Amazon Basics 4K HDMI Extractor Review

[JonP]

1 - What makes you think your avr is limited to 16 bit, and not some other component in the chain doing the limiting (or the source being 16 bit.
2 - You probably can't hear the difference between 16 and 24 bit in any case.
3 - You certainly don't need to worry about being limited to 96kHz.
4 - Jitter is pretty effectively filtered out by any competent DAC - so nothing to worry about there either.

1. My Moode audio player software on the Pi reports that the "DAC" (the audio device attached to the HDMI port, i.e. the Onkyo AV internal DAC) is reporting being able to handle 8 and 16bit audio streams only. I don't know who what where or when, so far, but want to figure that out. A different source path, that I understand, would help.
2. Yeah, that is arguable, but if I have a very nice DAC (the Schiit) talking to nice headphones thru a nice amp, and the original media or stream is 24b... I'd prefer to have it get there that way.
3. Probably not, but, occasionally the media is higher, and see the #2 argument.
4. One of my use case ideas is, going to a friend with older high end equipment, which may be very likely to have low jitter resistance, unlike many current ones.

 

[antcollinet]

I'd guess that is a problem with Moode with your particular AVR rather than any inherent limitation of the AVR.

The rest of the stuff is "I'd like it to be better even if I can't hear the difference" Personally I'd just be acknowledging I am paying bottom end price for the conversion and accept it's limitations.

 

[oal]

Been a while on this one... I now would like to try one of these for my Moode RPi based streamer... I'm currently using one of these at the TV/Stereo, for music, and it works nicely by just the Pi HDMI out going into my AV amp, and it's DAC. Also works nicely to put the Moode interface display up on the TV at the same tiime.

But, I am limited by the AV receiver being apparently limited to 16b (why?? when it's spec is 32b/384khz?) ...

As far as I have tested, Moode Rpi HDMI output is limited to 16bit. Therefore, the Amazon Basics 4K HDMI Extractor will not help. It will just convert 16bit HDMI output to 16bit SPDIF (COAX or Toslink).

Easy and inexpensive solutions for Moode Rpi will be:
- USB to SPDIF DDC (e.g. SMSL PO100 PRO)
- I2S to SPDIF DDC HAT (e.g. HiFiBerry Digi2 Pro)
Either of them can send 192k/24bit data to your AVC from Moode Rpi.

Alternatively, the vc4-kms-v3d ALSA driver in Raspberry Pi OS can send 24bit sound data in HDMI data. I do not know how to set it in Moode, but the following are the steps for Raspberry Pi OS Lite. Note that you have to install Music Player Damon (MPD) into Raspberry Pi OS Lite and need an MPD Client app for this solution (as unlike Moode, Raspberry Pi OS does not have the WebUI). So, I do not recommend this unless you are familiar with the Linux commands and ALSA/MPD settings.

1) Edit /boot/config.txt
Comment out the following line.
　#dtparam=audio=on
Make sure the following line exists. This is the HDMI driver which supports 24bit.
　dtoverlay=vc4-kms-v3d

2) aplay -l
After rebooting Rpi, make sure you have the vc4hdmi ALSA driver.
vc4hdmi for Rpi3, vc4hdmi0 (left side HDMI) and vc4hdmi1 (right side HDMI) for Rpi4.

3) aplay -L
Make sure you have the hdmi device.
　hdmi:CARD=vc4hdmi0,DEV=0

4) Edit /etc/mpd.conf
Following is the example of audio_ouput settings of Rpi4 left side HDMI for the MPD.
　audio_output {
　　type "alsa"
　　name "HDMI"
　　device "hdmi:vc4hdmi0,0"
　　mixer_type "hardware"
　}

Re-starting MPD, now you can play 24bit music from Rpi HDMI to your AVR.

 

[JonP]

mdsimon2 - Are you talking about straight TOSLINK or TOSLINK via a HDMI extractor?

Straight TOSLINK. I remember, quite a while back, when I got a Twisted Pear DAC kit using one of the first ESS DAC chips, that the TOSLINK socket module accessory part was one of the last that was good to 192k. All the available ones then were only 96k max. Sounds like that might have been a temporary situation, and that was probably +10yrs back...

tonlycollinet - I'd guess that is a problem with Moode with your particular AVR rather than any inherent limitation of the AVR.

