28-Aug-2025, 23:05
(This post was last modified: 28-Aug-2025, 23:12 by booshtukka.)
TL: DR; I really like this device.
More details below.
So, after a multi-year debacle with Arvus and the H1-D, I got a refund and purchased the Blustream SW42DA instead. Today the H1-D shows as $3,250, and still has the most barebones of functionality. I picked up an SW42DA for approx $1700 and it arrived the next day.
To compare, the H1-D supports 16 channels of Dante audio and the SW42DA supports 10. The H1-D promises Dirac functionality in the future, which may not be achievable with the hardware as is, so if we’re just looking at what it can do (unreliably) today, that’s it - it passes through a single HDMI connection, and extracts 16 Dante channels, with limited speaker configurations.
My set up today is 5.3.2 (3 x Phantom I Golds with optical Dante sticks (L/C/R, and sub sent to each), and 4 Phantom II Customs (RS/LS/LTM/RTM), so 10 channels is fine. I intend to get two more Phantom II Customs for heights in the future as 5.3.4 and that will max it out, so it’s perfect. But if you need more channels it won’t work for you.
The hardware is pretty nice. It feels substantial and well built and includes everything you’d need to rack mount it in various size racks or just have it stand alone. Mine is in a 19” rack and it takes 1U of space. It included an EU and a UK kettle lead - I’m in the UK. It has a lit front display and capacitive buttons, and an ugly remote (as is standard). Weirdly, the remote didn’t include a battery (CR2025) which seems a bit cheap, and the battery cradle snapped the first time I used it with zero pressure, but it doesn’t matter for my use case since I don’t intend to use this remote. It also has an external IR receiver in case you store it somewhere the remote doesn’t have line of sight to.
At its core it’s actually an HDMI switching device, it supports 4 HDMI inputs, with all inputs supporting up to 4K 60Hz 4:4:4 with Dolby Vision HDR10+ (HDMI 2.0b 18Gbps). It has one full range HDMI output, and a second HDMI output that can scale the video/audio output down if you need that. I don’t. It has 10 balanced analogue outputs, but I’m not using those either. Nor am I using the serial port or optical out.
I initially had audio cut out issues, but turns out I had Dante set to 32-bit and it only supports 24-bit. Right now I have it set to 48kHz but may try 96kHz once my ears are used to it.
There are two network ports, one for the GUI and one for Dante. You can choose to just use one or both. The Dante port supports PoE+ - I assume this means output, not for powering the device itself, but I’ve not tried. I use both ports. All of my Dante equipment is connected to a Ubiquiti USW-Pro-Max-24-PoE switch, which the ports set to Pro AV which priorities Dante traffic.
There are actually three IPs, one for the web GUI, one for the main Dante interface with 8 channels, and one for a second Dante interface with 2 channels. All these interfaces can act as Dante receivers too, but I’ve not tried this either.
When applying firmware updates, three interfaces means you need to do this three times and it takes a while. The website doesn’t make it clear which version of the firmware is currently available for download, any change history, or an ability to receive notifications for new firmware updates, which makes it a bit of a chore to check.
There were a few display bugs on Safari on macOS, and weirdly the Dante interfaces won’t accept exclamation marks in passwords in their respective GUIs, but these are non issues for me.
The web GUI is pretty good and includes most of what I want. I really like that I can use the remote control to turn the entire system up and down. I tried to set individual levels and delays for the channels, but as soon as you do that you lose the ability to control the level of the entire system. So instead, I used the Dolby Atmos app on the Apple TV to generate pink noise for each channel and a basic SPL meter app on my phone, and adjusted the Phantoms individually to get approx 85db from each channel at full volume. This is very loud, I usually set the volume to 50% to avoid damaging my house! The delays would have needed to be a max of 5ms, so not a big deal, but it’s a shame I couldn’t set that and keep the full volume control. The remote control can only move in single increments and you can’t hold the button down, and there’s no change in the display when you adjust the volume, so it’s a bit cumbersome to press the buttons 50 times, and irritating to try to understand the current state, but much much better than what I had to do before with iOS shortcuts and HTTP calls.
