HiFiMAN HM-801: An Owner's Guide

HM-801 Owner’s Guide

After owning the HM-801 for about 4 months, I’ve come to know this little piece of machinery pretty well.  It’s gone with me on several cross-country trips, it’s been stuffed into my coat pocket during snow storms, and it generates multiple “Woah, is that a Walkman?!” questions when it sits on my desk at work.

However, it hasn’t always been a smooth journey with my “little black brick.”  As many owners know, the supporting documentation is too brief and clear answers aren’t always forthcoming from Head-Direct’s customer service.  Overall, I’m satisfied with Fang and his support, but there just isn’t a comprehensive well of information that owners and potential buyers can draw from.

That’s what I’m hoping to start building with this thread.  I’m going to post some of my general tips and observations, in the hopes that others will chime in with their tips and suggestions for future firmware updates or even the next generation of HiFiMan.  I’ll update this main post with any useful information that anyone can offer. 

Hope you guys find this helpful. 

General Operation:

I find that the HM-801 is picky about how long you hold down the power button—it won’t boot up sometimes with what seems like a fairly long press of the power button.  Just err on the side of pressing too long; you should hold the button until you hear two distinct “clicks” when the player is properly booted.

Menu Navigation:

One thing that I should have done sooner is remove all of the menu options that I don’t use often, by going to Setting/Main Menu Set.  Doing this saves time, menu button clicks, and battery life.

Holding down the middle button will scroll through a menu in alphabetical order—this is most useful in the Tracks and Cue Lists menus, since folders are not alphabetized in the SD Card and Flash on Board menus.  You may want to consider using a batch renaming program to rename your songs in “Artist – Album – Track # - Song Name” mode to facilitate quick navigation in the Tracks menu.

Holding the top right or bottom right buttons (the "up" and "down" buttons) will scroll automatically, and save you from the annoyance of constant clicking.

To preserve battery life, I suggest immediately going to Setting/LCD Timer and Auto power off and setting these to the smallest increments possible.

Playback:

Since tracks are sometimes not displayed in numerical or alphabetical order within an album folder, there is only one way I know of to play these tracks in order.  Pick the track you want to start with, then reset the player.  Make sure you’re in “Playback Order – Order” mode, then hit the top left button until you see the “Now playing” screen.  It should be on the song you were playing when you powered down.  Now, when you skip forward, it should go in numerical order within that folder.

DAC:

I’ve only used the USB DAC.  I just have 2 tips to offer regarding the DAC:  Don’t plug in your USB cable into the HM-801 until after the HM-801 is fully powered on, and remember to remove your HM-801’s battery if you plan on using it in USB DAC mode for a long time.  The stock AC power supply apparently provides better sound quality than the smaller power supply that is available for purchase separately.

The coax (SPDIF) DAC reportedly sounds better than the USB DAC.  The HM-801 comes with an RCA to 1/8” converter to input into the HM-801’s 1/8” coax jack.

Charging:

The HM-801 can be charged when powered off; in fact, this seems to be the best way to charge, since it won’t be drawing power at the same time.  It seems like a full charge with the power off takes about 4 hours, but I’d like to hear from others on this point.  Some people have noticed that the HM-801 will feel completely cool when it’s fully charged, whereas it will be slightly warm while charging.

Flash Memory:

The HM-801 is very picky about what class and model of SD card is used.  See this thread for posts about which cards work best, although it’s generally agreed that Kingston Class 4 cards are best.  Just be sure to buy from a reputable seller like Newegg; I bought a card from an Amazon Marketplace seller that came in Chinese packaging and it isn't always recognized by the HM-801 and often freezes.

If you do have problems with getting the HM-801 to recognize a memory card, I have found that powering down and reinserting the card, or reinserting the card with the player on, sometimes helps.  If not, then you may have to reconnect the HM-801 in data exchange mode to a computer with the card inside, then choose “Safely Remove” and possibly repeat the “reinsert and reset” tactic.

Traveling Case:

I’m really happy with this case:  It’s compact, has decent protection against drops/bumps, and has a Velcro pocket for carrying interconnects and SD cards.  It's also cheap and carries a lifetime warranty.  The only downside is that the HM-801 can't easily be played while in the case, unless you're using the line-out.

Bugs:

1.  Sometimes, when navigating through files or folders quickly, the menu will jump one level back. 

2.  With certain high-sensitivity/low impedance phones (JH16 and Edition 8 in my experience), an audible ringing sound can be heard when listening from the internal headphone amp and touching the player around the amp module area.

3.  .Cue file playback is inconsistent.  Some cue files will play perfectly, and will allow you to navigate between songs within a large file.  Other .cue files don’t work at all, and will kick you back to the beginning of the very first song if you try to skip forward or back.

4.  I have not gotten any .ape files to play.  They may not be the right class of .ape, but it would be nice if the .ape functionality were better.

5.  Sometimes button presses will not cause any response, until the 2nd or 3rd button press.  This seems to happen most often near the beginning and end of songs.

Suggestions for Improvement:

1.  The order of folders under SD Card and Flash on Board should be in alphabetical order.  Same for the order of tracks within an album folder—sometimes tracks appear in the order in which they were copied into that folder on the SD card.

2.  There should be a “Shuffle All Tracks” option in the main menu.  The only way to shuffle tracks, as far as I know, is to be in random playback mode and pick a track under Tracks.  Strangely, this often leads to hearing the same songs and sometimes even in the same order. 

3.  There should be an ability to delete files straight off the SD card or on-board memory.

4.  The gain of both the stock amp module (version 2) and the GAME card are too high for custom IEMs like the JH16.  This results in channel imbalance at low volumes.

5.  It would be nice to create playlists on the fly, rather than having to rely on the "My Favorites" option. 

6.  The volume control can be hard to reach and adjust, and the high gain means that the volume will jump in large increments.

7.  Users that travel often or don't have easy access to an AC power supply pretty much have to buy an extra battery and the more compact power charger.  Also, users of custom IEMs pretty much have to buy the GAME card to get good volume control without channel imbalance.  I suggest offering these accessories as options to be substituted with the HM-801's stock charger and amp module.

8.  The chassis of the player gets scratched fairly easily, and the gold lettering wears off after a few months of use.

Let me know if I missed anything.  HM-801 owners, unite!

I guess there wasn't much interest in this project to collect knowledge, bugs and suggestions regarding the HM-801?

A few more bugs/suggestions:

• The "My Favorites" list doesn't update itself whenever any of the songs on the list are deleted off the player.  If you try to select a song that has been deleted, it just tries to update (which takes like 10 seconds), then puts you back on the same list.  If you want to shuffle through your favorites, you have to pick a song that you know is still on the player.
• It would be nice if the player remembered where you were navigating in the menus.  From the "Now Playing" screen, if you hit back (the top left button), it should go back to the folder where that file is located, so you could pick another song from that album. 
• If you turn off the player and turn it back on, it should remember that you were playing all Tracks in shuffle mode, so that you could just go to "Now Playing" and resume.  Currently, if you do this it will just shuffle through the tracks in the folder of the song you were playing when you turned off.

Fang told me that deleting songs off the player isn't possible due to hardware limitations.  That may be true, and may be related to why gapless playback isn't possible, but this seems incomprehensible given that the much cheaper and inferior (in terms of hardware) Sansa Clip and Cowon S9/J3 all have the ability to delete files directly off the player.