Q5/Q10 pro and the 24bit/192khz passthrough for music?

[stl]

Greeting from Vietnam,
I am consulting to buy a Himedia Q10 pro to play lossless ( just CD quality) and send the signal PCM to my kenwood K531 (DAC built-in mini hifi system).
But I have heard somebody told that the sound via optical too small and need a power amp. I dont know with my kenwood RK531 ( 80W) can play with this optical output strength ?

Can anybody share the experience with your home system ?

Thanks so much

My Q10Pro is connected to a NAD D3020 with a fiber optical cable without any issues. The cable transmits data, nothing to do with power.

[Mount81]

Still: any music files, like mp3 or FLAC are resampled from 24bit to 16bit and from 44.1kHz to 48kHz during playback.

[stl]

Still: any music files, like mp3 or FLAC are resampled for 24bit to 16bit and from 44.1kHz to 48kHz during playback.

Which is fine

[Mount81]

Still: any music files, like mp3 or FLAC are resampled for 24bit to 16bit and from 44.1kHz to 48kHz during playback.

Which is fine

I don't think that an audiophile or a sound engineer expert would agree.

[letienkh]

Still: any music files, like mp3 or FLAC are resampled from 24bit to 16bit and from 44.1kHz to 48kHz during playback.

Can Q10 pro passthrough the wav. (pcm) to the mini hifi system or DAC (NAD D3020) to avoid the re sampling  the bit rate 24 bit to 16 bit as most of the DAC process the PCM signal smoothly with higher bit rate (96khz/24 bit) ?

I accepted the storage for wav file will be larger than flac,ape, etc..

@stl : could you please help to do a test for me : play an wav file ( just stereo  audio) and choose raw output via spdif then confirm the sound is transmitted to your DAC correctly ?

Thank you very much.
Tien

[Mount81]

Still: any music files, like mp3 or FLAC are resampled from 24bit to 16bit and from 44.1kHz to 48kHz during playback.

Can Q10 pro passthrough the wav. (pcm) to the mini hifi system or DAC (NAD D3020) to avoid the re sampling  the bit rate 24 bit to 16 bit as most of the DAC process the PCM signal smoothly with higher bit rate (96khz/24 bit) ?

I accepted the storage for wav file will be larger than flac,ape, etc..

@stl : could you please help to do a test for me : play an wav file ( just stereo  audio) and choose raw output via spdif then confirm the sound is transmitted to your DAC correctly ?

Thank you very much.
Tien

As far as I can recall it, yes unfortunately the resampling occurs on the SPDIF outputs as well. This is some kind of Android limitation BTW, so most of the Android devices are affected. Only a few could have made this fixed (somehow).

[letienkh]

Follow this page http://www.futeko.com/newforum/index.php?topic=1172.0
The optical of himedia q10 pro can support  stereo 24/96.

[Mount81]

Follow this page http://www.futeko.com/newforum/index.php?topic=1172.0
The optical of himedia q10 pro can support  stereo 24/96.

Nothing in that Thread that confirms that it would support 24bit/96kHz on the SPDIF in the case of MUISC file playback. Rather than the opposite. See Reply #12. 

Using Himedia Music Player it played MP3, 24/96 Flac, 24/192 Flac. It can't play DXD (32/352.8 Flac) and DSD64 (.dsf).

->The playback of these files doesn't mean it actually did the output on these values and that no resampling did happen. I think that's what you may have confused.

However through UAPP (USB Audio Player Pro) it played everything the app could support. But it used the ASL (Android Sound Layer) to do this. Thus converted everything to 16/48 regardless of bit depth or rate.

->Which just confirms my previous presumptions.

[stl]

16 bit 48 Khz is very good. There'e a reason why CD's are recorded with 16bit 44.1 Khz, it's because the large, large majority of people can't really tell the difference above it.

For the audiophiles out there:
https://www.npr.org/sections/therecord/2015/06/02/411473508/how-well-can-you-hear-audio-quality

[Mount81]

16 bit 48 Khz is very good. There'e a reason why CD's are recorded with 16bit 44.1 Khz, it's because the large, large majority of people can't really tell the difference above it.

For the audiophiles out there:
https://www.npr.org/sections/therecord/2015/06/02/411473508/how-well-can-you-hear-audio-quality

These complains mainly are regarding the fact of the resampling and beside the maximum limit of the sampling values. I'm not such a big expert on this, but any conversion/resampling (regardless if it UP or DOWN) ends up with some loss of the quality, that's a fact.  And most FLAC and mp3 files out there are 44.1kHz originally (and not 48), so those would be surely concerned. The decimation level of the actual SQ in practice is another story and -maybe- it's still bellow the average perception limit of most of the people. I just speak the theory.  But the optimal would be the perfectly untouched PCM bitstream on the original values of these music files, not matter what they are, which just won't happen 100%-ly in these cases.

[Phil181]

Also note that lossless DTS-HD MA and TrueHD audio are passed through via HDMI.  The "Pure Audio" Blu-ray releases often contain these HD tracks in addition to PCM.
The "lossy" DTS 24/96 audio also is passed through without conversion to PCM and is clearly shown on an AVR.