DAP discussion thread

Discussion in 'IEMs and Portable Gear' started by zerodeefex, Oct 8, 2015.

  1. Bina

    Bina MOT - Shanling

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    Have a look at some old threads with people carrying their iMods with amps, or when they started adding even dedicated DACs to this pile. Even nowadays you will meet some folks who strap big DAC/Amp to their mobile phone.

    Some people were always willing to go big with their portable rigs, even if they no longer fitted their pocket. I was one of them and yeah, I carried my rig in my backpack or shoulder bag.
     
  2. likearake

    likearake Acquaintance

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    Hard to believe that the glory days of "portable" stacks like the iPod + Cypher Labs + ALO Rx were less than 10 years ago. It feels much longer...
     
  3. Claud

    Claud Living the ORFAS dream

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    The one thing that these giant DAPs should have is POWER. That in itself is a good thing especially if you have CFA IEMs. I read somewhere here that Ken Ball really liked the CFA IEMs with the A & K KUBE. Power is about all I see that the KUBE has in its favor, but I could be wrong.
    Bina, I was also one of those people carrying a load with Sony CDP Diskman, Headroom amp and custom pouch for that equipment. No IEMs, Just the funky Sennheiser white with yellow ear pads headphone. HD242 ?
     
  4. limesoft

    limesoft Friend

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    I've gotten very fond of the Sony zx507, so much so my Fiio M11 Pro is gathering dust. The sony is just very slick and well made - the screen is great with proper white balance (M11 is very blue), the sony music app is fantastic - the eq implementation is one of the best I've seen, you don't have to worry about balancing levels, just crank up the bass or whatever and it never distorts. As for sound, I now find it superior (possibly after the burn in) to the M11 Pro - there is a heft to the bass, a gentleness/refinement to the the mids and treble that I struggle to hear on the Fiio.. but my main beef with the m11 pro is that it's just a bit too lean and trying too hard to sound clear/clean.. the zx507 sounds more mature, it's quietly confident and doesn't feel the need to impress. Excellent pairing with the HD650, never would have imagined.. more so than my Apogee Element 24, M11 Pro, Ifi black label - i just love how refined and confident it sounds - its excellent for chillaxing
     
  5. Audiosolace

    Audiosolace New

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    The Cayin N8 / Lotoo PAW Gold Touch are amongt the best of high-end. In all-rounder category, comes the Lotoo PAW 6000 and in lower categories - the Shanling M6 Pro, Fiio M11 Pro are great. Hidizs AP80 and Shanling M0 are fantastic budget DAPs.

    Any advances on this?
     
  6. YMO

    YMO Chief Fun Officer

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    Who are you? Your three posts here were all fluff with no substance IMO. Please introduce yourself here.

    Please don't be another one of those amateur reviews sites who goal is to post on different audio forums for foot traffic to your site.
     
  7. Senorx12562

    Senorx12562 Case of the mondays

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    Too late I think.
     
  8. Audiosolace

    Audiosolace New

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    .
     
  9. YMO

    YMO Chief Fun Officer

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    Boom, you been caught.
     
  10. Claud

    Claud Living the ORFAS dream

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    So, I got THAT close to ordering a Kann Cube. Changed my mind at the last minute and preordered an A & K.......
    Why order old tech when you can preorder new tech. That's the DAP game.
    It is just too freaky a DAP to turn down.


    Sorry for the tease!! SE 200
     
    Last edited: Jul 9, 2020
  11. wormcycle

    wormcycle Friend

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    if you want a dap you do not buy Kann Cube, for walking an exercise vest would be a better choice. But. if you want a portable DAC and headphone amp, that can be also used as a balanced source for studio monitors, and drive any headphones from 600 Ohm through big planars to Andromeda then you buy KC
    What I like on SP200 that KC is missing are audio filters
     
  12. DarginMahkum

    DarginMahkum New

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    Let me have my first post here on SBAF with my Hiby R8 and write up a small set of initial impressions.

