[SDBiotek]

Thanks for your opinions. I will check out the CENtrance mini m8 (I don't need the power of the original M8 I've found out, as I have a pair of ciems and an LCD-XC which the mini should drive perfectly) but I will just get a 3.5mm connection for my ciems for now. Balanced is something I can look forward to into in the future. Thank you!

I have both the original M8 and the Mini (while it sounds good, the big M8 noise floor was a bit high with my ciems). The Mini definitely works well for my iems.It also drives my XCs just fine, but I prefer the big M8 with the XCs. In my experience, bass seems more fleshed out, and clarity seems a touch better, using the balanced out with my iems. For some, it is a dramatic improvement, but part of that may simply be listening at a higher volume. For me, it seems to matter more for well-mastered songs. Single ended with the iems is still very good.

 

[JeremiahD]

Anyone having probs with win7 and the 7.4.19 drivers, cant seem to get them to work, comes up with device not connected and in windows device manager it says something about unsigned drivers

 

[kernel8888]

anyone have any idea of the life of the battery of this device? And not in terms of hours, I mean how many charges can you get out of it before you see a significant drop in its ability hold a charge?

 

[peterinvan]

anyone have any idea of the life of the battery of this device? And not in terms of hours, I mean how many charges can you get out of it before you see a significant drop in its ability hold a charge?

I have depleted and charged my M8 almost every day for 20 months. Still get 5-6 hours out of it, depending if I use medium or high gain.

 

[TomBiel]

Hello everybody! I'm new in this forum.
 
I have received my new Hifi-M8 XL4 two days ago and have some questions for which I have not yet found answers:
 
1. Does the M8 do any automatic upsampling of the incoming data (in my case from iPhone 6/iPad)? 
2. Does it automatically upsample the 44.1kHz signal coming from the iPhone over the lightning cable to 192kHz?
3. Does it automatically upsample higher resolution signals coming via the CCK to 192kHz?
4. From a quality point of view, and since most of my collection is still in ALAC 16/44.1kHz format, is it better to use the iDevice input (via Lightning cable) or the CCK (via USB-B input)? Is there any difference?
5. Is it correct that the M8 does NOT charge my iPhone/iPad when connected via USB-B and CCK?
6. Is it correct that the impedance switch has no effect when using balanced headphones (LCD-2 with balanced cable)?
 
I use Onkyo HF Player as HiRes Player on my iPhone.
 
Thanks a lot for your valuable help!
Tom 
Switzerland

 

[DrSheep]

1-3 no; 4, moot because CCK with USB-B let you play FLAC at 24/96, which doesn't apply to ALAC; 5, yes you lose charging; 6, It does affect balanced out.
 
Hope this helps.

 

[tylerchris]

1. Does the M8 do any automatic upsampling of the incoming data (in my case from iPhone 6/iPad)?  2. Does it automatically upsample the 44.1kHz signal coming from the iPhone over the lightning cable to 192kHz?
3. Does it automatically upsample higher resolution signals coming via the CCK to 192kHz?
4. From a quality point of view, and since most of my collection is still in ALAC 16/44.1kHz format, is it better to use the iDevice input (via Lightning cable) or the CCK (via USB-B input)? Is there any difference?
5. Is it correct that the M8 does NOT charge my iPhone/iPad when connected via USB-B and CCK?
6. Is it correct that the impedance switch has no effect when using balanced headphones (LCD-2 with balanced cable)?

+1 to @DrSheep 's answers here. To expand a bit on #4:
 
There's no difference at all if most of your music is in ALAC 16/44.1, other than the fact that you can use a shorter / cleaner cable if going directly to iDevice jack (I have a very short black lightning cable from Amazon Basics that I use with my Space Grey iPhone 6s, which looks like a nice and clean black package). This is one of the big benefits of the HiFi-M8 in that it is iDevice certified, so might as well use it if you can.
 
BTW, only a few months ago did I realize/discover that the iPhone will actually play up to 24/48 (I didn't know it did 24-bit at all). I prefer using my iPhone as my DAP and using iTunes / Music App, so I had converted a lot of my 24/192 FLAC music to 16/48 ALAC and had to dither. I've since gone through and converted most of my 24/192 FLAC back to 24/48 ALAC (using foobar2000+ SoX Resampler), and no dithering required.
 
Of course, I still remember when we were all expecting 24/192 from the iPhone without the CCK and we were told Centrance was working on a firmware update to do it... Even though that never panned out, I still secretly hold out hope that come the iPhone 7 (which looks like it may remove the headphone jack), Apple opens up the ability for at least 24/96 out the lightning jack and maybe we do finally get that firmware update! 

 

[DrSheep]

Great explanations, and I though the 24/96 playback was fixed?  Try it with Neutron Player and see if it works.

 

[tylerchris]

  Great explanations, and I though the 24/96 playback was fixed?  Try it with Neutron Player and see if it works.

This is without the CCK?

 

[ExpatinJapan]

  Hello everybody! I'm new in this forum.
 
I have received my new Hifi-M8 XL4 two days ago and have some questions for which I have not yet found answers:
 
1. Does the M8 do any automatic upsampling of the incoming data (in my case from iPhone 6/iPad)? 
2. Does it automatically upsample the 44.1kHz signal coming from the iPhone over the lightning cable to 192kHz?
3. Does it automatically upsample higher resolution signals coming via the CCK to 192kHz?
4. From a quality point of view, and since most of my collection is still in ALAC 16/44.1kHz format, is it better to use the iDevice input (via Lightning cable) or the CCK (via USB-B input)? Is there any difference?
5. Is it correct that the M8 does NOT charge my iPhone/iPad when connected via USB-B and CCK?
6. Is it correct that the impedance switch has no effect when using balanced headphones (LCD-2 with balanced cable)?
 
