[QsTree]

Even better than FiiO M6?

Nice one but the battery life of only 13h would be a NO GO for me. Hence I still prever the A55.

 

[Meder Bakirov]

Nice one but the battery life of only 13h would be a NO GO for me. Hence I still prever the A55.

Does A55 support streaming services (Tidal, Spotify, etc)?

 

[hieple193]

Does A55 support streaming services (Tidal, Spotify, etc)?

A55 has Bluetooth Receiver for streaming

 

[Krutsch]

A55 has Bluetooth Receiver for streaming

Exactly. And using your phone for streaming services will always provide the greatest compatibility over a DAP.

 

[Blazer39]

can anyone give comparison between A35,A45 and A55 in terms of sound quality?
is there an upgrade in each iteration?

 

[phower]

Streaming to A50 over Bluetooth and then using a wired/wireless is meaningless. You are doing WAV -> Ogg/AAC ->SBC/AAC/LDAC or wired. The audio quality is already degraded at step 2. Step 3 degrades it further and rather pointless to use a DAP if you are going to use Bluetooth.

 

[phower]

can anyone give comparison between A35,A45 and A55 in terms of sound quality?
is there an upgrade in each iteration?

AFAIK all three models use the same Sony's S-Master HX DAC & amplifier. They should sound identical.

 

[Krutsch]

Streaming to A50 over Bluetooth and then using a wired/wireless is meaningless. You are doing WAV -> Ogg/AAC ->SBC/AAC/LDAC or wired. The audio quality is already degraded at step 2. Step 3 degrades it further and rather pointless to use a DAP if you are going to use Bluetooth.

Not really a meaningful or accurate comparison. Sure, WAV—> SBC is degraded, maybe twice depending on the device.

However, most streaming content is already served using lossy compression (I.e. MP3, Ogg, AAC).

Using Bluetooth from a good mobile device will support aptX HD or LDAC BT transmission. Using these codecs, aptX HD or LDAC, there is WAY more bandwidth than necessary to preserve fidelity from lossy codecs. Even if you are using something like Primephonic, which supports 24-bit FLAC audio to an Android phone, LDAC transmission will be indistinguishable from the original.

The real reason to use your phone to stream content is that the apps are always up-to-date, along with the phone’s OS. I think we learned that lesson with the ZX series.

Any, you are getting a far superior DAC/amp than what is available in most phones (if it even has a built-in DAC/amp) and what is available in most BT headphones.

 

[phower]

Not really a meaningful or accurate comparison. Sure, WAV—> SBC is degraded, maybe twice depending on the device.

However, most streaming content is already served using lossy compression (I.e. MP3, Ogg, AAC).

Using Bluetooth from a good mobile device will support aptX HD or LDAC BT transmission. Using these codecs, aptX HD or LDAC, there is WAY more bandwidth than necessary to preserve fidelity from lossy codecs.

Fidelity is lost due to encoding not due to lack of RF bandwidth. Even Bluetooth 2.0's meagre 600kbps is more than sufficient.

Any, you are getting a far superior DAC/amp than what is available in most phones (if it even has a built-in DAC/amp) and what is available in most BT headphones.

This is disputable. I already made a post about it some time ago. The S-Master DAC/Amp suffers from higher THD/IMD than the DACs in smartphones.
Unfortunately, no one has tested the A30/40/50 objectively. I have wasted so much time googling and I haven't found any resource. There were some tests done on higher end
Sony DAPs on a Korean website. They reported higher THD/IMD for the same S-Master chip. AFAIK Sony hasn't released any new chip beyond the HX version and hence the distortion should be similar.

 

[Krutsch]

Fidelity is lost due to encoding not due to lack of RF bandwidth. Even Bluetooth 2.0's meagre 600kbps is more than sufficient.

Again, you are making a nonsense comparison. Yes, SBC is a codec that is not bit-rate capped, with respect to transmission rate, but in practice it is never used at data rates above 345 kbps. For lossy codecs, you are incurring 2 levels of aggressive compression that degrades sound quality.

