HiFi Renderer

HiFi Renderer turns a spare Android phone into a dedicated network music player with bit-perfect USB output to an external DAC. A phone normally resamples everything through the Android audio mixer, so it cannot act as a hi-fi source. HiFi Renderer bypasses the Android audio stack completely and streams to your DAC over raw USB, at the source file's own sample rate and bit depth. Nothing is resampled, remixed or volume-scaled on the way through. Point a DLNA or OpenHome controller at it, press play, and the music goes from your server to your DAC untouched. WHAT IT DOES • Bit-perfect USB audio to class-compliant USB DACs, both USB Audio Class 1.0 and 2.0 • Plays at the file's native rate and bit depth — no resampling, ever • Works with the DLNA/UPnP controllers and media servers you already use • OpenHome support: the renderer holds the playlist itself, so you can close the controller or take your phone out of the house and the music keeps playing • FLAC, WAV, AIFF, MP3, AAC/M4A and LPCM (L16/L24), plus whatever else your phone can decode • DSD64, DSD128 and DSD256 from DSF and DFF files, sent to your DAC as DoP (DSD over PCM) — the DSD bits arrive untouched, never converted to PCM • Gapless transitions between tracks at the same sample rate • Pause, repeat, shuffle, seeking within FLAC tracks, and volume remembered per DAC • Home-screen widget with artwork, transport controls and the current format • Starts at boot and stays up; the screen blanks when idle and wakes when the music starts • Nine languages, following your phone's own or one you pick IT READS YOUR DAC, AND TELLS YOU THE TRUTH Manufacturer documentation is often silent about the things that decide whether a track will actually play. HiFi Renderer reads your DAC's own USB descriptors and reports, in plain language, what it really supports: sample rates, bit depths, and whether its volume can be controlled from the phone at all. If a track is outside what your DAC can do, the app says so and declines it, naming the rate involved. It will not quietly resample to make something fit. That is the one thing this app exists not to do. Nothing is hard-coded for particular models. Every decision is read from the device in front of it, so unfamiliar hardware is described rather than guessed at. DAC VERIFICATION Built-in tests that check what your DAC does rather than what it claims. A sweep plays every rate the device advertises and confirms it genuinely locks to each one; a stability soak holds a single rate for 10, 30 or 60 minutes. Both report underruns and per-packet errors as a pass/fail table you can copy and share. The report covers the digital path only. If it passes and something still sounds wrong, the data reached your DAC intact and the problem lies after conversion. FOR GUESTS A visitor can send audio to it from an Apple phone, tablet or laptop without installing anything or learning what DLNA is. That path is lossless but fixed at 44.1 kHz and 16-bit, so the app labels it on screen as not bit-perfect. Your own listening is unaffected. NO DAC ATTACHED It still plays, through the phone's own output, and marks itself as not bit-perfect so you always know which of the two you are getting. WHAT YOU NEED • Android 8.0 or later • USB OTG (host) support, so the phone can power and talk to USB devices • A class-compliant USB DAC — no vendor drivers are involved. A powered USB hub is recommended, as many DACs draw more than a phone will supply • A DLNA/UPnP or OpenHome controller and a media server on your network On Xiaomi, Huawei and some other brands, starting at boot needs an autostart permission that only you can grant. The app's first-run setup names the screen it lives on. No account. No ads. No analytics. It requests no permission to your storage, your contacts or your location. The optional microphone permission only stops Android asking about the DAC every time it is switched on; the app never records.