ARC bit-perfect in Android phone! [To External USB-DAC]

I think, that there is a bit misunderstanding, what hardware volume control means.
It’s not, that the output volume for USB out will controlled, but the volume in the USB DAC itself, like you will take the volume knob (if there is any) on the USB DAC.

I’m using an Astell & Kern AK HC2 usb dac and can confirm that i almost blew out my eardrums (almost, because i took heed of advice from a poster above and thankfully did not put the iems in my ears). yep… max volume with this usb dac.

My iems were in my ears. You cannot imagine the pleasure I’ve experienced… Anyways, I hope this get addressed soon (hopefully)

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Can we expect a future update for non DAC users like myself, or will this only work with DACs? I have a Samsung S22+ and Galaxy Pro Buds 2 which are wireless. Unless I’m totally missing something that is staring me in the face you need wired headphones to use a DAC with a phone?

We ordered that DAC a couple of days ago, and it was unboxed about 10mins ago. We’ll get it sorted out. I’m sure there is just some detail about the chipset that we are not massaging in the right way.

We are planning to do another driver for “direct output” to built-in headphone jacks on DAPs and phones, but before that, we are hoping to add DSP to ARC. With our team size, we can only really do one large ARC audio project at a time, so we have to prioritize.

As for your Pixel Buds, very few bluetooth device + phone combinations support lossless playback regardless of how ARC works because bluetooth transmission virtually always involves lossy codecs, so there really isn’t a lot for us to improve on there.

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THANK YOU VERY MUCH Roon Labs. Please, take my money for a lifetime subscription. This feature and my new NAD C399 with BluOS Roon Ready, make me no longer have any doubts. Again: THANK YOU for this feature

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Currently enjoying lossless DSD (via DoP) from my home Nucleus streaming to my Pixel 6 feeding an Oppo HA-2 while at work. This has been a day long awaited. Kudos, Roon team!!!

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I love the pace of development with Roon, can’t imagine how things would look like without Roon to be honest. Kudos for that.

Out of curiosity, why wouldn’t the Android Roon app support bit-perfect USB driver too?

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DSP in Arc would be amazing! Also MQA unfold would be awesome. Landscape mode would be nice to have. Also more granulated volume control(with more steps).

Excellent move in the right direction.
Now we just need bit lossless playback without an external dac!

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The process for attaching / detaching the DAC, managing the lifecycle of the USB driver, surfacing the correct info in the UI, integrating OS level volume controls, etc is totally different for the two apps since they do playback quite differently. I would say that these integration aspects took up 80% of the calendar for this project, and the USB driver development was the other 20%, so we are talking about a near doubling of effort to get both apps working.

Roon Remote only works at home. ARC works at home and on the go. The only significant gap is DSP, and we’ll close that with ARC as soon as we can, so it made sense for us to do this in ARC and let the Roon team focus on interesting stuff for Roon, instead of duplicating similar functionality that is already possible in ARC.

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There are multiple warnings about this from AK - on the HC2 box, in the quick start guide included with the HC2, in the product manual downloadable from the AK website, multiple places on the AK website including the product pages for the HC2 and on most of the dealer pages where it is being sold. Happens by default when connecting some USB DACs to a computer or phone. From AK’s product page - Make sure check the volume on your connected player device before using headphones or earphones. Some devices may automatically set the output level to maximum volume when the cable is connected. Listening to headphones or earphones at maximum volume may damage your hearing. Please verify the volume level before each use.

I believe there are lots of DAP users out here that would appreciate some love towards bitperfect output on Android without an external DAC. Might sell a few subscriptions as well…

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Yes, this is planned. This is a multifaceted problem, however. It’s not just about bit-perfect output–many DAPs have flash storage that is not fast enough to run ARC with acceptable performance, and others run very old versions of Android. So it’s likely that whatever result we are able to deliver here will only work well on a subset of products, which is always a bit disappointing for people.

Nonetheless, this is in our plans. DAPs will get faster over time, and they will likely remain popular.

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3 posts were split to a new topic: ARC: weak connection

On Questyle M15 dongle, usb Android, no Mqa

Max volume using Android phone into Focal Bathys inbuilt DAC via usb.

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Is DSD native possible on IOS?

No. Apple does not provide the needed access to the device. Without major changes from them (unlikely), it will never happen for any product.