And, yes, LDAC is technically lossy, but supports upwards of 990 kbps data rate, which means it can be far less aggressive in compression - especially with lossy or Redbook content.

But the more important point is that 16-bit, 44.1 kHz CD quality content passes through the codec unaltered, as the available bit-depth for transmission more than exceeds the required 16-bits. So, this will certainly be the case with lossy content, like MP3/Ogg/AAC.

aptX HD has a similar story to tell, but uses 4 sub-bands for encoding, as opposed to the 16 sub-bands used by LDAC; along with a 576 kbps data rate cap, aptX HD is not as capable. However, I would challenge anyone to reliably tell the difference with even a high-end Head-Fi rig.

 

[phower]

But the more important point is that 16-bit, 44.1 kHz CD quality content passes through the codec unaltered, as the available bit-depth for transmission more than exceeds the required 16-bits. So, this will certainly be the case with lossy content, like MP3/Ogg/AAC.

Even without padding, uncompressed Redbook audio is 44100*2*16/1000 = 1411.2kbps which is more than 990kbps. I don't know that can be passed unaltered, if not lossy.? The LDAC source code is available on Android. Let me dig into it when I am free.

 

[Krutsch]

I will be curious to see what you discover, looking at the source - who has time for that?

But, to my earlier comment, remember: Sony is not claiming that LDAC transmits Redbook WAV/PCM, unaltered. They are claiming that Redbook PCM is equivalently compressed in a manner similar to FLAC - that is, lossless.

 

[hieple193]

Streaming to A50 over Bluetooth and then using a wired/wireless is meaningless. You are doing WAV -> Ogg/AAC ->SBC/AAC/LDAC or wired. The audio quality is already degraded at step 2. Step 3 degrades it further and rather pointless to use a DAP if you are going to use Bluetooth.

If you want to enjoy hi fi music you are not going to streaming. Because the quality on Sportify, Deezer, Tidal... . I usually buy digital album cd quality, hires and ripping cd for the best quality. Go for Chi DAP if you want to, because they are great and features value for money. But big one like Sony solved the problems by their way and not crammed too many things on their product, that what i like them

 

[Raketen]

I've been streaming basic Tidal mp3 over LDAC with the A55 to wired headphones and find it totally acceptable quality for non-critical listining/commuting (not that I do much critical listening to begin with- also, frankly a more stable/usable connection than the ES100 or via phone USB, and a less battery draining connection than using phone hotspot to connect to a wifi streaming DAP).

I might marginally prefer the audio of the A55 to my v30 and even to the similarly featured ES100 dongle and Hiby R3, but (like the R3/ES100) it also gives me hardware playback and fine grain volume controls (which v30 is good for UNTIL you try to use external source) and basic EQ of the phone's streaming audio, which is itself worth it for me. I also have local music collection on the A55 with its own very good battery life, small size and with a highly polished interface designed specifically for browsing and playback that I don't have to navigate to every time I want to adjust something, unlike in Android. It's also sort of refreshing to be able to get the best out of a device Single Ended and without having to bother with balanced cables and adapters for every other gadget I might use them with.

Sure, no one very concerned about chain purity or hi-res-itude would consider using such a setup, but it works for me (and probably some other people too).

 

[Blazer39]

I've been streaming basic Tidal mp3 over LDAC with the A55 to wired headphones and find it totally acceptable quality for non-critical listining/commuting (not that I do much critical listening to begin with- also, frankly a more stable/usable connection than the ES100 or via phone USB, and a less battery draining connection than using phone hotspot to connect to a wifi streaming DAP).

I might marginally prefer the audio of the A55 to my v30 and even to the similarly featured ES100 dongle and Hiby R3, but (like the R3/ES100) it also gives me hardware playback and fine grain volume controls

literally no reason to keep R3 if you have A55...that DAP was such a disappointment.