I use Onkyo HF Player as HiRes Player on my iPhone.
 
Thanks a lot for your valuable help!
Tom 
Switzerland

1. No.
2. No.
3. No. If you have hi-res it with playback as hi-res. say 24/96 will playback as 24/96 with the CCK and USB-B.
 
4. Just use the lightning cable for this one.
5. I don`t know.
6. I dont know.
 
 
 

  +1 to @DrSheep 's answers here. To expand a bit on #4:
 
There's no difference at all if most of your music is in ALAC 16/44.1, other than the fact that you can use a shorter / cleaner cable if going directly to iDevice jack
This is one of the big benefits of the HiFi-M8 in that it is iDevice certified, so might as well use it if you can.
 
BTW, only a few months ago did I realize/discover that the iPhone will actually play up to 24/48 (I didn't know it did 24-bit at all). I prefer using my iPhone as my DAP and using iTunes / Music App, so I had converted a lot of my 24/192 FLAC music to 16/48 ALAC and had to dither. I've since gone through and converted most of my 24/192 FLAC back to 24/48 ALAC (using foobar2000+ SoX Resampler), and no dithering required.
 
Of course, I still remember when we were all expecting 24/192 from the iPhone without the CCK and we were told Centrance was working on a firmware update to do it... Even though that never panned out, I still secretly hold out hope that come the iPhone 7 (which looks like it may remove the headphone jack), Apple opens up the ability for at least 24/96 out the lightning jack and maybe we do finally get that firmware update! 

You can load 24/48 onto your phone but it will still only playback at 16 bits, sorry.
 
______________________________________________________
 
 
Does the Centrance Hifi-Skyn plays back 24 bits?.
 
lets test the Hifi-M8!
Using Flacplayer app (Onkyo app is sub par imho, it also shows the wrong information to mislead the user into thinking they are playing back hi res).
 
 
Hifi-M8, USB-A and lightning.
The answer is NO. it still only plays back at 16 bits. (I have a special testing file sent to me for such purposes).
 
You can load and play back 24/48, 24/96 files etc but it will down sample to 16 bits, sorry.
 
 
 

 
24/96 down sampled to 16/48
 
 

 
typical 16/44 file.
 
____________________________________________
 
Test number two.
 
USB-B with CCK.
YES. Hi res.
 

24/96 to 24/96 via CCK.
 
Hmm, i did wonder if it may have changed, but no.
 
 
 

  Great explanations, and I though the 24/96 playback was fixed?  Try it with Neutron Player and see if it works.

No. sorry.
 
You CAN play the 24/96 file using an app (flacplayer by Dan Leehr), but it will be down sampled to 16/44 or 16/48 depending on the news of the day.
 
You can play hi-res 24/96, 24/192 etc via CCK to USB-B but is finicky and troublesome, bulky etc.
 
 
_______________________________________________________________________________
 
Enter the Centrance Hifi Skyn.
 
 

 
 
 

 

[tylerchris]

Originally Posted by ExpatinJapan /img/forum/go_quote.gif

You can load and play back 24/48, 24/96 files etc but it will down sample to 16 bits, sorry.  
 
 

 
24/96 down sampled to 16/48
 

That would be really unfortunate for me if 24/48 material is down-converted to 16/48, as then I'd much rather do the 24bit -> 16bit conversion myself with foobar2000 rather than have the iPhone hardware do it on the fly.
 
Can you confirm how you know that the 24/96 file was downsampled to 16/48? The screenshot you posted shows that 48khz samplerate, but I don't see where it says it's 16bit? Is there another way you know that for sure? Thanks

 

[ExpatinJapan]

The file has no sound via lightning to usb-a on hifi-m8.

(faint) sound on hifi-m8 to usb-b.

(faint) sound on hifi-skyn.



Hifi-M8 via USB-A has always been stuck at 16/44 or 16/48.

-------------------------

I have two music files sent to me a few years back by an audio company to test various dac amps on the market and whether they could actually play back 24 bits, or not. (as most claimed they did 24/etc).

You either hear sound,... or you dont on the second test file.

__________________________________________________________

its an old post but written around the time the Hifi-m8 came out.

https://cypherlabs.com/bit-rate-frequency/

 

[crazydeep]

Hi - I'm curious to know how the Centrance HiFi M8 compares vs. the Chord Mojo. Any thoughts or impressions? Is the CHord mojo a worthy investment / upgrade vs. the CEntrance HiFi M8?

 

[ezekiel77]

  Hi - I'm curious to know how the Centrance HiFi M8 compares vs. the Chord Mojo. Any thoughts or impressions? Is the CHord mojo a worthy investment / upgrade vs. the CEntrance HiFi M8?

 
Hi, do a thread search for Mojo. I asked this a few months ago.
 
TLDR: Yes.

 

[crazydeep]

 
Hi, do a thread search for Mojo. I asked this a few months ago.
 
TLDR: Yes.

 


Thanks!

So seems that Mojo might be better than the M8, but maybe not by much. But it might be sufficient reason to invest in a new toy he!he!

I did get the Centrance Skyn and I absolutely love that product.