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

[UnderwaterB0i]

Yeah. If your music source provides more power... the better the sound from the dongle. People tend to forget that the USB-C is also the dongle's power supply (unless there's a battery in the dongle.

So the CB19 helps a bit.
My iPhone 15 does ok, but the music from the macbook pro sounds better plus I can up sample the music.

I prefer the Alpha's DAC to the DX180's DAC, but its really close.
I mean its not like the DX180's dac is bad at all. I love it too, but the Alpha ... at least for me... beats it by a smidge.
If I was just casually listening while out on a walk... I couldn't tell the difference. Still have to pay attention to the street traffic noise.

If you're planning on using the Alpha while walking around... the USB-C socket is going to take some abuse and the YTer Andy's recommendation to glue a cable in... makes a lot of sense.

The Alpha w the case is definitely money well spent.

Of course if you had the DC Elite... not sure why you sold it... that one got better reviews and because of the power issue... the Alpha has mixed reviews... when it works... it beats most everything else in its price range.

The DX180 DAC is good. A little different flavor. A little warmer overall, which is good for certain IEMs/headphones.

I had the DC Elite but wanted to shift my funds to have more of my money in a desktop DAC/amp than a dongle. I did, and eventually ended up with the Aune S9c Pro, which is flagship level, so I wanted to get something close to as good as the DC Elite but not quite as expensive. That’s what led me to the XI1, a lot of reviews saying it’s not quite as good as the DC Elite, but dang close, for a quarter of the price.

 

[Mortin]

Thats why im using the Alpha and any other dongle like the Elite with a Samsung phone. Samsung delivers all the power a dongle needs and there is absolutely no difference between sound when connected to a PC or Samsung phone.

There really is no difference between a Samsung and a Windows laptop (or it is minimal), but only if there is external power supply via iBasso! If the device itself provides power, then the sound from the laptop is better than from the Galaxy S24. And, in my case, only the S-series provides the highest sound quality, regardless of whether it is with external power or not. If you take a budget Samsung A-series with USB 2.0, then even external power does not help it. The sound is bad.
By the way, as I wrote above, my new DAC Celest CD-20 has identical behavior: Galaxy S - perfect sound, as well as a laptop, Galaxy A - everything is bad. The only difference is that Galaxy A24 does not start Onix at all without external power, but CD-20 works.
So this sound quality feature is not unique to Onix and is probably related to the USB and UAC version.

 

[smegel]

The DX180 DAC is good. A little different flavor. A little warmer overall, which is good for certain IEMs/headphones.

I had the DC Elite but wanted to shift my funds to have more of my money in a desktop DAC/amp than a dongle. I did, and eventually ended up with the Aune S9c Pro, which is flagship level, so I wanted to get something close to as good as the DC Elite but not quite as expensive. That’s what led me to the XI1, a lot of reviews saying it’s not quite as good as the DC Elite, but dang close, for a quarter of the price.

Yeah that would make sense.
The Alpha has some quirks which kinda killed its momentum.
I have to glue in a USB-C cable because when I first got it... I had the dongle swinging loose. (This is my first dongle.)

And you're right. The DX180 is a little warmer.

The Onix Alpha is probably 95%+ of what you get w the DC Elite but at 1/4th the price. So while its not 'top dog', its still probably the best value and one of the best implementations of the CS dac chip.

Honestly, unless you have decent IEMs or Headphones, a lot of the differences in terms of sound stage, presence, <insert your audiophile description>, would be missed.

If I were to replace the Alpha... I'd go w the xDuoo XD05 Pro. Its transportable... but you can swap out the DAC cards... including a new tube card. And also the op-amps.
Has a battery and can also work as a desktop amp/dac. Big switch from the Alpha.

 

[Shanling]

I have no source material with that kind of sample rate, the best I have is 192kHz (but it's not on the phone yet). I use foobar as the PC player, but again, I don't want to enable ASIO if I can avoid it, which is why I haven't really tried looking into DSD playback via foobar. The PC is full modern hardware, the phone's aging, but I would've thought it'd cope fine (it's internal DAC is 384kHz). Unless using the computer to do solely one dedicated thing well (at the expense of everything else), kernel level stuff in Windows tends to bring me more headaches than it's worth.

Any comments/suggestions would be most appreciated!

EDIT: I've found others way back in July '24 making similar observations, and no one refuting them.. Perhaps the Alpha isn't actually up to spec? Can someone confirm they've had it running @ 768kHz and if so, on what transport, please?