Yep, starting to sound that way. People over at the Moode forum were unsure about such details, it's an uncommon case. I had a hard time trying to get info on this, even digging deep on the official RPi site.

oai - As far as I have tested, Moode Rpi HDMI output is limited to 16bit.

Aha!! Well, that moves things along. Appreciate the in deep info on the newer driver and how to swap it into a RPi system... I can understand it, but it's probably more than I'd want to try at this point. Sounds like there's different needs for different Pi versions, and one would need to make sure it's not going to cause issues with the rest of the Moode ecosystem. I will be passing this info off to Tim and his dev group at Moode, though... maybe in a revision or three, the default HDMI output will be 24 bit!

I have myself to blame for mixing several concerns, together here... but appreciate the extra answers. Mainly, I'm looking for one of these to provide a bare Pi/Moode player with a decent digital out, with the secondary wish of a coax out as well as an optical one. Some older gear only has coax. Didn't think it was going to fix my 16 - 24 bit anomaly... but good to find out the root cause in the process! I have a few concerns for possibly high jitter, if I ever do my "go impress friends with older DAC's what a clean transport/streamer could do for them" case, but that won't be an issue with my own newer gear.

Aaaaand..... while typing this up and looking at things, I see Amazon has made a liar out of me, suddenly a box with the coax output appears in "other stuff" bar, after I'd given up after looking at dozens to not find such. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09SD7Y5S5?psc=1&smid=A2I0EIL4I6JR4X&ref_=chk_typ_imgToDp
Maybe I'll buy two, and ship one to Amir, to see if it's similarly bit perfect in digital, and how much jitter it might have. Was tempted to buy that USB to toslink in and out thing that was mentioned, to do testing on my own... but that's spending 2x the extractor cost to do a single test on it? Hmmm... but, it's for Science!!! ;-)

 

[oal]

I have a few concerns for possibly high jitter, if I ever do my "go impress friends with older DAC's what a clean transport/streamer could do for them" case, but that won't be an issue with my own newer gear.

For your friends, who have only COAX, as I mentioned before, I would recommend I2S or USB to SPDIF DDC rather than HDMI extractor because it is difficult for a cheap HDMI extractor to generate SPDIF output with less jitter.
https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...mi-extractor-review.39467/page-7#post-1415494

Both SMSL PO100 PRO and HiFiBerry Digi2 Pro can output clean SPDIF output without jitter.
SMSL PO100 PRO: https://a.co/d/1Qn92wJ
HiFiBerry Digi2 Pro : https://a.co/d/27QDohp

EDIT: I wrote "without jitter". Actually, they do have jitter, but at a moderate to low level.

 

[JonP]

Well, even my "friends w coax digital only" scenario is mostly hypothetical, at this point.... I do agree that a low jitter digital item for the Moode box is a better solution...

More likely use case would be simply jacking into whatever, stereo, AV amp, even a TV... to show off Moode off as what a streamer can do, without needing my external DAC and a pair of audio cables to have to find inputs for.

Was interested how you did your testing on the link you posted. Between that, and a link about how noisy some TV digital outputs are, I've been wondering about quality levels. Harder to put the TV I would guess, into the test path, but not impossible.

edit: Reading over your other thread again, in the charted results, I see one of the jitter sensitive items (the Marantz) showing great results with just the Pi3 HDMI out, vs the extracted Amazon TOSLINK... Guess one might not know what's clean and what isn't, till you check. Your mention of having an external sound card with optical in and out made me look. And, I do have this as well on my old SB X-Fi HD, so I might do some testing of my own...

 

[JonP]

OK, reporting back after some, eh, efforts....

I did buy this thing, even did buy two to send one to Amir... https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09SD7Y5S5?psc=1&smid=A2I0EIL4I6JR4X&ref_=chk_typ_imgToDp
First things first... I wouldn't recommend buying one. It seems that it will only extract audio at 44.1K and 48K sample rate. No matter what settings you choose with the dip switches.

