Review and need-to-know Eversolo DMP-A6 streamers (Gen-1 / Gen-2)

The zidoo uhd8000 is close. It can play Atmos music-only files, but it needs to use the video player to do so. This limits its music library functionality. It can also play Atmos from Apple Music.

 

The MP player is capable of playing atmos in m4a container. So you can make your surround playlists including atmos.
BUT no gapless playback on any multichannel lpcm/dts/atmos format.

I'm still hoping for a zidoo eversolo crossbreed!

 

Thanks for the reply. When i purchased it a year ago, it was unable to do so. If you have an Atmos .thd file, can you try to play that directly and then rename it to .m4a and try to play it?

 

I love multi-channel music. Have about 540 albums stored on a M2 SSD on A6. Have a Panasonic DP-UB9000 that also can play MCh music gapless but the UI is very poor and you have to press a button on the remote every time if you want it to play gapless.

 

You might want to get in touch with Panamax. They should not be letting a ground condition occur. I’ve heard of folks have luck in such conditions by using ifi isolating devices.

 

It would appear the A6 Gen 2 clock is 3sec slow. I know this is a trivial issue, but I would’ve thought in this day and age it would be the same time as other network devices. I have a WiiM Ultra sitting next to the A6 and that’s when I noticed the time difference. I then checked the time with my mobile. The WiiM is in sync with the mobile which would mean the Eversolo is slow. Now I’m not going to lose any sleep over it, or let it worry me as both units are located out of the way and not generally visible.

Apparently we learn something new everyday, this must be my one for today.

 

This applies for the zidoo!!!! But i could not play a thd/mlp file. I had to rip the disc into mkv and some tool converted it to m4a. (music media helper 8 i believe)

 

The XRECODE3 program (windows) is cheap enough to buy and will convert any music format into any other format as desired. Use it myself for MLP => FLAC (DVD-Audio albums) which I have relative few.
You can also convert the output to a single track with a CUE sheet to avoid any gaps. Great for playing live albums. Never seen anything better.

Only my OPPO can play those DVD-Audio albums natively which frankly I never do anymore.

Yes all Zidoo players will play BD Audio Only or BD Concert albums using the Video Player provided the BD Menu works for it which definitely is not always the case.
BD Audio Only albums e.g. always use a track per title which won't work without BD Menu processing!

The Dune HD Max 8K deploys like the T8 a top quality crystal for the motherboard, this amongst others also resulting in improved HDMI output clocking with the Dune Max.
That in turn improves the sound produced by the AMP's internal DAC connected which is not trivial. It is all about the weakest link.

 

Dvd audio extractor converts to flac directly. Mlp, dtshd, thd files are the unconverted files. but not played by zidoo, eversolo.
Dae will not remove the encription though, you need makemkv for it.
Dvd, dvda have no encription. They are easily handled by DAE.

I will try xrecode see if it handles dts-flac or dts-wav

 

You cannot just "rename" a file, and expect it to be a completely different thing... file-extensions identify file-types; renaming them does not change their format... (OMG, so far I surely have been saved from facing this... new-gen's are capable of literally everything, I must admit)

 

Can someone explain how dts files are converted to PCM but ignoring replay gain ?
PCM stereo or Multichannel is applied with replay gain.
but DTS outputted as PCM is not.

Is there a diagram to understand the audio stream flow.
Does it mean that the DSP is handled before conversion? So no EQ or roomcorrection on DTS files

Is there a compatibility matrix? Which format supports what function.
then maybe i can do some conversions to get replay gain working for ALL files in my lib.

 

From your observations, PCM does get handled correctly, both in terms of replay gain and EQ.
My (obvious?) suggestion is: convert all your DTS to linear PCM (they will, most probably, get converted at 384 kHz). They will most probably be smaller, too.

 

Renaming extensions does occasionally fool a player application to handle a file that it normally rejects (does not recognize). Jriver and foobar are both examples of this.

 

A bad example.
I never experienced anything like this; but if it works... let it be. Just do not expect to be always the case; as this means the following:
1. the player might not recognise (or know about) the extension "xyz"
2. you change such extension to ".wav"
3. the player knows ".wav" files, and tries to open it.
Now... it SHOULD fail at it, as the file is not a WAV, but most probably then it performs a series of header contents match, and realizes the file is not a WAV, but can be read (another file extension, slighly different, but still known to it... an example comes to mind: .aiff vs .aif, but the file format is the same, it's just .aif is a non-standard extension; .aiff is, instead)

 

I will QUOTE you:

 

What do you mean? These are two unrelated scenarios.
PCM is how music is digitized. Nothing about its quality. As an example, MP3 is still PCM in the end.
What is not working in your scenario is, most probably, the on-the-fly conversion; hence I suggested the static conversion.
Converting DTS => linear PCM may mean making it an OGG, or AAC (whioch are still meant to be, and recognized as, lossy containers, so you are not infringing any rule-of-thumb...)

 

You are implying that ogg or aac have no replay gain issues?
That is the reason i ask for a compatibility matrix.

Is there a licence free version of aac??
since ogg is a container i wonder can it hold DTS?
Can the DMP-a6 extract vorbis on the fly without issues?

 

No.
I am implying that you said: some formats are not recognised, while some others do.
You said that renaming the files (their extension) sometimes forces the player to recognize them. This qwas my point.
Maybe indeed some formats are getting recognised better than others, and thus also their metadata replay-gain tags... who knows? (I do not use replay gain,m as I am an ALBUM guy, not a SHUFFLE-MY-LIB kid)

 

Sorry if this has been answered elsewhere.

I am thinking of side-grading to the gen 2 from the gen 1. I don’t expect any gains in fidelity. The gen 2 has HDMI arc and a 12v trigger.

I have two questions :

• Does the DMP-A6 gen 2 switch automatically to the arc input, i.e. I turn on the TV end the HDMI protocol does its thing and wakes up/switches to the HDMI input on the DMP-A6 ?
• Does the trigger work properly and turn on an connected power amp ?

 

Using a Gen 1 unit, I use an usb to 3,5 mm plug to switch my power amp on. Providing anything between 5 and 12 volt will trigger most if not all units I think. Bought that cable on Audiophonics website. So no need for Gen 2 unit here.