Ok another update. Following the link
@m-i-c-k-e-y left, I emailed EXTREAMSD and their customer service tech Davy rapidly emailed me back (within the hour). He stated that R8 -IS- supported though the document on their website listing supported devices did not list it. We tried some tweaks, the most important of which was to turn UAPP Internal Hires Audio setting for UPSAMPLE = off. This eliminated the flag ‘hires dac not found or set up’ and it appeared that when but perfect = off playback was occurring (playback timer progressed showing time from beginning of the track), but no audible sound played via the R8’s 3.5/4.4 PO. Davy asked me to uninstall/reinstall UAPP.
That fixed it!
I was worried that I may not have access to all my account info, add-on apps, and TIDAL subscription in UAPP, but info was automatically restored (so data must have been been retained by UAPP or Google Play Store)
I did have to turn Upsample =off. At first I did not and got the same old message “ 'Failed to find or set up hires DAC!” But having interacted with Davy I checked that and it was “on” — so I turned it “off” then everything worked perfectly. All other settings were as installed.
I can now toggle Bit perfect on/ off. When on, all playback behaves perfectly- R8 unfolds MQA to 768 KHz (direct =384 KHz in UAPP), and non-MQA to 705 KHz (direct 44 KHz)
When bit perfect =off, MQA plays at 48 KHz, and non MQA at 44 KHz, and I can use PEQ for non MQA songs.
KUDOS to Davy at EXTREAMSD - I rarely encounter this level of responsiveness - especially on the weekend! If I have any additional problems I am confident that EXTREAMSD is there to help and won’t hesitate to ask again. But I will hesitate to tweak settings on my own!