I found a tremendous rabbit hole of problems, trying to do what should be a simple thing, measuring stuff with REW and optical/digital interfaces. Probably not REW's fault, and perhaps quirks of my test gear, really... but man!! I have an old SB XFi-HD USB soundcard, it actually has TOSLINK in and out. Great! Loop back with optical cable, ridiculously low distortion and RTA numbers... Great! Plug in optical out to in on my Modi DAC, RCA's back to the XFi inputs, Great, measuring actual DAC performance! No problems, cant wait to measure the extractor.

I also did HDMI in from my laptop to the Onkyo AV amp... and saw Windows reporting rates up to 24 b/192k, 5 or6 Dolby and etc modes available, confirming that it's my RPi, not the Onkyo, that's the cause of my seeing only 8-16b from my Moode streamer box. Great!

And then, I ran into issues. This testing stuff isn't as easy as it ends up sounding in Amir's reports, I imagine there's a lot of background futzing that he has to deal with that we don't usually hear about. Upgraded to the latest beta REW, a windows update came in, some issues went away, etc... but still ended up with some weird incompatibilities of TOSLINK and such.. I'm not detailing many of the other problems during setting up I had that did eventually go away, like actual background noise during silence when using HDMI in on the AV, and so forth.

And, I get the HDMI extractor, the optical out seems to not be able to be seen by the XFi in. Won't sync, cant measure. Very frustrating. Also annoying that it seems to lose many of the video side HDMI abilities, and higher level Dolby multichannel features that windows was reporting the Onkyo capable of. My TV optical out seems also to not be able to be seen by the XFi in, though you can plug it into the Schiit Modi and it plays fine. Ah well. Was also hoping to try to measure the quality of the HDMI into TV -> TV optical out path. One thought of using the extractor, would be to replace the TV TOSLINK out, if it was "bad", like some reporting of lousy SINAD that some TV's seem to indicate.

I was also able, finally, to run TOSLINK out of the extractor, to the Modi, and get reasonable sounding sound out. Wasn't able to cross check it by using USB as source into the Modi and the same analog out into the XFi line in's, to try to compare quality, seems running two different USB audio devices is problematic for REW?


So, TLDR, this HDMI extractor does have both RCA Coaxial as well as TOSLINK, like I wanted, but seems seriously handicapped otherwise. My reason to have one was to add digital outs with at least most of the quality level of what I could play out. Yes, even those perhaps unhearably better hi-rez files and radio stations... If you don't want anything above 48k sample rate, or need all your multichannel options, this could be fine for you.

 

[Overseas]

As for the tested Amazon Basics extractor, does it work with HDMI Arc and TV remote?

 

[Michal]

The 24MHz clock is actually just a crystal as a clock source for the chip itself. The audio clocks are regenerated from the HDMI stream and all the timing is determined by the HDMI source.

Edit: You can find more info about HDMI audio jitter in this link (leading to our company website with a product presentation): https://audiopraise.com/projects/internal/vanitypro/hdmi-audio-jitter/
How the audio clocks are determined from the HDMI stream is explained in the linked article from OPPO knowledge base, useful to read.

Hi
Does the jitter problem you are talking about occur only with simultaneous video and audio transmission or also with audio only transmission?
E.g. Will audio playback from Neutron Music Player etc. on Android TV Box via HDMI also have jitter?

 

[antcollinet]

Hi
Does the jitter problem you are talking about occur only with simultaneous video and audio transmission or also with audio only transmission?
E.g. Will audio playback from Neutron Music Player etc. on Android TV Box via HDMI also have jitter?

Most dacs have excellent jitter rejection. I've not seen any DAC measured here that passes jitter though to the audio output that is in any way audible. My suggestion would be to not worry about it.

 

[PavelV]

Hi
Does the jitter problem you are talking about occur only with simultaneous video and audio transmission or also with audio only transmission?
E.g. Will audio playback from Neutron Music Player etc. on Android TV Box via HDMI also have jitter?

Hi Michal, the jitter I was talking about is inherent to the HDMI protocol and there isn't much difference between audio/video and audio only transmission. EMI is another concern, HDMI creates galvanic connection between source and sink with data, ground as well as power (+5V), which creates a path for HF noise to travel easily back and forth between the connected pieces of equipment. Although jitter sensitivity of modern DACs has improved significantly, there is very little to no data available about jitter audibility to make general conclusions. Just like in many other cases, you need to try with your own ears.