ONIX Alpha can do 768 kHz without issue, as long as you have correctly set software.

Here it is playing 768 kHz file from Foobar, using basic Wasapi Plugin.

 

[smegel]

I got hold of an Onix Alpha the other day, and can't seem to get the DAC to go above 384kHz upsampling.. I'm hoping someone here may have some pointers. I doubt I could hear much/any difference between 384kHz and 768kHz, but I'd like to test to see.

The Alpha came with the latest firmware (which I don't need as I don't like Apple products), and have found and gotten hold of the earlier firmwares in case that turns out to be a recommendation.

I'm not particularly familiar with using DACs (I still can't shake thinking of them as external sound cards).. I have a few different pieces of equipment that have similarities (they too have DAC chips), and just assumed the Alpha would behave similarly, but with OTG capabilities, and that seems to ring true up to 384kHz.

Sources are a Win10 PC and a phone. The PC didn't see any change when installing the official driver - set in the device's settings in Windows, not trying to run as ASIO as far as I'm aware (would rather avoid ASIO-type drivers if I can). PowerAmp app on the phone can be set to 384kHz, but Eddict Player's even worse at max 192kHz.

I have no source material with that kind of sample rate, the best I have is 192kHz (but it's not on the phone yet). I use foobar as the PC player, but again, I don't want to enable ASIO if I can avoid it, which is why I haven't really tried looking into DSD playback via foobar. The PC is full modern hardware, the phone's aging, but I would've thought it'd cope fine (it's internal DAC is 384kHz). Unless using the computer to do solely one dedicated thing well (at the expense of everything else), kernel level stuff in Windows tends to bring me more headaches than it's worth.

Any comments/suggestions would be most appreciated!

EDIT: I've found others way back in July '24 making similar observations, and no one refuting them.. Perhaps the Alpha isn't actually up to spec? Can someone confirm they've had it running @ 768kHz and if so, on what transport, please?

General story and impressions that may assist others:
As my phone's starting to age, so is it's battery, and I want to make it last as long as I can. As such, grabbing a cable/adapter to allow external powering of the Alpha was the obvious solution. I wouldn't've even bought the Alpha if that wasn't possible; I've seen other DACs with separate power in ports and nearly pulled the trigger on one of those for that very reason, then I found the iBasso CB19 cable. Reading through this thread has certainly helped confirm my suspicion that external power would be preferable, but in practice it doesn't seem to need as much juice as I thought it would.

Initially (the first use/test session) I got a weird sound that I thought might be a single BA in the left IEM clipping - but only on certain tracks at specific times (I'm guessing a specific frequency was being hit, and there wasn't much else going on so it was noticeable and irritating). The issue was 100% repeatable. The Alpha became fairly hot to touch. I found turning the 4.4mm jack ever so slightly in the socket would cause audio to stop, or come back, sometimes it would sound thin as if half the data was missing. After unplugging and replugging a couple times all these issues disappeared. I must of spent 30mins trying to troubleshoot the weird single clipping BA sound before finally turning that jack - certainly didn't expect a jack to need 'burn in' or a bit of manhandling for it to make a proper connection. And now it makes a fine connection every single time, and the Alpha is barely warm to touch while running.

With the first USB cable I tried that didn't come in the box the PC would randomly reboot unexpectedly after a few mins of listening (no blue screen, just straight soft reboot without warning). After this happened 3 times I wasn't very impressed. The first thing I thought to do was swap the cable, and it's been fine ever since. I'm not unfamiliar with tech; I've even had a couple of IT jobs over the years. We get used to a rapid fire trial and error approach to troubleshooting. I can't enunciate why I first went to the USB cable as a possible cause for a PC reboot (completely bypassing the usual first step of cycling power), or even why it actually was the cause. The first cable I tried was overspec'd to handle the Alpha with ease. It was a fresh cable, perhaps it was cheap and not actually up to it's claimed spec.

The 3rd cable was a longer one that again should've been spec'd to handle the Alpha even with the length and the power drop that brings. I was experiencing mini/micro drop outs every few seconds, and they weren't consistent in their timing; as frequent as it was annoying. This was on a different port however, so I can't confirm there was enough power on the bus as there could've been other devices hanging off it - I didn't investigate that far. Adding the power up the line with the iBasso cable solved it.

