FX Audio D802C Direct Digital amplifier "unboxing" and first impressions. (Longish post)

[st3ph3nm]

My Cambridge Audio A300 keeps dropping the right channel out, and definitely needs to go to the doctor.  It was intermittent for ages, but now is beyond a joke.  Anyway, I needed, at the very least, a temporary replacement, to drive my Legend Acoustic Joey 2s..

 

Budget is really tight at the moment, so I started looking at some of the great bang for buck offerings in direct digital amplification - where everything is in the digital domain until the analog conversion takes place at the speaker outputs.  A few years ago the Wadia 151 caused a stir, as did a Chinese amp - the QLS QA100.  NAD did a few more expensive offerings as well.  I kept putting this off, until just recently I started seeing references to the FX Audio D802C.  Most of what I could find was on French forums - but from what I could gather this thing even out performed the QLS.  What's surprising is the cost - these guys can be had for about $130 USD.  Ridiculous, huh? 

Figuring at that price, what the hell, I bit the bullet.  Found one on Aliexpress (more on that later) and ordered it.

 

http://www.aliexpress.com/store/product/FEIXIANG-FX-AUDIO-pure-digital-amplifier-D802C-remote-USB-optical-coaxial-Bluetooth-AUX-input-80W-2/1710143_32416630522.html

 

So here it is:  It arrived sans box, and with some damage to the housing.  But I negotiated with the seller for a partial refund, as it seems to be working fine.

A couple of things first struck me.  It's really, really small.  In fact, the power supply is just about the same size as the amp.  It has 3 digital inputs (USB, optical and coax), and this model also has an analog AUX input (pair of RCA connections)  Dunno how that works for a digital amp, but there you go.  Being small is great - apart from the obvious advantages, it's really easy to hook up connections - just hold the amp in one hand, and plug in with the other.

 

Get to the point, Steve, I hear you sigh exasperatedly!  How does it SOUND?

 

Bloody Awful.  Oh wait, at first it's bloody awful, because it has this silly EQ thing that just makes it sound crap on any setting.  Hitting the "tone" button on the remote drops that EQ setting out and gives you actual direct, unfiltered sound.

 

And then, it sounds great!  Easily the equal of the Cambridge (though the last few months have jaded me a little) and clear and loud (much louder than I'll ever use) and not at all harsh.  Last night after ironing out some signal issues from DVDs, my wife and I just spent a night listening to it together.  Nick Cave's "The Boatman's Call" tested it nicely - Cave's renowned deep syrupy voice has a rough edge to it that the D802C showed beautifully.  Similarly, Jeff Buckley's "Grace" album was similarly showcased to be the luscious production that it is, with his voice soaring over that wonderful guitar work.  And some of the heavier sections of Radiohead's "OK Computer" came through hard and clean - this thing allows the Joey's speed and responsiveness to really shine - there's times when there's lots of noise and loud crap going on, but clever detail in it all.  The FX Audio did it all effortlessly.  I'm truly impressed.  I'm also not very good at writing about sound, so I'll finish off here.

 

Oh, one thing.  It's probably worth paying a little more and getting it through a different portal than I did.  I'm not impressed with the level of protection they offer at Aliexpress, and it's feedback system is really broken.

 

[rastus]

...it has this silly EQ thing that just makes it sound crap on any setting.  Hitting the "tone" button on the remote drops that EQ setting out and gives you actual direct, unfiltered sound.

 

 

So this "silly EQ thing" can only be disabled via the remote, not the unit itself? From what I can read also, the C version has Bluetooth (Bluetooth chip: CSR57E6), have you tested this at all?

[st3ph3nm]

As far as I can tell, yes, you need the remote to turn that function. But I never received a manual, so I could be wrong. The multifunction knob may have access. As for bt, I haven't tried it yet: no interest in it for me. The analog input turned out to be useful for my tuner, though. I'd love to hear this thing back to back with the QLS or Wadia amps. Anyone in Melbourne have either?

