That would explain why it’s so slow then.
Not really. You are still sending it garbage input. . . I was perfectly happy with BT sound until I hooked up a cheap SMSL Sanskrit dac and some decent speakers (wavecrest hvl). The BT compression makes a mess of the high end. Once you hear the difference, you’ll scrap it.
I just found out that Chomecast can output putatively bitperfect digital audio via optical. I ordered another and a cable. I’d like to replace the computer I have hooked to my dac in the living room. We’ll see. . . .
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So would plugging the dot into the receiver give me noticeably better sound? I don’t have a 3.5 mm plug on my receiver so I was going to run a 3.5mm to coaxial and plug it into one of the coaxial digital inputs. One thing I like to do is sometimes when I listen to music I like to have the tv on for visual purposes but since everything is connected to the receiver once I select the input of my audio device no tv obviously. But with the dot on the table next to the couch I’m watching the Penn state vs Ohio state game while listening to Miles Davis on my Sennheiser headphones plugged into the dot while sipping a Kentucky straight bourbon…
I don’t know about the sound quality of the audio output from the dot directly. I suspect that it is much better if the source is good. But I’m mainly concerned with playing local files. There’s no good way that I know to do this with the dot. Perhaps the 3.5 plug will give you good audio from some online sources. If so, that would be nice.
Chromecast Audio is nice because it simply has the music file send directly to the Chromecast Audio device. When you cast the audio, you just tell the CCA receiver to get the file from the source. So if I’m using my phone to play music from Plex, when I cast the song to the chromecast audio device, I don’t send the file from my phone to the device; rather, I tell the device to play the file from the source.
The device can function as a dac, outputting analog, or output the digital content via optical. If you have it output digital, you can simply hook it up to a dac with a special toslink cable. (I should have one in a week or so.) Right now, I have a separate computer in my living room doing this. It’s going to be re-purposed if all goes well.
DAC’s can’t improve crap, ie crap in -> crap out. And BT is compressed, WiFi can easily stream HD audio, 128k streams sound better than BT without AptX.
DAC’s really only are useful if you have a VERY clean source, actual wav/flac file for example on a USB stick, WiFi from a media server, etc.
3.5mm is analog only. DAC’s won’t touch that, or if they do it’s pass through.
"The bt receiver has a digital coaxial output so I assume that means the DAC is taking place inside the receiver and that’s a good thing. " Yes, if the source is digital, in any way, the DAC will process it. THIS is where a high quality DAC will make a difference. Not via 3.5mm or other analog source.
As @asmuts said, not having a method to direct stream one’s own media to the DOT is a downside. I have a Plex media server with all my personal music on it, I can stream that (full rez) to most of my stuff, but not the Amazon devices. I have ALL that music uploaded to Google Play as well, but since Amazon and Google get along like oil and water…
I don’t mind using the Dot’s for Pandora (ok bitrate) or Prime Music (good bitrate) the paid versions should have higher bitrates with Pandora, Spotify, maybe others. ALL will be noticeably superior to BT. Like really noticeable. DAC’s in the Dot and Echo are probably pretty reasonable, most phones these days have great DAC’s (all things considered) so I wouldn’t worry at all about using the 3.5mm out, with a dual RCA to an analog input on your receiver.
Step 8 shows the original Dot’s DAC, not sure of it’s quality but I’ll see if I can find out.
http://www.ti.com/product/PCM5142
That’s pretty reasonable, it’s a hirez device (thought it wasn’t but I got bit depth and data rate confused), good SN ratio. I’m no audiophile so I won’t pass judgement on it by any means.
Edit: Here’s a review of a Fiio DAP with the same DAC. I have a couple Fiio’s, good little devices.
Edit2: This one shows it’s a hirez unit, I hate the audio world…So yes, this is a really good DAC…I think…
Thanks for the advice. I’m neither an audiophile or a tech expert but I like to think most days I’m smarter than the average 4 legged mammal…I figured out last night the 3.5mm was analog when I plugged my headphones into it and they worked. Good thing as I was going to plug the dot into the digital connection on my receiver, who knows I might have caused damage. I also did a little research and read how WIFI is better generally for streaming than BT. So the only thing I’m wondering about is the DAC quality in the Dot,as my 2 options would be:
1) Stream to the dot , send it to my BT receiver which then sends it digitally over coax to my receiver which then does the conversion using the Burr-Brown 192khz/24 bit DAC. Or…
2) Stream to the Dot and let it do the analog conversion using it’s DAC then send it to my receiver using a 3.5 mm to double RCA cable plugged into the left/right inputs on the receiver. Only question is does anyone know what kind of DAC the dot has and how much does it matter? Oh and one other question people will disagree on , is it worth it to spend more on a higher quality cable? If digital I would likely say no but with analog maybe?
