[MuntzMental]

Has anyone else had a problem when playing from the 3.5mm jack into their car radio?

My A55 works flawlessly, however when the A100 is playing no sound comes out... I have tried; multiple cables, Walkman/Spotify/UAPP, different EQs, turning it off and on again. Nothing seems to work.

The 3.5mm works with all my headphones/IEMs but not the car radio.

Car for reference is a 2018 Subaru WRX STi Premium with a HK head unit.

Bad video but you get the idea

Thanks in advance

I have the same problem on my 2018 Subaru FXT. It also has the HK head unit.

What is weird is that when the 3.5mm is plugged in and Bluetooth is off somehow the head unit knows a Sony A100 is plugged in. This was before I even paired it. I also noticed that the volume when plugged into AUX is the Android volume not the Sony volume "app".

I never would have imagined that any data would be sent via 3.5mm.

The A105 works perfectly in my wife's Nissan Rogue when plugged into AUX.

I haven't tried it in my E36 via AUX on the Mediabridge but my guess is it would work fine.

So, I'm not sure if it is a Sony issue or a Subaru issue.

 

[imparanoic]

i wonder if the nw-a100 walkman can use external type c dac such as ibasso dc02, audioquest dragon fly, cyrus sound key?, does sound better or worse? or just different?

 

[nanaholic]

i wonder if the nw-a100 walkman can use external type c dac such as ibasso dc02, audioquest dragon fly, cyrus sound key?, does sound better or worse? or just different?

It does.

I'd say it's just a slight difference. The single end output of the A100 Walkman is extremely good and there's very little need to go the external DAC route unless you are looking for something really different like a balance output DAC as in the iBasso DC01 or to really up the output power, but since these types of compact USB C DACs draws power directly from the device you are looking at even further reducing the battery life, which IMO is not worth the trouble.

 

[imparanoic]

It does.

I'd say it's just a slight difference. The single end output of the A100 Walkman is extremely good and there's very little need to go the external DAC route unless you are looking for something really different like a balance output DAC as in the iBasso DC01 or to really up the output power, but since these types of compact USB C DACs draws power directly from the device you are looking at even further reducing the battery life, which IMO is not worth the trouble.

thanks for the comparison

 

[imparanoic]

It does.

I'd say it's just a slight difference. The single end output of the A100 Walkman is extremely good and there's very little need to go the external DAC route unless you are looking for something really different like a balance output DAC as in the iBasso DC01 or to really up the output power, but since these types of compact USB C DACs draws power directly from the device you are looking at even further reducing the battery life, which IMO is not worth the trouble.

would you know if it makes any difference to nw-zx507? or it's rather pointless?

 

[nanaholic]

would you know if it makes any difference to nw-zx507? or it's rather pointless?

I'd say it is completely pointless.

The ZX507 already has two outputs (single end and balanced) and a fairly decent amount of output power. If you still feel the need to feed your ZX507 Walkman to a thumbsized compact USB-C DAC to "improve the SQ" then you need to seriously ask yourself why you bought the ZX507 in the first place, why not pool the money for a different DAP instead?

 

[imparanoic]

I'd say it is completely pointless.

The ZX507 already has two outputs (single end and balanced) and a fairly decent amount of output power. If you still feel the need to feed your ZX507 Walkman to a thumbsized compact USB-C DAC to "improve the SQ" then you need to seriously ask yourself why you bought the ZX507 in the first place, why not pool the money for a different DAP instead?

great response, just curious anyway.

but DC01 on nw-a100 is a great option for harder to drive IEMs and most full size headphones

 

[kodered]

I have the same problem on my 2018 Subaru FXT. It also has the HK head unit.

What is weird is that when the 3.5mm is plugged in and Bluetooth is off somehow the head unit knows a Sony A100 is plugged in. This was before I even paired it. I also noticed that the volume when plugged into AUX is the Android volume not the Sony volume "app".

I never would have imagined that any data would be sent via 3.5mm.

The A105 works perfectly in my wife's Nissan Rogue when plugged into AUX.

I haven't tried it in my E36 via AUX on the Mediabridge but my guess is it would work fine.

So, I'm not sure if it is a Sony issue or a Subaru issue.

So I did a bit more troubleshooting and found that if I convert the 3.5mm to RCA then back to 3.5mm it works perfect...

I just found the converters laying around and will look for a more permanent solution now that I know this.

 

[psikey]

great response, just curious anyway.

but DC01 on nw-a100 is a great option for harder to drive IEMs and most full size headphones

It recognised my BTR5 as a DAC and Dragonfly Cobalt and played bit perfect out of them (MQA too with the DFC) with UAPP app.

 

[nanaholic]

https://www.phileweb.com/news/d-av/202005/28/50419.html

Great news for the streamers - new update released today allows for full resolution playback from other streaming apps with no downsampling.