    * One of the main selling points of the Hiby R8 is the controller with 4 little ARM cores and 4 big cores, the SD 660. It is like using a mobile phone, fast and fluid. Actually the most powerful processor of the Android DAP world.

    * Another important point if is the 10000 mAh battery. i did some measurement and it is able to do about 11-12 hours of continous DSD512 playing and the FLAC testing is going on with a projection of about 14 hours.

    * It is bigger and heavier than M15, but not with a big margin. The version I have is the alloy version at ~410g and there is the stainless steel which is about 100g on top of that.

    * It is a streamer DAP. The stainless steel version can even take a SIM-card. The WIFI performance is excellent, no hick-ups slow-downs. I saw >50 Mbps on 2.4GHz and >330 MBps on 5GHz, and didn't notice any interference noise while doing the tests at full load. As I don't have the LTE version, could not test that.

    * It comes with Android 9, and as I understand system level EQ'ing should be possible. I am not an EQ user, but I might try and report it some day.

    * It comes with a ready-to-rock package, including the case and the screen protectors. The big case (not the carry case) that you would see in the photos is actually quite useful, that you can place upto 4 IEMs / cables inside.

    * Another user friendly point is that, it has automatic screen rotation and tap-to-wake.

    * It is a very powerful device. I don't have the exact figures but I have seen 1,088mW (4.4mm PO@32Ω) being mentioned. It has 3 gain modes and turbo modes, as I understand, doubles the output voltage. My Focal Stellia can be driven at low gain without turbo mode and after 50% volume level it starts to become too loud.

    * It has ~0.4ohms single ended output impedance and ~0.8 ohms at the balanced output. I have not noticed any hiss with my A18t.

    * Has both balanced and unbalanced line-outs.

    * OTG harddisk connection works and it can power a 2.5" standard SATA harddisk, which means you can buy a 2TB HD for fairly cheap price like $75, or even a 4TB SATA SSD disk for the price of a 1TB micro SD card, and connect it from the USB. As it has a fairly big battery, you are good to go with an external storage for a reasonably long time (measurements will follow soon, in the next days).

    * Sound. It is well extended in both directions and the mids are warm and full sounding, and at least with Stellia it scales well with volume. I currently have also the DX220MAX, which is like a refined iBasso house sound. As I understand it is not what many in this forum likes but it has its place for me. MAX has the dry, neutal, airy sound giving a larger space impression, which might also be seen as artificial. On some passages especially the back vocals might sound too far away and thin, though detailed. R8 mids are the opposite. They are full, warm and close up. There is no edgyness. I tried connecting the MAX and R8 to SHA900 amp, which is a very neutral portable amp and the same character was still observable. On A18t the bass sounded really full but not messy or muffled.

    [I will continue updating to make a better first post]
     
    Last edited: Jul 13, 2020
  13. EagleWings

    EagleWings Friend

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    @DarginMahkum , this forum works a little different from other public forums. First, please introduce yourself in the New Members Introduction thread. We would definitely like to hear what you think about the R8, especially how it compares to other DAPs that you have heard. Posting a picture of your gear without any useful/consumable info is extremely frowned upon.
     
  14. DarginMahkum

    DarginMahkum New

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    Cool, thank you. I will do that in the newcomers thread. In the meanwhile I will add my initial impression to my post above to make it more useful.
     
  15. Claud

    Claud Living the ORFAS dream

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    I too was looking at the HiBy R8, but could never get a price. Ended up getting an A & K SE 200. Its got two amp and DAC circuits. One is a very good single AKM DAC and the other is two ESS DACs. So far the single AKM gets most of my attention. This weekend I ran the A & K continuously with the Fiio FD1 for breakin. I have been trying several single DD IEMS and so far, the fido aint too bad and its cheap. I have Moondrop Starfield and KxxS as well as CA Atlas. I have purchased several Penon IEM cables to find the best combination with my IEMs and DACs .
     
  16. DarginMahkum

    DarginMahkum New

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    Congrats on your new DAP.

