ONIX Alpha XI1 - Smallest & Most Affordable ONIX DAC - High-Power Portable USB DAC/AMP

[seyuu]

99 reviews? 50 reviews? Whatever... there are very good impartial reviews already out there by AndyAudiovault, Tone Deaf Monk, GizAudio In Reviews, and Giz Audio. All saying good things about the Onix Alpha You're late to the party

You mistaken i said about dtc 800 not ONIX XI1!.. I already own Alpha XI1!...

 

[Shanling]

New Shanling Magnetic Dongle Holster releasing this month.

Fitting anything from UA1 to UA5 and even ONIX XI1.

MagSafe compatible and come with metal plate for all other phones.

Will be available at our standard distributors for <20 USD

 

[Surf Monkey]

New Shanling Magnetic Dongle Holster releasing this month.

Fitting anything from UA1 to UA5 and even ONIX XI1.

MagSafe compatible and come with metal plate for all other phones.

Will be available at our standard distributors for <20 USD

Ooooh. I want that for sure.

 

[Lépine]

OK, so no need to teach my Husky to bite the postman... the DAC was delivered.

Did some quick tests.
My IEMs are DITA Project M using the 3.5mm connector to start.
I use Spotify for my music source.

Definitely improves the quality of the sound.
Music is crisper / cleaner. I heard things that I didn't know were there.

I tried a different USB-C cable. One that I use w my external hard drives that are rated for 10Gb/s data xfer.
Honestly sounded slightly better... a little cleaner. I mean if you were listening casually, you'd miss it. But if you were paying attention you'd hear it.
My guess is that its slightly better cable and more power is going to the dac. Better shielding.

The only negative... for casual listening... when out and about... the Apple dongle is easier w the iPhone. When carrying the iPhone and dac, its a bit more of a pain when you want to change volume or skip a song. But that's going to be true of any dongle that's not just a cord.

That said... definitely worth it and will use it when I want to listen to music.
If I'm just going out and about... have to think about it.
Sometimes its just easier to use my M&D MW08s (Bluetooth IEMs)

Glad it finally arrived for you. It's a good sounding DAC.

I am surprised you can hear a difference in USB cables. I still stand firmly in the camp that any quality USB sounds like any other. I have tried even $100 per meter Wireworld Starlight 8 which separates the power from the digital signal wires which are 28awg Silver-clad Oxygen-Free Copper. 24kt Gold connectors. Doesn't sound any different.

The only digital cables that I have found to sound better is actually Amazon Basics Toslink Cable, but that is using an AK SP2000 for the USB to Toslink converter so there's a bit more clarity and weight to the bass notes from the SP2000 DAC chipset going into the M-Scalar.

SP2000 has a great clock and jitter control for Toslink.

 

[ybbobserrot]

New Shanling Magnetic Dongle Holster releasing this month.

Fitting anything from UA1 to UA5 and even ONIX XI1.

MagSafe compatible and come with metal plate for all other phones.

Will be available at our standard distributors for <20 USD

@Shanling When will this be available directly from Shanling online storem

 

[smegel]

Glad it finally arrived for you. It's a good sounding DAC.

I am surprised you can hear a difference in USB cables. I still stand firmly in the camp that any quality USB sounds like any other. I have tried even $100 per meter Wireworld Starlight 8 which separates the power from the digital signal wires which are 28awg Silver-clad Oxygen-Free Copper. 24kt Gold connectors. Doesn't sound any different.

The only digital cables that I have found to sound better is actually Amazon Basics Toslink Cable, but that is using an AK SP2000 for the USB to Toslink converter so there's a bit more clarity and weight to the bass notes from the SP2000 DAC chipset going into the M-Scalar.

SP2000 has a great clock and jitter control for Toslink.

Yeah, I was surprised too.
To be completely honest, it was very minimal. You really had to listen to it and go back and forth just to hear it.
It was ever so slightly a cleaner sound.

I chalk it up to being a slightly better cable in terms of shielding.
If you work in IT, think of CAT 5 or CAT 6 vs CAT 7 ethernet cables. CAT 7 has a higher xfer rate mostly due to shielding.
Of course there's the issue of power. A slightly better USB-C cable/connection would probably provide a slight edge in power, not something I could easily test.

I don't have any fancy 'audio grade' cables. I don't think that there would be enough of a difference to justify the price. YMMV depending on how much disposable income you have. (I'm married so you can guess where that money goes. )

 

[smegel]

I did notice one thing about using the DAC w my Macbook Pro.

Initially I saw the output to be 32kHz PCM. This is the default setting.
You have to go into the Midi app to change it.
So I set the output to as high as the DAC can go.
(You can see the change in the DAC's display)

So my question is this... will the DAC take the incoming data and then upscale it?
I forget the frequency and bit rate of Spotify's 'High Quality' but its not that high.

So does the Midi application upscale Spotify before sending it to the DAC and what will the DAC do if I'm sending the data at a higher frequency and bit rate?

Note: I've got the M1Max chip... (And Apple is now on the M4 chipset) ... which has more than enough horsepower to handle audio and most of my work stuff at the same time.

Thx.

 

[gowthu]

I did notice one thing about using the DAC w my Macbook Pro.

Initially I saw the output to be 32kHz PCM. This is the default setting.
You have to go into the Midi app to change it.
So I set the output to as high as the DAC can go.
(You can see the change in the DAC's display)

So my question is this... will the DAC take the incoming data and then upscale it?
I forget the frequency and bit rate of Spotify's 'High Quality' but its not that high.

So does the Midi application upscale Spotify before sending it to the DAC and what will the DAC do if I'm sending the data at a higher frequency and bit rate?

Note: I've got the M1Max chip... (And Apple is now on the M4 chipset) ... which has more than enough horsepower to handle audio and most of my work stuff at the same time.