[rastus]

I've read conflicting reports that the unit overheats, and others say it doesn't overheat. And again, some say it distorts at about 30%, while others say it doesn't distort at all. This may be user-error rather than the device itself.

[st3ph3nm]

Quality control may be an issue, I suspect.  Mine doesn't get warm at all.  My ears will bleed before I get any distortion out of it - but that may not be the case if that awful EQ is activated.  It's so stupidly cheap, though, it's worth the risk if you're thinking about it.  I'm just loving it.

[rastus]

My ears will bleed before I get any distortion out of it - but that may not be the case if that awful EQ is activated.

 

True, about that EQ thingy... boosting anything rarely results on good SQ, but the yungins love it.

[Cafad]

Now that is cheap.  But I guess another way of saying that is "Now that is great value for money".

 

As is usual with these little amps the output is quoted at 10%THD so it isn't really an 80wpc amp, more like a 20wpc amp (at 0.1%), but then I'm sure you guessed that.

 

I suspect that distortion mentioned will depend very much on the specs of the speakers it is being used to drive, if you crank an amp that puts out 5 watts at 0.05%THD and force it to go into the "many more watts at somewhere near 10%THD" you should probably be expecting the possibility of some unpleasantness.

 

I was looking at picking up a Popu D6  from Ali Express a while back just to see if the next model had sorted out the power issues the D5 of mine had but I didn't get around to it.  Or at least not yet.

 

Good to hear there are still bargain audio buys out there.

[Equaliser]

Wait 10% of THD is a good thing, the Chinese love there distortion so should we.

[Nada]

0.1% THD @ 8ohm load at 1kHz   => 50W    =    35 Wrms

 

http://www.st.com/content/ccc/resource/technical/document/datasheet/36/12/fe/ee/a4/c8/49/80/CD00062804.pdf/files/CD00062804.pdf/jcr:content/translations/en.CD00062804.pdf

Edited May 28, 2016 by Nada

[Nada]

As far as I can tell, yes, you need the remote to turn that function. But I never received a manual, so I could be wrong. The multifunction knob may have access. As for bt, I haven't tried it yet: no interest in it for me. The analog input turned out to be useful for my tuner, though. I'd love to hear this thing back to back with the QLS or Wadia amps. Anyone in Melbourne have either?

 

Please can you try the Bluetooth for us and compare it to USB for sound quality and dropouts? It would be cool to use a smart phone to stream music from via BT:

 

FX-AUDIO   D802C   USB  Bluetooth 

Bluetooth 

a. Press the SELECT switch on the front  panel to switch to the Bluetooth input: Display = BT

b. when lights flash do a mobile search for D802C

c.  Play music when green LED displayed

Edited May 28, 2016 by Nada

[st3ph3nm]

 

Please can you try the Bluetooth for us and compare it to USB for sound quality and dropouts? It would be cool to use a smart phone to stream music from via BT:

 

FX-AUDIO   D802C   USB  Bluetooth 

Bluetooth 

a. Press the SELECT switch on the front  panel to switch to the Bluetooth input: Display = BT

b. when lights flash do a mobile search for D802C

c.  Play music when green LED displayed

 

 

I'll give it a go, but my lack of interest is due to the unavoidable issue of file compression over bluetooth.  I can see why it's used in car audio applications for convenience, but honestly, why bother at home?  For streaming purposes, I have a Raspberry Pi on my network, which is controlled from my phone via MPD.  Convenient, but no quality loss. Nontheless, I'll report back after I play with bluetooth on Monday (my next day off)

 

@ Cafad, where were you two months ago when I was asking about amps?  I couldn't find anything about the Popu. when I stumbled across the FX amp.  As for rated power, yes, I always treat these things with some grains of salt, and tend not to listen to my system at very loud volumes, anyway.  

[Cafad]

 

@ Cafad, where were you two months ago when I was asking about amps?  I couldn't find anything about the Popu. when I stumbled across the FX amp.  As for rated power, yes, I always treat these things with some grains of salt, and tend not to listen to my system at very loud volumes, anyway.  