Also of note is the introduction of a Search function to the Walkman app, a shortcut to Favourites, as well as 999 Bookmark lists (compared to the current 10).

 

[djselbeck]

Yeah you can enable it in the settings.

It looks like it changes the system's behavior substantially.

If you enable it a new component appears in logcat. It is called IzmAudioResampler and it looks like it resamples ALL to 192kHz. Looks like it is bypassing Android's SRC completely. You can see output like the following if you play e.g. 44.1kHz ogg files from within a standard Android music app:

05-28 11:04:15.119 3105 3793 D IzmAudioResampler: IzmAudioResampler(192000, AUDIO_FORMAT_PCM_FLOAT, 2)
05-28 11:04:15.119 3105 3793 I Fundamentals: ---------- AudioConfig[IAR: Track [3]] ----------
05-28 11:04:15.119 3105 3793 I Fundamentals: f_samp: 44100
05-28 11:04:15.119 3105 3793 I Fundamentals: format: S16_LE
05-28 11:04:15.119 3105 3793 I Fundamentals: num_of_ch: 2

It is a good thing that Sony did it. I trust Sony's resampler much more than Android's. On the other hand you can see an increase of CPU load in top

 

[psikey]

Yeah you can enable it in the settings.

It looks like it changes the system's behavior substantially.

If you enable it a new component appears in logcat. It is called IzmAudioResampler and it looks like it resamples ALL to 192kHz. Looks like it is bypassing Android's SRC completely. You can see output like the following if you play e.g. 44.1kHz ogg files from within a standard Android music app:

05-28 11:04:15.119 3105 3793 D IzmAudioResampler: IzmAudioResampler(192000, AUDIO_FORMAT_PCM_FLOAT, 2)
05-28 11:04:15.119 3105 3793 I Fundamentals: ---------- AudioConfig[IAR: Track [3]] ----------
05-28 11:04:15.119 3105 3793 I Fundamentals: f_samp: 44100
05-28 11:04:15.119 3105 3793 I Fundamentals: format: S16_LE
05-28 11:04:15.119 3105 3793 I Fundamentals: num_of_ch: 2

It is a good thing that Sony did it. I trust Sony's resampler much more than Android's. On the other hand you can see an increase of CPU load in top

Was hoping update would do proper bit-perfect playback not just scale everything up to 32/192!

Not sure I'd want another layer taking a 16/44, 16/48 or even 24/48 and just scale it out to 32/192. Not doing MQA in Tidal either.

Even if you have a 24/192 whats actually going on to change it to 32/192 and whats the point of that anyway? No one sells/streams 32/192 tracks.

If your not fussed over bit-perfect its another tweak to try out I suppose seeing as Sony don't seem able to do bit-perfect except in their own app.

 

[djselbeck]

Was hoping update would do proper bit-perfect playback not just scale everything up to 32/192!

Not sure I'd want another layer taking a 16/44, 16/48 or even 24/48 and just scale it out to 32/192. Not doing MQA in Tidal either.

Even if you have a 24/192 whats actually going on to change it to 32/192 and whats the point of that anyway? No one sells/streams 32/192 tracks.

If your not fussed over bit-perfect its another tweak to try out I suppose seeing as Sony don't seem able to do bit-perfect except in their own app.

I also hope they would do bit-perfect. At this point in time it looks like technically they are almost there. I don't know why they still resample. They are even getting correct format from MediaPlayer class of Android. Still it is already an improvement. I hope that the might just struggle with Android and add it in the future. I really don't understand why Sony is so bad at working cross departments. They have Android experts in house. Same story like what they did with smartphones and subpar camera software for years.

 

[psikey]

I also hope they would do bit-perfect. At this point in time it looks like technically they are almost there. I don't know why they still resample. They are even getting correct format from MediaPlayer class of Android. Still it is already an improvement. I hope that the might just struggle with Android and add it in the future. I really don't understand why Sony is so bad at working cross departments. They have Android experts in house. Same story like what they did with smartphones and subpar camera software for years.

I wonder if Sony phones can do bit-perfect or only with Walkman app and possibly UAPP. Not had a Sony phone for years.

I had my heart set on getting an import ZX507 but was holding off for this rumoured HD streaming fix.

We strive for the track being played as recorded/mastered without data loss or manipulation (bit-perfect) so now its confirmed it still can't do streaming services (which I use most) and therfore no Tidal MQA I have had to change my plans and look elsewhere.

 

[djselbeck]

I wonder if Sony phones can do bit-perfect or only with Walkman app and possibly UAPP. Not had a Sony phone for years.

Qualcomm smartphones usually do bit-perfect at least if they use codecs that use the offloading API which is quite a few on Qualcomm (IIRC even vorbis) but I would need to double check.Sony phones got to expensive. I use cheap Motorola now