If you're having troubles with the Alpha, try a different (hopefully better) cable and ensure it's sufficiently powered, cycle power, perhaps try jiggling things round a bit and allow a few hours for it to settle down.

Gotta say I'm impressed with the Alpha's performance; really enjoying what I'm hearing so far..

I don't do windows... so I'm on the default firmware when it was shipped.

But to answer your question... I can go into the Macbook's MIDI application and upscale the output of the macbook to 768kHz @ 32bits. It looks like the Macbook recognizes the capabilities and sets the maximum bit rates for the device.

Once set , it stays that way until I change it.

I've super glued a 1m USB-C 4 cable to the dongle dac And its velcro'd to my desk as a dedicated headphone output. (I can also take it w me when I travel. )
Its still the best sounding CS based dongle dac out there and still a great value.

I can't address the windows issues... stopped using them unless I have to for a client over 15yrs ago.

 

[Lawnmower]

I don't do windows... so I'm on the default firmware when it was shipped.

But to answer your question... I can go into the Macbook's MIDI application and upscale the output of the macbook to 768kHz @ 32bits. It looks like the Macbook recognizes the capabilities and sets the maximum bit rates for the device.

Once set , it stays that way until I change it.

I've super glued a 1m USB-C 4 cable to the dongle dac And its velcro'd to my desk as a dedicated headphone output. (I can also take it w me when I travel. )
Its still the best sounding CS based dongle dac out there and still a great value.

I can't address the windows issues... stopped using them unless I have to for a client over 15yrs ago.

Fair enough re Windows.. And your approach with the macbook sounds similar to mine in Windows; I'm aware apple tends to handle audio far better than Windows, at least from an audio artist/engineer perspective. Don't s'pose you've tried Linux, and managed 768kHz?

And speaking of 768kHz, do you know anywhere good to find hi-res source material?

I'll look into the Wasapi Plugin that Shanling mentioned..

 

[smegel]

Fair enough re Windows.. And your approach with the macbook sounds similar to mine in Windows; I'm aware apple tends to handle audio far better than Windows, at least from an audio artist/engineer perspective. Don't s'pose you've tried Linux, and managed 768kHz?

And speaking of 768kHz, do you know anywhere good to find hi-res source material?

I'll look into the Wasapi Plugin that Shanling mentioned..

Sorry, I'm just up sampling the best quality from Spotify.

If the data on Google is correct, the highest quality setting is 44.1kHz
I did a quick search for high quality PCM files...
https://www.nativedsd.com/
But I know nothing of this site.

 

[ohaeng]

I got hold of an Onix Alpha the other day, and can't seem to get the DAC to go above 384kHz upsampling.. I'm hoping someone here may have some pointers. I doubt I could hear much/any difference between 384kHz and 768kHz, but I'd like to test to see.

The Alpha came with the latest firmware (which I don't need as I don't like Apple products), and have found and gotten hold of the earlier firmwares in case that turns out to be a recommendation.

I'm not particularly familiar with using DACs (I still can't shake thinking of them as external sound cards).. I have a few different pieces of equipment that have similarities (they too have DAC chips), and just assumed the Alpha would behave similarly, but with OTG capabilities, and that seems to ring true up to 384kHz.

Sources are a Win10 PC and a phone. The PC didn't see any change when installing the official driver - set in the device's settings in Windows, not trying to run as ASIO as far as I'm aware (would rather avoid ASIO-type drivers if I can). PowerAmp app on the phone can be set to 384kHz, but Eddict Player's even worse at max 192kHz.

I have no source material with that kind of sample rate, the best I have is 192kHz (but it's not on the phone yet). I use foobar as the PC player, but again, I don't want to enable ASIO if I can avoid it, which is why I haven't really tried looking into DSD playback via foobar. The PC is full modern hardware, the phone's aging, but I would've thought it'd cope fine (it's internal DAC is 384kHz). Unless using the computer to do solely one dedicated thing well (at the expense of everything else), kernel level stuff in Windows tends to bring me more headaches than it's worth.

Any comments/suggestions would be most appreciated!

EDIT: I've found others way back in July '24 making similar observations, and no one refuting them.. Perhaps the Alpha isn't actually up to spec? Can someone confirm they've had it running @ 768kHz and if so, on what transport, please?

