Fire HD as endpoint -- doesn't recognize DAC

[Bill_Barol]

I’m hoping somebody can help me troubleshoot an issue with a Fire HD tablet and an iFi DAC.

I was until recently using an iPad Air (into an iFi Zen V2 DAC) as a Roon endpoint at my listening chair. The Wifi on the iPad started to get spotty, though, so after reading some positive comments about the Fire HD 10 in this use case I decided to try a refurbished one. I connected it directly to my Zen (USB → USB-C).

The iPad was basically plug-and-play with the Zen, but the Fire doesn’t seem to recognize it. When I go into Roon Audio settings to enable it, Roon shows me a generic speaker icon and “Default Output.” I can enable this as an endpoint, but when I go to play an MQA track through Tidal I get High Quality playback via Default Output (AAudio.) The status LEDs on my Zen stay white, indicating non-MQA playback.

The weird thing is, I installed the Tidal app on the Fire and it instantly recognized the DAC and gave me full MQA playback through it, which suggests that the snag is in the Roon software (Fire version) trying to talk to the DAC.

I’m a Mac guy, this is my first non-Mac device, and I’m unfamiliar with Fire OS. Have I missed something?

Many thanks in advance for any help.

[Rugby (aka Daniel or Big Dan)]

Roon resamples everything to 24/48 because it is an Android OS, and Roon uses the default OS audio mixer.

Other apps may have built their own audio engines to bypass the OS.

I certainly use my tablet as only a control point, not as an Endpoint.

[Bill_Barol]

Thanks for this information. Back it goes to Amazon.