 

Yep, I missed this thread completely until a few days ago.  Sorry about that.  I must say though, you seem to have come out of your search with good results.

[Green Wagon]

What I'm trying to find is something along this line but with a class A/B amplifier.

I only need maybe 5 watts at most.

But everyone is bamboozled into believing they need more.

[st3ph3nm]

 

Please can you try the Bluetooth for us and compare it to USB for sound quality and dropouts? It would be cool to use a smart phone to stream music from via BT:

 

FX-AUDIO   D802C   USB  Bluetooth 

Bluetooth 

a. Press the SELECT switch on the front  panel to switch to the Bluetooth input: Display = BT

b. when lights flash do a mobile search for D802C

c.  Play music when green LED displayed

 

 

Ok, so I'm trying out the bluetooth right now, and it works without trouble.  It's actually quite neat.  I can even stream from my back room - though I live in a small unit, so that's not surprising.  As I suspected, the bluetooth compression is immediately apparent.  Flattened soundstage, everything sounds a little distant, compared to uncompressed files.  It's much like listening to okay or mediocre mp3.  So yes, convenient and probably fine for friends coming over to say "listen to this song I just heard" etc.  But I'll be sticking to the Raspberry for convenient music, controlled from my phone.

[walker1000]

Sweet little amp and probably more reliable than the cambridge audio!

[Green Wagon]

Sweet little amp and probably more reliable than the cambridge audio!

 

No comment

[st3ph3nm]

To be fair, the Cambridge gave trouble free, good quality sound for ~10 years or more, so I think I got my money's worth.  I believe it'll be fixable, too - which will be a good excuse to start a second system, probably with a turntable, so I'll have a nice old fashioned analog setup as well as my new, hi-tech, fancy digital setup.    Every problem is an opportunity.

[Neo__04]

I've been tossing up for a while now what to buy in the way of a small amp for tv/rasp pi.

 

The 802/802c does seem to get some good reviews from people.

 

I've been following a thread on diyaudio which has some thd measurewith with a scope. They even talk about modding similiar

amps for better performance.

 

Have a read.

 

http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/class-d/280228-i-am-d-v200-fx-audio-d802-optimisation-tpa3116.html

 

Another highly rated amp, i think i read somewhere in the thread it had the best THD specs of the lot.

 

http://www.aliexpress.com/item/I-AM-D-V200-Wireless-WIFI-Remote-Control-Pure-Digital-Audio-Amplifier-Headphone-Amp-USB-Optical/32417096558.html

Edited June 2, 2016 by Neo__04

[st3ph3nm]

Thanks for that, really interesting, although that last link didn't go to a product for me.  It looks like the V200 is the pick of the bunch going by those thd measurements.  I'm not having any of the noise issues mentioned in that thread, but my D802C came with a 32V power supply, and I'm driving 6 ohm speakers.  Can't go wrong with either of them at these silly prices.  I'd have been more than happy with this sound quality if I'd paid the $400 or more that a QLS QA100 would have set me back...

Edited June 3, 2016 by st3ph3nm

[Nada]

Thanks for that, really interesting, although that last link didn't go to a product for me.  It looks like the V200 is the pick of the bunch going by those thd measurements.  I'm not having any of the noise issues mentioned in that thread, but my D802C came with a 32V power supply, and I'm driving 6 ohm speakers.  Can't go wrong with either of them at these silly prices.  I'd have been more than happy with this sound quality if I'd paid the $400 or more that a QLS QA100 would have set me back...

 

Funny thing but I think your D802 is the pick of the bunch based on the THD.

 

This site is doing silly thing with links. Probably using link tracing for revenue.

 

For the V200 try http://tiny.cc/borwby

[Nada]

another neat looking  STA326 based PWD amp

[st3ph3nm]

With 2.1, no less.  But I notice that the power supply is only 12V, so I doubt you'll get much grunt out of it...  There seems to be a plethora of these things coming out, now.  If only you could get some good speaker bargains to go with them!  Imagine crystal clear, musical sound systems with a sub $500 overall budget!