General story and impressions that may assist others:
As my phone's starting to age, so is it's battery, and I want to make it last as long as I can. As such, grabbing a cable/adapter to allow external powering of the Alpha was the obvious solution. I wouldn't've even bought the Alpha if that wasn't possible; I've seen other DACs with separate power in ports and nearly pulled the trigger on one of those for that very reason, then I found the iBasso CB19 cable. Reading through this thread has certainly helped confirm my suspicion that external power would be preferable, but in practice it doesn't seem to need as much juice as I thought it would.

Initially (the first use/test session) I got a weird sound that I thought might be a single BA in the left IEM clipping - but only on certain tracks at specific times (I'm guessing a specific frequency was being hit, and there wasn't much else going on so it was noticeable and irritating). The issue was 100% repeatable. The Alpha became fairly hot to touch. I found turning the 4.4mm jack ever so slightly in the socket would cause audio to stop, or come back, sometimes it would sound thin as if half the data was missing. After unplugging and replugging a couple times all these issues disappeared. I must of spent 30mins trying to troubleshoot the weird single clipping BA sound before finally turning that jack - certainly didn't expect a jack to need 'burn in' or a bit of manhandling for it to make a proper connection. And now it makes a fine connection every single time, and the Alpha is barely warm to touch while running.

With the first USB cable I tried that didn't come in the box the PC would randomly reboot unexpectedly after a few mins of listening (no blue screen, just straight soft reboot without warning). After this happened 3 times I wasn't very impressed. The first thing I thought to do was swap the cable, and it's been fine ever since. I'm not unfamiliar with tech; I've even had a couple of IT jobs over the years. We get used to a rapid fire trial and error approach to troubleshooting. I can't enunciate why I first went to the USB cable as a possible cause for a PC reboot (completely bypassing the usual first step of cycling power), or even why it actually was the cause. The first cable I tried was overspec'd to handle the Alpha with ease. It was a fresh cable, perhaps it was cheap and not actually up to it's claimed spec.

The 3rd cable was a longer one that again should've been spec'd to handle the Alpha even with the length and the power drop that brings. I was experiencing mini/micro drop outs every few seconds, and they weren't consistent in their timing; as frequent as it was annoying. This was on a different port however, so I can't confirm there was enough power on the bus as there could've been other devices hanging off it - I didn't investigate that far. Adding the power up the line with the iBasso cable solved it.

If you're having troubles with the Alpha, try a different (hopefully better) cable and ensure it's sufficiently powered, cycle power, perhaps try jiggling things round a bit and allow a few hours for it to settle down.

Gotta say I'm impressed with the Alpha's performance; really enjoying what I'm hearing so far..

I've attached the answer I received from the person in charge in the past. (I used Google Translate.)
"Windows doesn't have system wide support for 768 kHz, as it's not something any normal app would be using.
For your playback of 768 kHz files, we recommend using dedicated playback software with Wasapi/Asio output, for example Foobar."

 

[Lawnmower]

I've attached the answer I received from the person in charge in the past. (I used Google Translate.)
"Windows doesn't have system wide support for 768 kHz, as it's not something any normal app would be using.
For your playback of 768 kHz files, we recommend using dedicated playback software with Wasapi/Asio output, for example Foobar."

Thanks muchly! Makes sense. I've still got about 15 pages of this thread to sift through, it's probably hidden in there somewhere.

 

[HiddenSquid]

Can anyone compare onix alpha xi1 vs moondrop dawn pro?

 

[jrazmar]

There really is no difference between a Samsung and a Windows laptop (or it is minimal), but only if there is external power supply via iBasso! If the device itself provides power, then the sound from the laptop is better than from the Galaxy S24. And, in my case, only the S-series provides the highest sound quality, regardless of whether it is with external power or not. If you take a budget Samsung A-series with USB 2.0, then even external power does not help it. The sound is bad.
By the way, as I wrote above, my new DAC Celest CD-20 has identical behavior: Galaxy S - perfect sound, as well as a laptop, Galaxy A - everything is bad. The only difference is that Galaxy A24 does not start Onix at all without external power, but CD-20 works.
So this sound quality feature is not unique to Onix and is probably related to the USB and UAC version.

Do you not hear the crackling noise or sharp ticking sound out of the S24 whenever connected with the ONIX? When it works, I agree that the S24/S24+ does not have any difference in quality or just very minimal compared to a desktop/laptop source. However, I gave up already on this combo after so many trial and error tests. The crackling noise and sharp ticks are just so unpredictable and it hurts my ears when it happens as I tend to listen to music at high volume. The first few days with the ONIX was a bliss. It just came one day for no reason when the noise starts to appear. It felt like electricity was coming out of my earphones to my eardrums...really scary and traumatic. haha.