The device can receive CEC controls if you’re using ARC, but only from the output device not from a source. This is such a shame, but not a dealbreaker. My TV is too old to support Atmos at all rendering ARC a bit useless. And actually it seems like CEC is not passed through at all anyway, so I also can’t turn the TV on and off with the Apple TV remote. But, I did successfully get the Apple TV to learn the IR signals for volume (I had to reset the Siri Remote to get this to work) and this means that apart from power and switching inputs, I can do everything with one remote. This makes the wife very very happy.
Annoyingly I can choose bigger increments for CEC volume controls, but not for IR controls.
As a side note, the H1-D did pass CEC through, so I was able to turn the TV on and off, but it was impossible to change the volume at all with the current firmware.
I’ve connected an Apple TV, Xbox and PS5 and have one input left over. This also helps with my TV, where only two of the HDMI inputs support HDR so the result is much better. I can name the inputs in the GUI, but was disappointed to see the screen still just says “Input 1”, “Input 2”, etc.
It does have an upmixer for stereo to surround signals which works decently with music, though I had some weird experiences testing Atmos with this on.
I’ve reached out to their support more times today than I would like to admit. They are very responsive and patient, even when I’m sure I’m very irritating!
The sound is brilliant. So so good. Now that I can select an accurate speaker configuration, the Atmos test videos are very immersive with no gaps in the soundscape. And loud! Having three sub channels and seeing the Phantoms going hell for leather is very impressive. In theory I could set up 5.7.2, but any more than three sub channels was just getting ridiculous in terms of bass.
If I were to ask for more to make it perfect, I’d request:
Overall this device does almost everything I want, looks great, sounds great, and is at a reasonable price point. I highly recommend it.
More details below.
So, after a multi-year debacle with Arvus and the H1-D, I got a refund and purchased the Blustream SW42DA instead. Today the H1-D shows as $3,250, and still has the most barebones of functionality. I picked up an SW42DA for approx $1700 and it arrived the next day.
To compare, the H1-D supports 16 channels of Dante audio and the SW42DA supports 10. The H1-D promises Dirac functionality in the future, which may not be achievable with the hardware as is, so if we’re just looking at what it can do (unreliably) today, that’s it - it passes through a single HDMI connection, and extracts 16 Dante channels, with limited speaker configurations.
My set up today is 5.3.2 (3 x Phantom I Golds with optical Dante sticks (L/C/R, and sub sent to each), and 4 Phantom II Customs (RS/LS/LTM/RTM), so 10 channels is fine. I intend to get two more Phantom II Customs for heights in the future as 5.3.4 and that will max it out, so it’s perfect. But if you need more channels it won’t work for you.
The hardware is pretty nice. It feels substantial and well built and includes everything you’d need to rack mount it in various size racks or just have it stand alone. Mine is in a 19” rack and it takes 1U of space. It included an EU and a UK kettle lead - I’m in the UK. It has a lit front display and capacitive buttons, and an ugly remote (as is standard). Weirdly, the remote didn’t include a battery (CR2025) which seems a bit cheap, and the battery cradle snapped the first time I used it with zero pressure, but it doesn’t matter for my use case since I don’t intend to use this remote. It also has an external IR receiver in case you store it somewhere the remote doesn’t have line of sight to.
At its core it’s actually an HDMI switching device, it supports 4 HDMI inputs, with all inputs supporting up to 4K 60Hz 4:4:4 with Dolby Vision HDR10+ (HDMI 2.0b 18Gbps). It has one full range HDMI output, and a second HDMI output that can scale the video/audio output down if you need that. I don’t. It has 10 balanced analogue outputs, but I’m not using those either. Nor am I using the serial port or optical out.
