I will keep this thread open as a guide and for experiences. Initially it will be mainly a mix of bug reports and features requests. These will be highlighted with various colors to reflect the relative importance signaled by me. The current observations are for Music Player 3.0 release 3.4.0 (indicated by APP manager). It is my sole deployment running it with an Onkyo TX-RZ720 AMP via HDMI-RAW output which has support up to 32-bit 386 kHz PCM and DSD128 source formats. A SABRE 9038PRO based external DAC with identical PCM/DSD high definition audio support is available via USB or SPDIF. Today it is only used with additional Music Player APP's installed on my Z9S: - Onkyo HF Player - USB Music Player Pro The DAC is connected via USB2 to my Z9S and supports native DSD and DoP playback that way. YES there is a noticeable sound improvement using that path. Operation Hints & Tips: 1) All listening is done using my Onkyo TX-RZ720 AMP for playback via HDMI: Accordingly Audio settings using Quick Settings must be set for HDMI RAW to AUTO (not to ON), High Sample rate support ON and SACD 176.4 kHz output set to ON also. 2) Don't forget pressing the Menu key: Will offer multiple options on different places. Findings (mix of bug reports and requests): - There is something weird with the exchange of audio settings between Quick Setup and Music Player. Had to toggle switches and reboot multiple times to get these active (HQ ON + SACD ON). Had exactly the same after the previous update. I can't imagine being the only one. In my view these settings should be part of Music Player directly by the way. - Setting AUDIO HDMI to ON will give unpredictable results leading to no sound being output at all for no obvious reason. AUTO seems to work without side effects it seems thus far. - Using mentioned settings music is output via HDMI with the source matching sample size (16 bit - 24 bit) and sample rate (44.1 kHz - 192 kHz). This includes playing MP3 correctly at 44.1 kHz. It would be nice if this could be shown on screen too (Menu key option?). - SACD support is still limited to real-time conversion to FLAC 24-bit at 176.4 kHz in Stereo format. No DSD and/or Multi-CHannel (MCH) is currently supported. The workaround is getting FLAC MCH equivalent converted sources someway. Tools for multi-channel SACD track conversions/extractions are difficult to get though. - SACD DFF support does not include DST decompression. DST-DFF files do in fact produce a distorted sound. The minimum change should be detecting DST compression and giving an unsupported format error. - SACD WavPack compressed DST (WV file-extensions) tracks are recognized and played. Also valid for SACD ISO's. - There is no support for true gapless playback. This is essential for multi track live recordings but nicer in general too. - FLAC and DTS-CD can play with MCH next to stereo. These may sound really well on a Home Theater setup. Audiophiles are currently discovering this it seems as they got really fixed about music installations being stereo only. - CUE sheets are supported, functional and found automatically. The additional files are essential with single track sources for entire albums (FLAC, WAVE and SACD ISO formats mostly). Cue sheets facilitate track information, switching tracks and various album art/info data elements. - Some DTS-CD tracks produce only noise. (I must check but these seem to be all 5.0 and not 5.1 as most are?). - Playback may suddenly stop producing sound for unknown reason. The player has then stopped (pop-up warning after a while). - The scraper has limited/weird search results and the library is in the current state unusable for me. - Lyrics has mixed results including regularly also Chinese lyrics . It should in my vision be possible to turn them off too. This also to exclude potential impact on sound quality as audio purists like to do. - The album art shown may be a left-over from a previous album played when not found. - There is a weird playback error shifting playback speed to fast play. No idea how it is exactly triggered but happens when using the remote for some actions. Archive and Covers My music is organized in a different way than archive is dealing with now: for Artist dedicated Albums Folder: Artist - Album Files: Nr - Song for Collection Albums Folder: Album Files: Nr - Artist(s) - Song I am pretty sure many do something similar. Collection Albums can get Folder: Various - Album as an alternative. Albums are now sorted using the Album label which is very difficult to find your way with. This as I don't remember/match all album titles. Artists are sorted including artists found in collection albums resulting in a true mess (thousands of artists). Maybe nice for some but for sure not for me (good for occasional artist searching only). Final verdict: Still in an early Beta state despite the impressive change list (compared with which FW release?). Not very sure about stability and sound quality yet . Will use it more to become sure. I have seen a few problems which were solved for sure
Updated after getting my external DAC installed and doing more with SACD sources and formats as the consequence. Anxiously waiting for Zidoo to add support here. This either via supporting DSD via HDMI/SPDIF or via USB external DAC. Strange not getting any comments, but maybe most don't look under general. It belongs here in my view as it is common for almost all Zidoo players.
Gapless playback seems to be still not working for MCH FLac with Mediaplayer 8.0? I tried on Z9X 8k - does not work for me, stereo only. This is - honestly - unbelievable!
Is there?, will there ever be a HDMI compliant device which support AND multichannel gapless AND DSD. How come a device is able to play DSD MCH natively AND gapless. But fails to play any other MCH codec gapless. For atmos i can understand. But pcm can be encoded recoded on the fly! Just generate a continuous stream and mix the tracks into it. PLEASE!
Yes there is! Sadly enough ! Everytime i wanna play a multi-channel album. So let me ask again : Is there, will there be a device capable of gapless playback of all standard codecs (modern or classic) over hdmi. Every avr can receive it and it is 2025 by now!
Dunno - I'm a firm believer in horses for courses - I mainly use a Squeezebox Server (yeah, I know it's not called that anymore..) for music with about 8 clients around the house and garden (it varies) which can all be sync'd and has always done gapless. Not HDMI though. But by far the best music system I've ever used in all the many decades I've been doing this from cassette tapes to Imerge sound servers through to my current setup(s). If I fancy a bit of lossless multichannel SACD, I use an Eversolo A6 - that is HDMI, runs on Android, and again, handles gapless flawlessly. For me anyway - don't know about "all standard codecs" - I use what I use. I also have a Linn DS but that's a pain in the arse and I only keep it for posterity. Stereo only, but no issues with gapless. And of course I use vinyl for those Malbec infused trips on the wayback machine - perfectly gapless but no HDMI I use my UHD8000 to watch movies.
I want to use my Z3000 for music and watching series and an occasional movie. Well that was the promise i bought into. The previous zx9pro was perfect enough for the video part. I could not care less about the improvements of the poster wall. It's nice but so unnecessary for my use. Then how do you output your multichannel tracks?
I generally use the A6 for multichannel. But I just tested a Z9X 8K and found that SACD multichannel ISO rips play gapless, SACD stereo flac rips play gapless, CD stereo flac rips play gapless, 96/24 stereo flacs from HDTracks play gapless. The only tracks I couldn't get to play gapless on the Z9X were DTS ones. And no surprise, all tests were using Dark Side of the Moon which I have in a million different versions.
I have no interest in stereo. Failing are: Dts, dts es, dts hd Flac 4.0, 5.0, 5.1, 6,1, 7.1 M4a (atmos) To name a few . Some are even converted to stereo. Does the a6 cover these tracks?
