple headphones so I could check out the differences in the sound... not much time leaft to actually enjoy the music. Slimmed down my collection and now spend much more time simply enjoying the music...

Your signature tells the story well

 

[jsmiller58]

I have also found it does - or at least says it does.

Question - does Qobuz use the LG V30’s DAC, or go through Android? Hopefully that question comes across sensibly...

Your signature tells the story well

yeah, well that list is a whole lot shorter than it used to be! Of course, the collection is growing again - just got the DM6 in today, have Kanas Pro and Tansio Mirai on order, waiting on Ether CX and ZMF Eikon... OK, I may have a problem...

 

[Dannemand]

Those look sweet !
Maybe you will get a great deal again next Black Friday and the older model could be well discounted.

Also considered any of the so called ChiFi headphones ? Chinese are producing some incredible audiophile headphones at fraction of the prices of western brands e.g my DM6 earphones.
I’m Im sure you have already looked into this.

I hope I won't have to wait till Black Friday. But more importantly, despite the M1060 getting excellent reviews, it seems to still have a few issues, some of which were addressed in the newer M1060C Closed Back variant. Again, if they release a new version of the M1060 with updated drivers, I may just dip into savings and go for them.

I haven't looked into Chinese gear, maybe I should. I assume there is a risk involved. One of the nice things about Monoprice headsets is 5 year warranty. Yes!

As to asking for a refund... nah, (a) I love to encourage independent developers of great products that benefit me

Great spirit. Davy definitely deserves our business.

 

[csglinux]

I added a couple of new sections to the first post that may be useful for new V30 users. Many thanks for the contributions @seanc6441, @archy121 and @Dannemand

Now, about that interesting little post last week from @VI001101106 on the main V30 thread:

https://www.head-fi.org/threads/lg-v30.858933/page-330#post-14767385

I pretty much spent all of Sunday morning (it was too wet for soccer ) beating my head against a brick wall over this one. No luck so far, although I thought I'd got somewhere at one point, and then couldn't reproduce it. I had some private communications with the good folks at Shanling a while back (their M0 uses the same DAC chip as the V30) and they swear they don't bit-pad 44 kHz PCM. I didn't communicate directly with the tech guys though, so I don't know for sure, but I suspect most likely our 44->48 kHz resampling fun comes from Android and LG's chosen software implementation. I don't yet know if there's a solution as simple as changing a config file. Seems unlikely (if it were that easy, wouldn't somebody else already have figured it out?), but who knows. I'll keep digging when I have the time, but please don't anybody hold their breath in expectation of a quick fix. If any (rooted) V30 owners want to help test things out (assuming you have access to audio analyzers or know how to use audio_flinger over adb), the most likely files you want to look at are in \system\etc and \system\vendor\etc and \system\vendor\etc\audio. From Android 7, an optional build flag was used to deprecate audio_policy.conf, so you'll also need to be looking at the files like audio_policy_configuration.xml. I went through all the files listed in @VI001101106's post, switching all 48000 sample rates I could find to 44100 but, so far, no luck

 

[Dannemand]

I added a couple of new sections to the first post that may be useful for new V30 users. Many thanks for the contributions @seanc6441, @archy121 and @Dannemand

Now, about that interesting little post last week from @VI001101106 on the main V30 thread:

https://www.head-fi.org/threads/lg-v30.858933/page-330#post-14767385

I pretty much spent all of Sunday morning (it was too wet for soccer ) beating my head against a brick wall over this one. No luck so far, although I thought I'd got somewhere at one point, and then couldn't reproduce it. I had some private communications with the good folks at Shanling a while back (their M0 uses the same DAC chip as the V30) and they swear they don't bit-pad 44 kHz PCM. I didn't communicate directly with the tech guys though, so I don't know for sure, but I suspect most likely our 44->48 kHz resampling fun comes from Android and LG's chosen software implementation. I don't yet know if there's a solution as simple as changing a config file. Seems unlikely (if it were that easy, wouldn't somebody else already have figured it out?), but who knows. I'll keep digging when I have the time, but please don't anybody hold their breath in expectation of a quick fix. If any (rooted) V30 owners want to help test things out (assuming you have access to audio analyzers or know how to use audio_flinger over adb), the most likely files you want to look at are in \system\etc and \system\vendor\etc and \system\vendor\etc\audio. From Android 7, an optional build flag was used to deprecate audio_policy.conf, so you'll also need to be looking at the files like audio_policy_configuration.xml. I went through all the files listed in @VI001101106's post, switching all 48000 sample rates I could find to 44100 but, so far, no luck

Thank you for testing this. As I posted in the main thread, I don't think Android's default sample rate is our problem, but rather that the LG audio driver doesn't support 16/44 -- for whatever weird reason. As Shanling pretty much confirmed to you, the ESS DAC itself DOES support 16/44 (not only 24/44) so bit-padding wouldn't be needed if LG would change that driver. But unless/until they do, I believe the only fix is to hack the Android Mixer to perform bit-padding instead of upsampling when being fed 16/44.

 

[435279]

Does anybody have an MQA colour dot (green/blue) when playing MQA from Tidal in UAPP on the V30, I don't. Does it even matter?

On my Pioneer 300R UAPP shows the coloured dot but no dot on the V30.

Cheers.

 

[Dannemand]

Does anybody have an MQA colour dot (green/blue) when playing MQA from Tidal in UAPP on the V30, I don't. Does it even matter?

On my Pioneer 300R UAPP shows the coloured dot but no dot on the V30.

I don't believe you will get a dot when playing on V30 because UAPP passes everything to the DAC for unfolding and rendering. When playing on external DACs or other phones that don't have hardware MQA, UAPP does the decoding/1st level unfolding (assuming you purchased the MQA add-on) and you will see the dot.

That's my understanding, anyway.