That’s convenient that you can choose digital or analog out. I would probably send it out digitally and have my receiver do the conversion. I have no experience with chromecast so excuse my ignorance. It is an advantage that your phone isn’t sending the music to chromecast over BT but instead just telling it what to play, so is the music stored locally on the CC or ,more likely, streamed over WIFI? I know you can upload songs to Google Music but I have a lot of songs from Amazon Music that are “free” to Prime members and I have a feeling they couldn’t be uploaded.
Thanks for the links. Maybe it’s German in me but I found it interesting. The original Dot had the PCM5142 DAC but does anyone know if the new dot does? The price is a lot lower so it’s possible they downgraded it for cost reasons.
Ya. In my case, I only play music that I have stored on my NAS, a Synology Diskstation. Since it’s a Diskstation, it has a music app called DS Audio. It’s OK. I also have Plex running on another box, since it was too much for the poor Synology to handle. Both DS Audio and the Plex app are cable of casting to the Chromecast Audio (CCA) device. When you hit cast on one of the apps, your tablet or phone pretty much tells CCA to get the music from the source, either the Plex server or the Diskstation. (I’d be very happy if the dot could do the same thing. . . .)
You still have some control over the volume, etc. on the phone. But the stream does not pass through the phone. It’s much more efficient than using bluetooth and allows for bit perfect transfer of the music from the source through CCA to a DAC. Supposedly. I have another CCA coming. I’m going to compare it to using foobar (a music playing program) when it arrives.
The CCA I just got is in my basement / gym. It replaced a bluetooth receiver. I’m using the built in CCA DAC right now. It’s budget audio down there, but it already sounds better. And it’s more reliable so far. And I can use a really cheap phone or tablet and not worry about the bluetooth quality. (I’m using a $60 BLU phone right now, just to see.)
Having BT in that chain will kill quality. Also, Burr-Brown doesn’t really mean anything. TI bought them a loooong time ago so TI DACs are Burr-Brown, sorta. It basically just became a marketing term at that point. You’ll see the Bottlehead DAC review calls out a Burr-Brown.
The quality is paramount, and the “original” Dot already has a 384khz(192 usable)/32 bit DAC. So it might actually be better…SN could be higher like some Wolfson DAC’s, probably others, but SN is probably also restricted by the size and electrical layout of the Dot (or Chromecast for that matter) since it would be a pretty noisy environment.
We really should have done a side topic on the audio side of this. @JDRoberts or maybe @slagle, can you maybe break this into another thread to unclutter this one?
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I can’t move individual posts, an admin will have to. Good idea, though. 
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As mentioned here:
You can stream your own content to your Echo using House Band (official app, seen as a skill in the Alexa app) and JRivers media server.
I have not had time to hook it up yet this weekend, but I plan to soon.
The thing I am struggling with is, I want to plug in my Alexa to my receiver, but when I am listening to TV through the receiver, or my son has XBox pumping through the receiver, I want to hear Alexa’s responses. I don’t guess anyone has a good workaround for this, do they?
This is the only thing I have found that may be a cheap workaround:
Ya I was beginning to think a separate thread was called for. My fault but might as well add a bit to it. I just connected one dot using the 3.5mm cable but could only get my hands on a cheap one. I compared the sound with the same song back to back but only briefly. Unfortunately over BT was a lot louder side as a bit difficult but I do think it sounded better wired.
DAC on gen2 appears to be TLV320DAC3203 I2S DAC:
http://www.eevblog.com/forum/reviews/teardown-amazon-echo-dot-2/
As someone above pointed out, this is a cost cutting measure, 100db SN ratio, so a LOT lower than the Gen1 Dot! It’s still 192khz with unknown bit depth:
http://www.ti.com/product/TLV320DAC3203
I haven’t swapped my gen1 for a gen2 to compare, but I’d venture most people won’t hear a difference. But this is disappointing.
Edit: TI comparison:
It’s less than half the price of the original DAC.
Thanks for the links. From what I see the SNR dropped from 112 to 100 and the sampling rate went from 384khz to 192khz. I guess they figured most people either wouldn’t notice or wouldn’t care. On the bright side the new one is good down to -40 where the old one was only good to -25…
Just “refresh” … I had the same issue with two of mine. I clicked on refresh and the 5 GHz network appeared. I connected all of mine (6) to 5 GHz and haven’t had any drop.
Sorry for the stupid question but what did I you refresh? Did you mean ‘update Wi-Fi’ on the alexa app?