[nicholas9976]

On 30/04/2016 at 4:54 PM, st3ph3nm said:

My Cambridge Audio A300 keeps dropping the right channel out, and definitely needs to go to the doctor.  It was intermittent for ages, but now is beyond a joke.  Anyway, I needed, at the very least, a temporary replacement, to drive my Legend Acoustic Joey 2s..

 

Budget is really tight at the moment, so I started looking at some of the great bang for buck offerings in direct digital amplification - where everything is in the digital domain until the analog conversion takes place at the speaker outputs.  A few years ago the Wadia 151 caused a stir, as did a Chinese amp - the QLS QA100.  NAD did a few more expensive offerings as well.  I kept putting this off, until just recently I started seeing references to the FX Audio D802C.  Most of what I could find was on French forums - but from what I could gather this thing even out performed the QLS.  What's surprising is the cost - these guys can be had for about $130 USD.  Ridiculous, huh? 

Figuring at that price, what the hell, I bit the bullet.  Found one on Aliexpress (more on that later) and ordered it.

 

http://www.aliexpress.com/store/product/FEIXIANG-FX-AUDIO-pure-digital-amplifier-D802C-remote-USB-optical-coaxial-Bluetooth-AUX-input-80W-2/1710143_32416630522.html

 

So here it is:  It arrived sans box, and with some damage to the housing.  But I negotiated with the seller for a partial refund, as it seems to be working fine.

A couple of things first struck me.  It's really, really small.  In fact, the power supply is just about the same size as the amp.  It has 3 digital inputs (USB, optical and coax), and this model also has an analog AUX input (pair of RCA connections)  Dunno how that works for a digital amp, but there you go.  Being small is great - apart from the obvious advantages, it's really easy to hook up connections - just hold the amp in one hand, and plug in with the other.

 

Get to the point, Steve, I hear you sigh exasperatedly!  How does it SOUND?

 

Bloody Awful.  Oh wait, at first it's bloody awful, because it has this silly EQ thing that just makes it sound crap on any setting.  Hitting the "tone" button on the remote drops that EQ setting out and gives you actual direct, unfiltered sound.

 

And then, it sounds great!  Easily the equal of the Cambridge (though the last few months have jaded me a little) and clear and loud (much louder than I'll ever use) and not at all harsh.  Last night after ironing out some signal issues from DVDs, my wife and I just spent a night listening to it together.  Nick Cave's "The Boatman's Call" tested it nicely - Cave's renowned deep syrupy voice has a rough edge to it that the D802C showed beautifully.  Similarly, Jeff Buckley's "Grace" album was similarly showcased to be the luscious production that it is, with his voice soaring over that wonderful guitar work.  And some of the heavier sections of Radiohead's "OK Computer" came through hard and clean - this thing allows the Joey's speed and responsiveness to really shine - there's times when there's lots of noise and loud crap going on, but clever detail in it all.  The FX Audio did it all effortlessly.  I'm truly impressed.  I'm also not very good at writing about sound, so I'll finish off here.

 

Oh, one thing.  It's probably worth paying a little more and getting it through a different portal than I did.  I'm not impressed with the level of protection they offer at Aliexpress, and it's feedback system is really broken.

 

With the tone button EQ issue, does that equalisation come on every time you turn the amp on at the power point?

Or once you adjust the EQ to off once, will it stay off next time when you turn the amp off/on at the power point? 
This is important to me as I plan to put several of them in the ceiling as part of a multizone audio setup and will turn them off/on via a switch. 

Thanks,
 

[aussievintage]

Modern digital amps have come a long long way.  About when the TriPath chips appeared, they, apparently started gathering enthusiasts.  I got one a year or so ago, and I am completely amazed at the great sound.

 

This one from Jaycar is what I have.  https://www.jaycar.us/2-x-50-watt-rms-compact-stereo-pa-amplifier/p/AA0488  (don't worry that they call it a PA amp, it isn't, that's a mistake on their website.)