Questioning my Oppo Sonica dac?

You are paying for better sound. If you can’t tell the difference, don’t pay.

Every DAC I’ve ever owned displays the wrong resolution and/or bitrate.

BFD

@ fuzztone Thanks for the reply. Spotify and Quboz are about the same price with the Studio subscription. I clearly won’t need both though. I know the Spotify won’t improve any but I don’t mind it at all, I’m curious if my dac is possibly blocking a hi res signal somehow. How did you determine your dac was not displaying correctly?

Do you know what bit rate the song you were playing is? 44.1kHz/16bit is CD quality but 44.1kHz/24bit is considered hi-res and would only show as 44.1 on your DAC. Both of your components can be correct in this instance.

In Qobuz settings you can change the resolution level.  That might be the problem unless your DAC just can’t handle higher resolutions, then you just need to upgrade your DAC to something from this century.

@danham 

I know what the source is.. One DAC consistently reports 24 bits even with mp3s. 

Why aren’t you using USB out? That’s the highest resolution port out of the ifi.

Check the manual on the ifi Zen to make sure the port you are using supports the resolution you want. 

Oppo Digital Sonica DAC - The Absolute Sound

soix Maybe you should do a little research before badmouthing other people's equipment. BTW, last time I checked, 2017 is in this century.

@erik_squires to update...i did just get a USB 2.0 cable and my sonica dac now displays 96 khz when playing hi res from Qobuz. Thanks for the feedback.

Glad that advice proved useful, OP! 😀

Sounds like the problem is solved.  I was thinking that the streamer must be doing something to down sample before sending to the DAC, and in this case it was the usb vs other output issue 

OPPO Sonica is a great DAC. Esp with Modwright tube mod and external LPS.