The Zishan dsd's corner

[Themilkman46290]

I updated the firmware to 0.4I too, but got some crashes, 3 in a day, the 2 with a time gap of 10 seconds (crashed, booted off, booted on, started playing, crashed again). The files that were playing when this happened were some mp3s, 44.1k 16bit.
Also, are the colours more saturated (mainly on the spectrograph), or is it in my mind?

Dont know about colours but i did notice that it runs cooler playing dsd, a little warmer on flac and warm on mp3, and the little circle on the top right stays red/orange on mp3 but goes back to green on dsd/flac.
Is it possiple the new firmware was optimized only for lossles? they gave no consideration to mp3, doesnt bother me too much but i do have some old mp3s i like. most of my collection is lossles anyway so its not a big deal but i thought it would be less taxing for it to play smaller files

 

[HeyManslowdown97]

No.
I leave here a link that could be useful to clarify some concepts.
http://nwavguy.blogspot.com/2011/02/headphone-amp-impedance.html[/QUOTE]

You lower the dbs to not get distortion.

I get the concept but it’s a shortcut like a band-aide.

For starters, we don’t know the output voltage that Zishan is pulling. We should start there. Next, everyone has different headphones so each mod should meet those specs with resistors cross reference op amps and output preferences (a ballpark figure aka healthy range).

Low powered op amps are amazing with a large voltage ranch if you it’s say 9 to 36v ranch. Bumping that up to say 24v is a better mod in my opinion since you want to bring out the charactics op amp sound.

This ALL can be measured with a multimeter including the resistors to change each step as we all go along and compare notes. This just my suggestion though but I believe we’d all learns in the process and get most customized mods to our liking.

These are my educated guesses.

Updated: (section found in blog post)

“These batteries only produce a bit over 3 volts which means you typically get less than 1 volt RMS of audio output driving typical headphones (sometimes much less). If you add 120 ohms to the output, and use typical portable headphones (nearly all of which are in the range of 16 –32 ohms) the headphones usually won’t play loud enough. And most of the battery power is wasted as heat in the 120 ohm resistor. Only a small fraction of the power makes it to the headphones. That’s a big problem in portable audio where getting the best battery life from ever smaller devices is critical. It’s much more efficient to deliver all the power to headphones.”

 

[Draknodd]

You lower the dbs to not get distortion.

I get the concept but it’s a shortcut like a band-aide.

For starters, we don’t know the output voltage that Zishan is pulling. We should start there. Next, everyone has different headphones so each mod should meet those specs with resistors cross reference op amps and output preferences (a ballpark figure aka healthy range).

Low powered op amps are amazing with a large voltage ranch if you it’s say 9 to 36v ranch. Bumping that up to say 24v is a better mod in my opinion since you want to bring out the charactics op amp sound.

This ALL can be measured with a multimeter including the resistors to change each step as we all go along and compare notes. This just my suggestion though but I believe we’d all learns in the process and get most customized mods to our liking.

These are my educated guesses.

Again, the main problem Is about alterations to the frequency response. I can't really find a single case where an high output impedance could be positive.
Output res are only a cheap way to protect a cheap output stage. Lowering dbs is totally uncorrelated to the freq. res. EQ is only a shortcut that won't solve the problem and can only deteriorate the sq.

Lowering those res for me It was only a temporary fix to get less sound alterations on my hybrid iems before replacing the discrete output buffer.

 

[HeyManslowdown97]

Again, the main problem Is about alterations to the frequency response. I can't really find a single case where an high output impedance could be positive.
Output res are only a cheap way to protect a cheap output stage. Lowering dbs is totally uncorrelated to the freq. res. EQ is only a shortcut that won't solve the problem and can only deteriorate the sq.

Lowering those res for me It was only a temporary fix to get less sound alterations on my hybrid iems before replacing the discrete output buffer.

Yes that’s do to a Drop VOLTAGE! Aka Ohms Law.

All Ivan did is re-circuited the DAC and used an CMOS amplifier as his “Universal Buffer” directly to the output jacks.

In his defense the cheap (censored) PCB may not be able to handle higher voltage.

In your blogpost from 2011. Do you want me explain Moore’s Law again! Take a look at a smartphone from 2011 to present as a shortcut tutorial.

It’s a shortcut not a permanent solution!

“These batteries only produce a bit over 3 volts which means you typically get less than 1 volt RMS of audio output driving typical headphones (sometimes much less). If you add 120 ohms to the output, and use typical portable headphones (nearly all of which are in the range of 16 –32 ohms) the headphones usually won’t play loud enough. And most of the battery power is wasted as heat in the 120 ohm resistor. Only a small fraction of the power makes it to the headphones. That’s a big problem in portable audio where getting the best battery life from ever smaller devices is critical. It’s much more efficient to deliver all the power to headphones.”

 

[DBaldock9]

The only way forward for the thread and community I see feasible is this:

How everyone who upgraded to 0.4I finds it?