Thx.

I too noticed this issue in my Macbook pro, All system audios and browser audios are playing at 32khz. I was using auto resampler and it appeared after updating to Mac OS 15 beta.

But Apple music playback sampling rates are perfect.

 

[smegel]

I too noticed this issue in my Macbook pro, All system audios and browser audios are playing at 32khz. I was using auto resampler and it appeared after updating to Mac OS 15 beta.

But Apple music playback sampling rates are perfect.

Yeah. Apple Music has some controls which seem to change the settings of the midi.
But if you are listening to anything other than Apple Music, you can go to the Midi app and change it there.

Had to do some google searches to find the apple support page on this.
The cool thing about the Alpha... it tells you the frequency of the connection so you can see your changes actually working.

That said... I really couldn't hear a difference w casual listening. I mean it all sounded good, and I don't know if I can tell any difference.
But then again. I'm an old man at ~58.

 

[Lépine]

Yeah, I was surprised too.
To be completely honest, it was very minimal. You really had to listen to it and go back and forth just to hear it.
It was ever so slightly a cleaner sound.

I chalk it up to being a slightly better cable in terms of shielding.
If you work in IT, think of CAT 5 or CAT 6 vs CAT 7 ethernet cables. CAT 7 has a higher xfer rate mostly due to shielding.
Of course there's the issue of power. A slightly better USB-C cable/connection would probably provide a slight edge in power, not something I could easily test.

I don't have any fancy 'audio grade' cables. I don't think that there would be enough of a difference to justify the price. YMMV depending on how much disposable income you have. (I'm married so you can guess where that money goes. )

Yes, I agree about the USB ports from different computers do sound different. It's not been the cable, it's been the quality of the USB port. USB 2.0 sounds so so. USB marked SS sounds better in most cases. My high end gaming laptops (MSI) make a considerable difference in sound quality vs tablets (Microsoft Surface Pro i7). I have to go into the operating system and make sure all eco-power saving features are turned off. I have also tried powered docking stations with USB 3.1 SS ports, and again sometimes they do perform better especially for extremely high sampling rates and DSD256 DSD512.

However, I prefer on most occasions to use the AK SP2000 and TOSLINK using Amazon Basics Toslink cable. I also have a AudioQuest Toslink Forest cable which surprisingly sounds bad, I think they way overcharge and use crap optical fibers so the maximum Toslink speed drops from 96K to 88K or 48K. Chord provides very good TOSLINK cables that perform much better than AQ. If your Toslink generator is Single Mode Toslink (vs Multi-mode), a lot of the music tightens up and so called tubey fuzzy sound comes closer, clearer, faster, and bass becomes more defined.

I am curious how you have gotten an adapter to use ethernet cables, I don't think the distance I have between my laptop and DAC is far enough to hear a difference, but always willing to try. So the computers obviously have ethernet RJ45, what do you recommend for the DAC? If the RJ45 to USB-A is crap, then the sound is worse than before. I don't see any USB-A adapters. Looks like if I want to try this then I have to special order RJ45 to USB-A adapter.

The Onix Alpha remains high on the list for me, there is a considerable difference in performance that I can get from a laptop vs the iPhone.

 

[smegel]

I am curious how you have gotten an adapter to use ethernet cables, I don't think the distance I have between my laptop and DAC is far enough to hear a difference, but always willing to try. So the computers obviously have ethernet RJ45, what do you recommend for the DAC? If the RJ45 to USB-A is crap, then the sound is worse than before. I don't see any USB-A adapters. Looks like if I want to try this then I have to special order RJ45 to USB-A adapter.

The Onix Alpha remains high on the list for me, there is a considerable difference in performance that I can get from a laptop vs the iPhone.

Sorry, I was using the ethernet cables as an example. (I'm an old computer guy)
CAT-5 cable isn't rated for higher speed traffic. If you want 10GbE speeds, you need CAT-7 or better. CAT-8 is rated up to 40Gb/s but for a shorter distance. Long enough for patch cables. Then you go to fiber for higher speeds. But I digress. The point was to show that its possible for two USB-C cables that built to spec can have slightly different characteristics.

If you look at the higher priced USB-C connection cables... its really about shielding and better connections.

You're right that the USB-C port that also impacts sound. I have a docking station for my Macbook. If I plug my headphones into the 3.5mm port on the docking station it shows up as realteck ?sp? and it sounds like carp.[sic]

I agree that the Alpha is a keeper.

On the Mac, I believe that the Midi is up sampling the original music and also allows you to add equalization. (Is it up sampling???) Its kinda funny because you can add EQ there... still run EQMac and then out to the DAC.

 

[Lépine]

I've been spending an evening with an iPad Pro 4th generation with the M2 processor. For the player, I've been using the Onkyo HF Player. The settings are set to output PCM at 176Khz. Onkyo has the highest priority setting. This isn't a bad combination. Overall tonality is pretty good, with a nice level of staging and only slightly less punch from using it on a proper laptop. If it wasn't for the slightly less dynamics, I would be pretty happy with the results on the Onix Alpha on an iPad. Music is details and believable. I'm listening to Caro Josee. and Stevie Holland, these are pretty good to tell how well the Onix is performing.

However, even on the M2 chipset, the iPad is a bit lighter on the bass and lower mid-range compared to a Laptop using the Nobel Viking Ragnar and the 4.4mm balanced graphine cables.

 

[Deckard001]

Do we have any news about Alpha update for the Android compatibility (issues with many devices)?

 

[zie5522]

There wont be an update for it i guess. It's hardware related from my experience.

 

[Deckard001]

There wont be an update for it i guess. It's hardware related from my experience.

That is a bit sad..