I initially had audio cut out issues, but turns out I had Dante set to 32-bit and it only supports 24-bit. Right now I have it set to 48kHz but may try 96kHz once my ears are used to it.
There are two network ports, one for the GUI and one for Dante. You can choose to just use one or both. The Dante port supports PoE+ - I assume this means output, not for powering the device itself, but I’ve not tried. I use both ports. All of my Dante equipment is connected to a Ubiquiti USW-Pro-Max-24-PoE switch, which the ports set to Pro AV which priorities Dante traffic.
There are actually three IPs, one for the web GUI, one for the main Dante interface with 8 channels, and one for a second Dante interface with 2 channels. All these interfaces can act as Dante receivers too, but I’ve not tried this either.
When applying firmware updates, three interfaces means you need to do this three times and it takes a while. The website doesn’t make it clear which version of the firmware is currently available for download, any change history, or an ability to receive notifications for new firmware updates, which makes it a bit of a chore to check.
There were a few display bugs on Safari on macOS, and weirdly the Dante interfaces won’t accept exclamation marks in passwords in their respective GUIs, but these are non issues for me.
The web GUI is pretty good and includes most of what I want. I really like that I can use the remote control to turn the entire system up and down. I tried to set individual levels and delays for the channels, but as soon as you do that you lose the ability to control the level of the entire system. So instead, I used the Dolby Atmos app on the Apple TV to generate pink noise for each channel and a basic SPL meter app on my phone, and adjusted the Phantoms individually to get approx 85db from each channel at full volume. This is very loud, I usually set the volume to 50% to avoid damaging my house! The delays would have needed to be a max of 5ms, so not a big deal, but it’s a shame I couldn’t set that and keep the full volume control. The remote control can only move in single increments and you can’t hold the button down, and there’s no change in the display when you adjust the volume, so it’s a bit cumbersome to press the buttons 50 times, and irritating to try to understand the current state, but much much better than what I had to do before with iOS shortcuts and HTTP calls.
The device can receive CEC controls if you’re using ARC, but only from the output device not from a source. This is such a shame, but not a dealbreaker. My TV is too old to support Atmos at all rendering ARC a bit useless. And actually it seems like CEC is not passed through at all anyway, so I also can’t turn the TV on and off with the Apple TV remote. But, I did successfully get the Apple TV to learn the IR signals for volume (I had to reset the Siri Remote to get this to work) and this means that apart from power and switching inputs, I can do everything with one remote. This makes the wife very very happy.
Annoyingly I can choose bigger increments for CEC volume controls, but not for IR controls.As a side note, the H1-D did pass CEC through, so I was able to turn the TV on and off, but it was impossible to change the volume at all with the current firmware.
I’ve connected an Apple TV, Xbox and PS5 and have one input left over. This also helps with my TV, where only two of the HDMI inputs support HDR so the result is much better. I can name the inputs in the GUI, but was disappointed to see the screen still just says “Input 1”, “Input 2”, etc.
It does have an upmixer for stereo to surround signals which works decently with music, though I had some weird experiences testing Atmos with this on.
I’ve reached out to their support more times today than I would like to admit. They are very responsive and patient, even when I’m sure I’m very irritating!
The sound is brilliant. So so good. Now that I can select an accurate speaker configuration, the Atmos test videos are very immersive with no gaps in the soundscape. And loud! Having three sub channels and seeing the Phantoms going hell for leather is very impressive. In theory I could set up 5.7.2, but any more than three sub channels was just getting ridiculous in terms of bass.
If I were to ask for more to make it perfect, I’d request:
- The ability to set relative volumes and delays, but still keep overall system volume control
- Full CEC pass through and compatibility (so I only need one remote!)
- The ability to hold down the volume buttons and set increments for IR remotes
- Displaying input names on the panel, and showing volume changes when using the remote
- Clearer history and dates for firmware and a notification system for if there is a new firmware available, perhaps in the GUI
Overall this device does almost everything I want, looks great, sounds great, and is at a reasonable price point. I highly recommend it.