I was not able to use my S24+ properly again. More than 2 minutes or sometimes less then the crackling noise will start to linger. I read in this forum that it is the cable used or the firmware that causes it but nothing worked for me. I haven't tried the CB19 yet as I don't have a portable power bank at the moment. Still, I'm curious if it solves the crackling noise issue with the S24/S24+. Might try it if it fixes the issue for now while we all hope this would be fixed in the future by Shanling or whoever.

By the way, I'm now using a Pixel 8 which also sounds good and it has Spatial Audio which works like Atmos in the Samsung and firmware is v1.1.3. No more crackling or ticking sound....so far.

 

[Lawnmower]

More than 2 minutes or sometimes less then the crackling noise will start to linger. I read in this forum that it is the cable used or the firmware that causes it but nothing worked for me. I haven't tried the CB19 yet as I don't have a portable power bank at the moment. Still, I'm curious if it solves the crackling noise issue with the S24/S24+. Might try it if it fixes the issue for now while we all hope this would be fixed in the future by Shanling or whoever.

The fact that it's fine with PC and Pixel 8 implies there's likely something wrong with your s24.. Perhaps the s24 USB port just needs a clean? I've not had any issues with my s10, and others in the thread have indicated no problems with s24..

If you're keen to try the CB19 without a powerbank, that USB A connector will take power from any source, doesn't need to be a powerbank; so you could try with connecting that to your PC or an AC->USB wallwart if you have one.. Not the ideal solution for clean power delivery, but worth at least experimenting to see if there's any change.

Only try at low volume for the experimenting until the issue's resolved; not worth risking your hearing over.

 

[smegel]

The fact that it's fine with PC and Pixel 8 implies there's likely something wrong with your s24.. Perhaps the s24 USB port just needs a clean? I've not had any issues with my s10, and others in the thread have indicated no problems with s24..

If you're keen to try the CB19 without a powerbank, that USB A connector will take power from any source, doesn't need to be a powerbank; so you could try with connecting that to your PC or an AC->USB wallwart if you have one.. Not the ideal solution for clean power delivery, but worth at least experimenting to see if there's any change.

Only try at low volume for the experimenting until the issue's resolved; not worth risking your hearing over.

I'd be careful there...
You may end up getting more noise that way. (A bit of feedback?) This happens w my BT headphones and while recharging I use the 3.5mm jack to listen to music.
If I use an external battery... no issues. Use the same PC? Feedback hum.

Some have reported hearing cracks and pops that occur randomly. It happens to me when I run it upscaled off my macbook however its only w certain music and its less since I glued the usb cable into the Alpha. Try a different USB-C cable, one that has a stiff connection and it could be the port on your phone... If it only happens w the phone... then its probably the phone.

 

[Lawnmower]

I'd be careful there...
You may end up getting more noise that way. (A bit of feedback?) This happens w my BT headphones and while recharging I use the 3.5mm jack to listen to music.
If I use an external battery... no issues. Use the same PC? Feedback hum.

Presumably you mean when taking the 3.5mm output from the PC, while concurrently charging (the same device that the 3.5mm is going to) via a separate USB connection from the PC? That's why the context was solely with s24 [phone not connected to anything else]. The data signal is from the s24, the power from wherever.

Some have reported hearing cracks and pops that occur randomly. It happens to me when I run it upscaled off my macbook however its only w certain music and its less since I glued the usb cable into the Alpha. Try a different USB-C cable, one that has a stiff connection and it could be the port on your phone... If it only happens w the phone... then its probably the phone.

I get hiccups or micro dropouts from PC due to having certain other (non-USB) equipment connected and running concurrently with the Alpha. Luckily I have no use for said other equipment while the Alpha's in use - so it serves as a reminder to turn it off. I haven't tested if lowering the sample frequency would help, I suspect it would.

 

[carliber1]

Which cable are you using for iPhone 13 Pro Max? I am planning to get get Onix Alpha, and since it doesn’t come with lightening cable am wondering which cable to get

SHANLING L3(TC-LT)lightning Audio Cable - SHANLING Official Store on AliExpress
https://tinyurl.com/ShanlingL3