This is a review and detailed measurements of the Amazon Basics 4K HDMI extractor. Member kindly purchased and drop shipped it to me. It normally costs $22.89 but was on sale for just $5!!!
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The case is the standard metal one for these kinds of adapters. Power is provided with a supplied USB-A to barrel (9 volt) connector. I powered it using the hub in my computer monitor. As you see a nice switch forces the digital output to be either stereo or 5.1.
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Pass-through HDMI connector is naturally provided as well as Toslink, Coax and analog stereo 3.5mm outputs.
Amazon Basics HDMI Extractor Analog Measurements
I started testing by feeding it HDMI and capturing analog output:
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Not very pretty but hard to expect anything more remotely close to this price point. Output is low by desktop DAC standards but should be enough to drive most amplifiers.
I was pleasantly surprised by the dynamic range being nearly 16 bits:
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I could tell there was jitter from the dashboard and our dedicated test shows that and then some:
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Linearity indicates some kind of truncation to 16 bits:
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IMD test shows high noise+distortion:
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Paradoxically, multitone response is quite respectable:
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That is like due to lower output level used in Multitone test.
Frequency response is good:
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Filtering of out of band, not so good:
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Which causes problems for our wideband noise and distortion test:
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Amazon Basics HDMI Extractor Digital Performance:
I hooked up to the coax output and got this dashboard:
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146 dB is the ideal performance of 24 bit PCM data and we are getting that. This means that the device transparently passes the digital data from HDMI to Coax with no funny conversion to 16 bits and such. This means you can hook up your own high-performance DAC and get proper analog output.
Conclusions
It is incredible how cheap electronic devices can get despite their complexities. Here we not only have an HDMI extractor but a DAC as well. To have this full functionality ship for total of $22 is incredible. No, the DAC is nothing to write home about but for everyday use it should be fine. And if you need better, you can get yourself a $100 DAC and be good to go. Inversely, you can think of this as $22 to add HDMI input to any DAC with Toslink/Coax input!
I am going to put the Amazon Basics HDMI Extractor on my recommended list. It is an incredible bargain.
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