My impressions so far:

1. Fixed crashes/restarts when in shuffle mode and album art is displayed
2. Better stability overall, only one crash since upgrading
3. Lows became better, more punch/definition. I actually took my DSD from "High sound quality mode", as i feel it smears transients
4. Highs are a touch softer/silkier, this also improved soundstage (I feel like floating in a bubble of sound)
5. Strangely enough there's much more noticeable difference between lossless and lossy (mp3) files sound quality. FLACs are like "wow!", mp3s are like "ups, that's embarrassing"
6. Zishan runs a bit cooler too (probably due to CPU code optimised/errors fixed)


Overall sonic profile became very close to F.Audio FA1 (as I remember it), but obviously without any annoying clicks that FA1 had.
Makes me very happy , as the whole point of buying into AK4497 DSD and modding it was to get that mesmerising FA1 sound while FA1 was useless to me due to clicks.

Just re-assembled my DSD, long enough to install 0.4I - and now I'm only seeing Asian characters on the screen.
So, how do I change the user interface back to English? Thanks for any insights!

 

[ThanosD]

Dont know about colours but i did notice that it runs cooler playing dsd, a little warmer on flac and warm on mp3, and the little circle on the top right stays red/orange on mp3 but goes back to green on dsd/flac.
Is it possiple the new firmware was optimized only for lossles? they gave no consideration to mp3, doesnt bother me too much but i do have some old mp3s i like. most of my collection is lossles anyway so its not a big deal but i thought it would be less taxing for it to play smaller files

I still have quite some mp3s unfortunately. On Flac and DSD I haven't faced any problems either.

@Ivan TT I think you should really consider stop responding to this guy. He will just not listen to you no matter what. If we all ignore him, he will just go on to responding to no-one for a while, and then stop. After that many pages, it should be obvious that there is no point. I made the mistake to press the "Show ignored content" because of the many responses, and it's clear that he is either a troll, or even worse someone with problems. Don't feed the troll.

@DBaldock9 you go to the second from the end selection (the one with the gear) on the main menu, then to the 5th selection, and then press the right button until you see English as the selected option

 

[DBaldock9]

I still have quite some mp3s unfortunately. On Flac and DSD I haven't faced any problems either.

@Ivan TT I think you should really consider stop responding to this guy. He will just not listen to you no matter what. If we all ignore him, he will just go on to responding to no-one for a while, and then stop. After that many pages, it should be obvious that there is no point. I made the mistake to press the "Show ignored content" because of the many responses, and it's clear that he is either a troll, or even worse someone with problems. Don't feed the troll.

@DBaldock9 you go to the second from the end selection (the one with the gear) on the main menu, then to the 5th selection, and then press the right button until you see English as the selected option

Thanks, I've got my System Settings back to the way they were, before the update - and now I can even understand what's on the screen...

 

[ThanosD]

Guys, would it be a good idea, if I converted my mp3s to flac? Obviously it cannot help with quality, but would this make it easier for the zishan to play them, and make the crashes disappear? Is this problem related just to the type of the file, or to the information that it contains?

 

[Ivan TT]

Guys, would it be a good idea, if I converted my mp3s to flac? Obviously it cannot help with quality, but would this make it easier for the zishan to play them, and make the crashes disappear? Is this problem related just to the type of the file, or to the information that it contains?

Only type of file, so converting to FLAC will work as a solution.

 

[ThanosD]

Only type of file, so converting to FLAC will work as a solution.

Good, I will find a program then, and start converting.

 

[Themilkman46290]

On a russian forum Harryuss found a possible workaround, seems mp3 related issues appear after playing FLACs, temporary fix is to go into System menu and back, this reduces CPU load (red circle) back to where it is on FLACs.

Spoiler

http://player.ru/showthread.php?t=180748&p=2752324&viewfull=1#post2752324

Ok, i will try that but so far only crashed once, in general pleased with firmware

 

[HeyManslowdown97]

Ohm's law

noun Electricity.
the law that for any circuit the electric currentis directly proportional to the voltage and is inversely proportional to the resistance.

On the Zishan it’s very hard to convert the series circuit to increase ohms. The parallel circuit is easier but the only real way to do is through a dedicated headphone amp designed to low impedience headphones. I think that’s the reason behind the choice of TI to only release Op1622 in VSON from meant to be an IC not a plug and play op amp.

Real interesting to learn about this stuff.

 

[HeyManslowdown97]

If y’all wanna convert your mp3s to DSD Files there’s a free way to do but it requires some patients as it can only be done using wav and one at time.

You can also do it one JRiver. It’s free for month and I think it’s like 60 dollars for the program. But you can convert your files during the trial time.

Remember: You would first to have to convert your mp3s into wav then wavs into DSD to use the tascam freeware and in Jriver any file can be convert into DSD.

Behold.

https://www.tascam.eu/en/hr-editor.html

 

[504960]

@Ivan TT
Hi I just bought this one.
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/***...-MP3-Player-Hard-Solution-2/32871554461.html?

What mod do you recommend and where can I buy what I need?
I am new at this.
My headphones are the Takstar Pro 82 for now.
Sorry for my english is basic.
Thank you.-

 

[HeyManslowdown97]

“Before I do the opa1622 buffer mod (that you described in a prev. post.) , I got from arrow real cheap thin film resistors and I'm going to replace all resistors near the opamps. I have no idea if anything will change.”

Like I said I hope he knows what he’s doing with the gain. It’s specifically designed for headphone amplifier application.