    R8 is unfortunately still not available outside of China, and as far as I know it was sold out also in China. It should be available soon in August, though. The one I have is an import from HK without the Google Play Services. I read somewhere long time ago that the alloy version will cost $1800 and the SS version will cost $2100 (which will have LTE connection for streaming, 6GB instead of 4GB RAM [maybe needed for the LTE stack? - not sure] and 128 GB internal flash disk instead of 64). SS version is also 100g heavier.

    I personally don't need any of these extras. The main selling points of R8 for me were the very fast system/SoC based on Android 9, pretty big battery 10000 mAh, very good WIFI reception (for Qobuz streaming) and the Hiby Link with which I can control the music player from my mobile phone over BT - works nicely if you have the player in your pocket and just want to reach your mobile phone for choosing the songs, adjusting the volume etc.

    One thing I don't like is that the HP outputs are not on the top of the player, like the volume control, but it is more a convenience rather than a must.

    Just as a small remark: If you audition it one day with a full sized HP, make sure to engage the "turbo" option in the audio settings menu.
     
  17. rhythmdevils

    rhythmdevils MOT: rhythmdevils audio

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    Are there any DAPs that play well with Tidal? Thinking of getting a portable amp/dac to use with my iPod touch 7th gen but it would sure be nice to just have one device.
     
  18. Claud

    Claud Living the ORFAS dream

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    The HiBy R 6 Pro is easy to set up for Tidal. You can do it on the iBasso DX 220 and their DX160 too.
    My A & K SE 200 is also easy to set up Tidal. The HiBy R 6 Pro would be my choice of these contenders. If you get the Aluminum one, its cheaper and sounds as good as the SS one.
    All of these DAPS have WiFi and can be OTA updated.
    If you care, they also do MQA including Tidal Masters MQA.
     
    Last edited: Aug 13, 2020
  19. limesoft

    limesoft Friend

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    The Fiio M11 Pro with Neutron music player app is a different animal.. seems the Fiio Music App is doing some dsp to make things sound more treble forward and aggressive in a weird hifi passive-aggressive way (smooth mids - hot treble). The neutron player make things more neutral/smooth and I much prefer it this way. There's bit of that AK velvet sound in the uber smooth mids, but they are very wide and resolving anyway so I don't mind it, especially as they smooth out my hd650 a bit - like a tube amp.

    So my opinion on the Fiio dap has changed - as long as you have neutron player installed and using balanced out, I can recommend it.

    * It has smooth/velvety but detailed mids

    * very large soundstage with accurate instrument placement

    * tight and fast transients bass without mid bass bloat, there's a generous offering too.

    * not a hint of grain (more so than any of my other sources, including the ZX507)- I'm not used to this completely grain free tone, it's kinda strange at first, too clean almost!?

    * did I say fast transients.

    * can still be a touch lively up top here and there like when piano notes strike it can jump at me a bit - I'm used to the Sony organic sound so I'm very sensitive to forwardness, but I can't say that this is a big problem, unlike with the Fiio music app where it's definitely too aggressive up top

    * Treble is very resolving and accurate, toned down to neutral level thanks to Neutron player. I'm treble sensitive and relegated the Fiio to my drawer thanks to their crappy music app, not the case anymore/

    - as a bonus Neutron player eq is extremely fully featured and good sounding- you can do anything you like! I have some headphone correction presets in it. The Fiio music app eq is shit

    So currently the M11 Pro is getting more ear time than my ZX507 - it sounds more technically capable with my HD650; bass reaches deeper/tighter the headphones come awake with better transients, and soundstage is larger, more resolution in general, mids are smoothed out a bit which I prefer with solid state.

    Will see how things go - I'm bit of a DAP slut, so I might go back to my ZX507 in a couple of weeks..
     
    Last edited: Sep 12, 2020
  20. rhythmdevils

    rhythmdevils MOT: rhythmdevils audio

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    the .5 ohm output impedance kind of ruins the HiBy for me as it would be used for CA iem’s which need 2-3. Gotta look into the others you mentioned.
     

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