I got an iBasso DX180 running Android 13. Allegedly, the device should be able to bypass the android downsampling limitations but it is not. When using Arc, the sample rate conversion on the signal path is all over the place and I am having a hard time troubleshooting. Sometimes it gets upsampled to 192 kHz, sometimes it downsamples to 44 kHz. It seems like if i play a high res file on Qobuz, that resolution is then locked on the OS level and then Arc upsamples or downsamples based on whatever quality was played last in the streaming app. I have no other changes in the audio settings like equalizer, audio leveling, headroom, etc. The sample rate conversion is set to compatibility only since it seems you can’t just disable that.
So in the end… is bit perfect possible using Arc in Android and not using an USB port as the output?
Not using the inbuilt dac. ARC only supports
Bit perfect via USB DACs and even then not all work. It will just see it as a phone and resample based on what the Os tells it the rate is. As you have found the dap will lock the rate of the last thing played from another app as this is what the os reports to it. Same on FiiO and A&K.
Thanks @Simon_Arnold3! That’s really crappy and disappointing. How can other apps deliver that and this expensive Roon license can’t? I’m not a big fan of the players available out there and Roon really can deliver on that front. But it quickly became problematic using Arc (even art is missing if Arc is offline). I was hoping the M11 being RR would do that but also mentioned Fiio being the same experience. So should I basically give up on the idea of having Roon on the go?
Up to you. It’s on their roadmap to support DACs in DAPs but when it happens and how well it will work is unknown, Android doesn’t follow same rules per device so much harder to support . DAPs are a small market, phones much bigger so it’s more of a compatibility thing as phones until very recently resample and Roon built the app with this in mind as the app does the resampling and a much better job of it than the os would but it has no idea what the device is it’s running on is capable of bypassing SRC. It needs to change as times and hardware has changed. I only use ARC on my phone with BT for commuting. I use my DAP only at home as portable RR zone these days.
In your ARC Settings → Playback, have you ensured that you turned off the “Automatically pick best quality” toggle? If you set the MUSE settings to Sample Rate Conversion - Max PCM rate, does that change anything?
Hi @noris ! Thanks for the follow up.
I did test a combination of several settings, including auto pick best quality off with MUSE set to Max PCM rate and the behavior remained the same. It down/up samples based on the last quality played through other apps. Even when I select other options like a set rate doesn’t seem to change anything.
Thank you for your patience. We’ve synced with development and have identified next steps internally for our team. However, we’ll need additional logging around this behavior to proceed.
If you’re able to reproduce the incident on the most recent ARC build and current Android release, please share an approximate timestamp and the phone you were using here. Our team will capture the diagnostic information necessary for QA to proceed.
Hi @connor this isn’t unique to this is asap device ARC does exactly the same on all FiiO DAPs. So if you use another app before ARC it will get the last sample rate that was at and set ARC to it. On reboot it defers to the max rate the device supports which is 384/24. So it changes all the time and as it’s upsampling so much takes its toll on the battery life unnecessarily.
Thanks for following up! Unfortunately, we’re not seeing any Arc logging tied to your account. If possible, would you be able to create another fresh timestamp of the issue and we’ll attempt another look?
Hi, @benjamin
I started a new test today - 8/19 @ 9:40am (PDT) through 9:50am. Played several files with different bit depth and rate. All got downsampled with the flag changing from high quality to enhanced when switching SRC from compatibility only to max PCM rate.
Thanks @benjamin . I am still unable to get this to work. I’ve updated the DAP and app, tried multiple settings but no go. Happy to coordinate and try to share the logs again.
Currently, ARC still relies on the standard Android audio interface for playback, which typically supports a single sample rate—often 48kHz. ARC adheres to what Android reports, which is expected behavior for the app. Some devices may dynamically adjust the sample rate based on other software, but this can vary and isn’t consistent across all Android devices.
Supporting advanced audio features, such as leveraging USB audio drivers or unique capabilities of DAPs, involves significant development and complex changes, which unfortunately isn’t something we can address quickly (as you can probably tell based on the duration of this thread alone )
I hope to have more information to share on this subject in the future, but progress will remain slow while our team continues to investigate solution possibilities. Thank you for your continued patience in the meantime!
Thanks! I am not going to pretend this answer makes me happy. Roon license is expensive, and there are others in the industry offering this capability (Plex, Mango player on iBasso, HiBy players…) for FREE. I am not sure where Roon roadmap is headed to, but wanting to be a big audiophile solution and somehow pretend high end DAPs are non existent doesn’t seem to align. While I appreciate the reply, I am not holding my breath for this to happen any time soon. It’s been a while this issue has been discussed in this forum and we still don’t have a solution.
As others have noted above, the DAP’s full capabilities are communicated to ARC via Android, not directly. Any fix we implement will be indirect and highly specific to the DAP’s firmware and the APIs involved.
There is an open ticket with development. This particular model of DAP is on the list. If you’d like to escalate your urgency to the Product team directly, please comment in Feature Suggestions where your post can make a broader impact.
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