 

[JonP]

As for the tested Amazon Basics extractor, does it work with HDMI Arc and TV remote?

Couldn't tell you... just that mine has some issues. The original Amazon Basics one, at least as of last week, was still out of stock, like it's been for some months now.

 

[Yorkshire Mouth]

At first I was happy. Nice one. Amazon Fire TV Stick with Amazon Music HD. Stick goes into this. Coax out into DAC, for ahem ‘perfect’ sound. HDMI out from this into TV or AV amp, so you can use the stick’s display and interface. Big sound + big TV. What’s not to like!

Then I was sad. Won’t work with full HDR 4K, etc., etc.

Then I was happy. Stuff it (‘stuff’ may not have been the word I used). Stop messing around and buy a cheap Fire TV stick (HD ‘lite’ version) just for music. I mean you can get one for £35. If the price of this had been £35 more it’d still have been a bargain.

Have I missed something?

 

[JonP]

Fire stick have Toslink/SPDIF out?

 

[Yorkshire Mouth]

Fire stick have Toslink/SPDIF out?

No, just HDMI.

Which is the whole point of this device.

 

[JonP]

Well, the whole use case for me is TOSLINK/SPDIF out for a DAC or AV amp that have them as ins.... from my Moode streaming player that has HDMI as its only out.

 

[Juampa1989]

As for the tested Amazon Basics extractor, does it work with HDMI Arc and TV remote? X2

 

[srkbear]

Not sure if this has been mentioned yet in this thread, but I use the attached HDMI to i2S de-embedder, which can be found on eBay for as little as $59, to pass the unmodified DSD stream from SACD discs to my Topping d90se, and it works beautifully. It also ports 96khz/24 bit Blu ray audio discs to my Topping as well. I’m using a Sony UBP-x1100ES player, but I suspect any will work.

It also has coaxial and TOSLINK outputs for those who prefer that format, and for those whose players don’t have a separate HDMI audio output, it’ll extract the audio data out of the unified stream and pass the video content out to a separate monitor/TV.

For mine to work with my Topping, I had to edit the settings in the menu to change the DSD flag pin from 14 to 15, which is the trigger that tells the DAC whether to output PCM or DSD audio—if I left it on 14, the DAC would convert the signal to PCM 176.4/24 bit (which sounded pretty great itself), but as soon as I switched it to 15 I got DSD64 without a hitch.

I think many DACs with i2S outputs offer these pinout adjustments. The d90se also lets you swap the left and right channel pins, along with the phase, and these are the three most common pinout variations that affect compatibility between players and DACs.

I highly recommend trying out one of these things. It really works!

HDMI to i2S de-embedder on eBay

 

[wyup]

As for the tested Amazon Basics extractor, does it work with HDMI Arc and TV remote? X2

It works with ARC enabled on tv, but tv remote volume does not work with Coax SPDIF output. I didn't see any olume control enabled with it. I didn't try analog out.

 

[t1m9k86]

Hi all,

I’m using this box connected to my Apple TV 4K and DAC via coaxial. The wording about the channel switch has me a little confused. I have Dolby Atmos disabled within the Music app on Apple TV so I only get a stereo signal sent to this box. To my understanding from the description on Amazon, whether or not 2CH is selected (LED lit under 2CH) is irrelevant because it’s only receiving a 2CH signal and will just pass it through coax to the DAC. The description also states that 2CH is the default, but my unit doesn’t show the lit 2CH LED by default - not sure what to make of that. In the review @amirm posted, he referred to the switch as “forcing” either 5.1 or 2.0. I’m trying to involve as little signal processing as possible into the DAC, so my instinct is to just leave it at no light under 2CH which I suppose is 5CH output and just the stereo signal pass through unaltered but I may be way off base, especially as this seems to conflict with @amirm’s post. Any insight would be greatly appreciated!

As an aside, since I have no device to display this information, does anyone know if the 3rd gen Apple TV 4K dynamically switches bit depth as well as sample rate?