FIIO M6 Hi-Res crackling / popping

[IFW]

when listening to audio using the Hi-Res output on my Fiio M6 I have a faint popping/cracking noise in the background of all tracks, I've tried tweaking various settings from resampling, buffer sizes, disable the equaliser/tone control and enabling/disabling DVC. so far I've not managed to find a fix or work around. OpenSL ES output works fine but I'd prefer to use the Hi-Res output and utilise the onboard DAC (ES9018Q2C).

For comparison the same audio tracks are fine when played through FIIO's default player, I'd rather use Poweramp though if possible due to the better UI, support for Album Artist tags and advanced shuffling etc....

Formats Tested:

Flac 96KHz 24 bit

Flac 44.1KHz 16 bit

MP3 320 Kbps

Audio Detection Log:

11:37:15.277 v3-build-860-uni

Device: Android Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. FiiO M6 m6 smdk7270 [armeabi-v7a, armeabi]

reading=/system/etc/audio_policy.conf

has outputs_primary, sampling_rates=44100|48000|88200|96000|176400|192000

has outputs/primary formats=AUDIO_FORMAT_PCM_16_BIT| AUDIO_FORMAT_PCM_8_24_BIT |AUDIO_FORMAT_PCM_24_BIT

has primary sampling_rates=44100|48000|88200|96000|176400|192000

has primary formats=AUDIO_FORMAT_PCM_16_BIT| AUDIO_FORMAT_PCM_8_24_BIT |AUDIO_FORMAT_PCM_24_BIT

has usb

has usb outputs

has usb_device, sampling_rates=48000

rate=48000

USB can handle Hi-Res - sdk=24

OK flags=0x900003400000000

FLAG_VARIANT_MIXED_HIRES

FLAG_SUPPORTS_PCM_8_24

FLAG_SUPPORTS_USB

FLAG_SUPPORTS_FLT_DYN_RANGE

INTERNAL_OUTPUT_FLAG_SR_192K

INTERNAL_OUTPUT_FLAG_SR_176K

INTERNAL_OUTPUT_FLAG_SR_96K

INTERNAL_OUTPUT_FLAG_SR_88K

INTERNAL_OUTPUT_FLAG_SR_48K

INTERNAL_OUTPUT_FLAG_SR_44K

[IFW]

A quick update to this, I've done a lot more testing and found that the issue seems to be resampling, if I set the high res output to use the same sample rate as the file I'm playing then everything sounds great however if I pick a higher sample rate than the playing file then I get the crackling sounds.

Obviously I could just set the sample rate to a low value but that somewhat defeats the point of using a DAP that is capable to handling high sample rates, is Poweramp every likely to support selecting the output sample rate to match the source files, within the limits of what the device supports and hence avoid the need to resample? I love the player for it's UI, library management and ease of use but if I can't utilise the capabilities of my DAP then I'll have to drop it for something else.

[Sebasto]

On my M7 the problem is fixed when lowering resample rate to 176kHz

[IFW]

On 2/28/2020 at 5:00 PM, Sebasto said:

On my M7 the problem is fixed when lowering resample rate to 176kHz

what sample rates are the files you're playing? my suspicion is that resampling is just too much for the low power processor of the M6 and that ideally it would output at the sample rate of the file and just let the DAC deal with it.. should be lower power consumption too as the CPU wouldn't be dealing with resampling.

[Sebasto]

Flac files

[maxmp]

Try flat eq preset + bass on 0% and preamp on middle (0). Does it crack? If it doesn't you just got bass/volume overload due to no enough dynamic range.

[IFW]

I have all EQ settings turned off at present.

[IFW]

On 3/13/2020 at 5:10 PM, Sebasto said:

Flac files

this doesn't tell me the sample rate, I have Flac files at various rates between 44kHz and 192kHz, depending on the output bitrate I choose I can control which files give audible errors, hence my belief that the issue is at least related to re-sampling

[tinoucas]

Hello, 
I have been experiencing the same crackling on my Fiio M6 as described here. Funnily, the cracklings were only audible when the screen was turned on. 

Thanks to this thread, lowering the output samplerate to 96kHz was enough to fix it for me (playing flac files in 44.1kHz~48kHz).

Side note, I have the resampler set to SoX with its other parameters left to default, and Tone and EQ are turned off (haven't tried with).

Hope this helps!

[m6 user]

On 2/21/2020 at 11:44 AM, IFW said:

A quick update to this, I've done a lot more testing and found that the issue seems to be resampling, if I set the high res output to use the same sample rate as the file I'm playing then everything sounds great however if I pick a higher sample rate than the playing file then I get the crackling sounds.

Obviously I could just set the sample rate to a low value but that somewhat defeats the point of using a DAP that is capable to handling high sample rates, is Poweramp every likely to support selecting the output sample rate to match the source files, within the limits of what the device supports and hence avoid the need to resample? I love the player for it's UI, library management and ease of use but if I can't utilise the capabilities of my DAP then I'll have to drop it for something else.

I just bought the device recently and I experience the same issues, i was look through the settings but i can't see any option the change the sample rates in there. When i'm using it as DAC (which I rarely do) i can do it in the computer but what about changing the sample rates directly in the device? can this even be done?

Thanks for any help!

[powerofthesun]

Is there any way to fix this? I'm having the same issue and I'd like to keep the sampling at 196.