In the past few hours, the specialist in the sector, Zidoo, has announced a new media-player box in the Neo series, the Zidoo Neo Alpha, with SSD for storage, integrated DAC, and Dolby Vision.
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Two years after the last time, we return to talk about Zidoo-branded mediaboxes, with the Chinese brand specialized in the sector which, for the occasion, has announced the new Neo Alpha, which accompanies the already presented Neo S and X.
The aluminum chassis of the Zidoo Neo Alpha (430 x 300 x 105 mm) is characterized in front by two USB 2.0 Type-A, a 6.35 mm jack, and a 5 “OLED touchscreen: again on the subject of ports and connectivity, there is the presence of Gigabit Ethernet (however Wi-Fi ac at 867 Mbps is present), a USB Type-B to use the device as an external DAC, a coaxial and an optical input, two USB 3.0 Type-A, one balanced output on XLR connectors, one optical digital output, one unbalanced analog output on RCA connectors, and two HDMI (one 2.0 and one 1.4 audio with 5.1 channel DSD lossless management).
Inside, the hexa-core Realtek RTD1619DR processor, added with the Mali-G5 GPU, and supported by 4 GB of RAM (DDR4) and 32 GB of storage (eMMC) operates as a logical compartment. Again in terms of storage, the user can have 512 GB (replaceable with an amount of max 1 TB) via SSD M.2 2280 with SATA 3.0 interface and up to 18 TB via the free SATA 3.0 slot for a hard disk 2 or 3 and a half inches.
In the visual field, Dolby’s Vision VS10 engine takes care of converting all types of files from SDR ((Standard Dynamic Range) to HDR (here managed in HDR10, HDR10 +, Dolby Vision, HLG formats) and vice versa: provided frequencies 23.976 / 24 / 59.94 Hz for full compliance with the framerate supported in the sources, in the Zidoo Neo Alpha the conversion from digital to analog, according to a sampling frequency of 768 kHz / 32-bit in PCM and a dynamic range equal to 140 dB, is handled by the ESS9038 Pro DAC, with interference avoided in the process by the fact that the two sections are separate, as one swithing power supply takes care of the digital audio circuits and a linear one the analog audio circuits.
On the audio, credited with high resolution support (FLAC, Dolby Atmos, WAV, APE, and DTS: X), other elements impact. The XMOS XU216 processor uses its 8 cores to contain jitter and latency, and to convert MQA files. The Qualcomm QCC5125 modem ensures Bluetooth support for aptX HD, LDAC, and aptX LL codecs. Finally, there is no lack of support for SMB and NFB protocols, AirPlay, DLNA, Roon Ready standards, and compatibility with Spotify: finally, control takes place both through the multi-platform companion app, and through the backlit remote control.