I have a dilemma or two regarding the HA2.
Firstly - am using it with my Galaxy S7 and Oppo PM3. When I plug my headphones directly into the phone, versus the HA2 (and this could be because my ears are not used to differentiating good from bad), I notice a differential but mainly in terms of the sound amplification. I don't see much difference in soundstage, clarity etc. Has anyone else noticed this? This is true both with using Poweramp as well as the Onkyo HF Player. I am in Singapore, so have the international edition of the Galaxy.
The second confusion/dilemma is with the Onkyo player itself. There are 20,000 modes which I don't have a clue about, so any guidance massively helpful.
1. "Enables Volume control in the background." - thoroughly confused with this.
2. Upsampling mode - On or Off? -
Probably Off. Especially if you use some high-res files (16 bit 48khz, 24bit 48khz, 24bit 96khz, 24bit 192khz, or DSD, etc.), you will need to use a program like USB Audio Player Pro (also known as 'UAPP') Or Onkyo player to bypass Androids propensity to automatically upsample ALL music files to 24bit 192khz, which is not a good thing - basically, you would want UAPP or Onkyo to help you feed a so-called 'bit-perfect' data stream to your Oppo, and not allow Android to interfere with the data stream in any way.
3. DoP Pause Operation - stop output or output DSD Zero?
4. Output DSD 2/6 MHz via DoP - activate or not? -
Probably activate. oppo plays Stereo DSD (DoP v1.0 or native).
5. Real time DSD Conversion - which mode to use?
Edit here: Someone taught me how to search using google! I found a lot of answers on this thread itself, but if someone can tell me (more for knowledge than anything else) as to what all this means (or point me to some resource) I will be ever grateful.
Whenever I am listening to music and I get a message or a call, there is this horrible sound emitted from the phone speakers - basically a noise overlay on the ringtones. Is there a way to handle this?
Is there anything easier to use which works well with the HA2 than this (specifically on Android and/or Galaxy S7?). I have already paid for the Onkyo unlocking, but don't mind shelling out another 5-7$ for USB Audio Player Pro (as an alternative which pops up when digging on the net) if that is going to be better! -
I have tried Foobar2000, HiBy and UAPP. At first Foobar2000 and Hiby worked ok, but an update to android started to create some internal issues for the phone (I read that sometimes android is running at max capacity updating the screen for instance, that the music playing gets paused for a fraction of a second, causing the DAC to emits pops and crackles), and it became too frustrating to listen to the music. I changed to UAPP which like Onkyo sends a direct stream to the DAC, and so the internal android resource issues no longer cause pops and crackles. So I suggest either Onkyo or UAPP are best, but only you can choose which user interface you prefer.
Lastly - whenever I have used (and again, with limited experience) iOS devices with something sucking the digital signal out to feed into an external DAC, the volume control on the iDevice has been disabled. This doesn't happen with the HA2 with the Onkyo or Poweramp. Does this indicate an issue or am I reading too much into this?
Edit: Addition. Even on full volume out from my phone - I need to use a fairly high volume level on the HA2. Is it just me or...
Any help/guidance will be much appreciated. This is my first time using an external DAC so trying to learn the ropes.
P.S. I did try to trawl through the hundreds of pages on this thread and see if I could find answers, but was unable to - so if these questions have been raised and replied to earlier, please do pardon my ignorance.
Thank you all!