USB issue trying to connect to a FiiO Q15 Dac.

[gryffe]

I have a problem using the USB C connection from my phone to a FiiO Q15 Dac. Sound comes out of phone rather than through headphones. I noticed a notification on my phone (an S24 +) that says "high powered usb device connected use an external power supply"
Anybody else come across this or know how to fix?

Thanks

[TechZilla]

Do you get a pop up asking if you want to use the dac? I use the Razer DAC and it works fine with 600ohm headphones and no warning about high powered. Have you tried using it via USB audio player pro app? This app bypasses the inbuilt dac in your phone, it's what I use with my tidal account connected to it so I get the full MQA and lossless flac otherwise I still get the sound coming through the dac and into the headphones but lower quality because it will use the inbuilt phone dac.

[gryffe]

Hi, thanks for reply. 

There are some strange goings on. I connected it to an iPad and it works perfectly. So I tried the phone again and this time it worked, a pop up came up asking if I wanted to use Roon ARC or USB Audio player pro. I chose Roon ARC and it was working perfectly.  I had to disconnect the phone for a bit and when I reconnected the pop up asking which app I wanted to use the DAC came up very briefly and disappeared so the DAC could not connect and the sound was coming from phone rather than out of the headphones attached to the DAC. I disconnected the USB seven or eight times without managing to get it to connect to the phone, and in fact the pop up asking which app I wanted to use the DAC with only appeared twice out of these seven or eight attempts. 

The obvious thing to suspect would probably be the USB connector on the phone or the DAC but the phone is just a week old and I only got the DAC today, so that is probably unlikely.

[TechZilla]

Sometimes restarting the phone helps or fully closing audio player Sometimes fixes it, it's probably a glitch of some sort.

[gryffe]

Hi, thanks for reply.

Restarting the phone was unsuccessful unfortunately. I tried something else , changed the setting on the DAC from USB to Bluetooth to connect to the phone by that method. As expected this worked ok. Then I switched back to USB setting on the DAC and I got a pop message on the phone "cannot connect to Q15 DAC". That is the first time that this message has appeared.

It's a mystery 😁

[TechZilla]

Any firmware updates needed for your DAC?

[gryffe]

I don't think so. It's a bit hard trying to decipher what the current FW version is. According to the FiiO website the latest version is v.182 on 22/11/23 and when I navigate to version it just has a long number rather than v.182. However there is a date underneath and that is 22/11/23 so I'm guessing the FW is up to date. As I say I just got the DAC today and still trying to come to grips with it and the menu is not very intuitive imo. 

[TechZilla]

Fair enough, DACs do make a big difference

[gryffe]

Hitting a bit of a brick wall with this. I've asked on a few other forums too and no feedback yet, fingers crossed somebody comes up with a solution.

[gryffe]

If you notice in one of my posts above I pointed out that my phone displayed "high powered usb device connected, use an external power supply", this got me thinking that perhaps there wasn't enough power getting through so I charged the Q15 using the "Power In" USB charging port at the same time as trying to get my phone to connect to the Q15 to play music via USB setting and this worked successfully. Once the Q15 had fully charged to 100% I stopped charging from the Power In charging port and now the Q15 is recognised by my phone and I can now play music successfully without it recharging the Q15 battery at the same. When I first encountered this problem the Q15 was not 100% charged but was 82% so I would have thought that this should have been enough to play music via USB connected to my phone. It will be interesting to see if the problem re-occurs when the Q15 battery level falls to a certain % that is not enough to power the connection between my phone and the Q15.