Original sound sampling rate from USB port to an external USB DAC

[Domchuck]

Hi,

I recently purchased a Q5 Pro to implement in my 2.0 stereo sound system combined with a projector, with movies and music streaming from a NAS running Kodi. The NAS has USB output to my USB preamp/DAC and HDMI output to my projector.

Since there were some incompatibilities between my Linux based NAS and my preamp/DAC mostly due to to upgrades in Linux and Kodi, I wanted to try a well designed and nicely supported Android box that would feed my USB DAC and projector simultaneously, since I learned that Android can natively output the sound from USB port since version 5.

I have installed the latest stable firmware (2.0.3), connected my non-upsampling USB DAC to it through one of the 2.0 USB port of the Q5 (tried with the 3.0 USB port as well)  and my DAC (which has a display) detects a 192 kHz signal coming from the Q5 Pro, no matter what is the actual sampling rate of the sound streamed by the Q5 Pro (Actually, the 192 kHz signal is detected even before any material is played on the device,  I get this signal during navigation within the menu of the Q5 Pro)

 Is there any way I can force the Q5 Pro to output sound without upsampling it? A bit-perfect stream would be the best, but I would be very happy just with the actual sampling rate of the streamed file coming from the USB port of the Q5 Pro.

I have this device since 2 days only, I have tried a few apps having proprietary USB drivers (if I understood correctly) that bypasses Android's USB driver (USB Audio Player Pro, Neutron) but although they made the Q5 Pro to output the correct sampling rate, they freezed or behaved strangely after a few minutes of try, or hi-res files were distorted. I read in this forum that Hibymusic might work, but this app does not support yet Android 7.  And those apps are anyway good  for music playback, not for films, and Kodi continued to output 192 kHz sound for movies.

Is there any, user-executable trick that would allow Q5 Pro/Android 7 to natively output sound through USB port at the original sampling rate of the file stored on NAS? I do not care about the sound coming from stream providers, Youtube, Netflix or whatsoever, just the material I have on my NAS.  Those are max 192/24 materials, this is also the max resolution my DAC can handle, anything above is not important for me.

Thanks in advance!

[Domchuck]

I have installed 2.0.4 official firmware, just to try, but the symptoms are the same.

Default Android USB driver sends sound at 192 kHz, special USB drivers from apps are sending the native sampling rate, but everything above 96 kHz is distorted. A native 192/24 flac file is distorted  with the proprietary USB driver, but when I set the app (Hibymusic, for instance, which is said not compliant with android 7) to output at fixed sampling rate, this file plays undistorted at 96 kHz and below, but distorted above .

USB Audio Tester shows that my DAC is recognized, and shows the totality of its supported sampling rate/bits (namely up to 192/24 for my DAC, an Antelope Audio Zodiac+)
 

[Domchuck]

I made a try by downgrading from firmware 2.0.4 to Android 5.1  (firmware 1.0.8 ) just to see what happens.

It's almost worse.

USB outputs a constant 48 kHz, USB Audio Tester recognizes my DAC and its handling capabilities, but Hibymusic has trouble forcing its USB driver to the OS. While initialization of the USB DAC is said OK after launch of the software, once a track starts to play, the USB output stops within a fraction of a second, then there is no more signal detected by my DAC. When I close the app, the situation remains, absolutely no sound, even from Mediaplayer. Reboot was necessary.

USB Audio Player Pro (trial version) outputs sound with the correct (native) sampling rate of the file, but the sound at the analogue output of the DAC is extremely distorted, way more than with Hibymusic under Android 7 (Firmware 2.0.4)  (All music files are stored locally)