I received N3 Ultra today and used it for about 90 minutes on my evening commute home. I walked from my office to the train, sat on the train and then walked from the train to my house. There was no audible microphonics or ringing, to my ears at least. I used the player on Tube timbre - Classic, Medium Gain, 42 vol, 4.4mm balanced out, and listened to 96/24 and 44.1/16 ALAC tracks with the screen off using the Sony MDR-1AM2 headphones. Battery went down from 95% to 78%.
I had the N3 Pro a few years ago, and based on what I remember, everything about the Ultra is better. Build quality seems better, the volume wheel isn't wobbly like it was on the Pro. Screen is much better, responsiveness is much better. The Snapgdragon CPU with the 2GB of RAM makes a huge difference compared to the Pro. It's not going to run as smoothly as the DAPs with the 665 and 4GB of RAM, but for a music only player it is more than sufficient. I was able to import my m3u playlists and was able to play them with no problem.
While I ordered the blue leather case, and its beautifully made, protects the player well, I actually really like the included silicone case. It doesn't add as much bulk to an already thick player, it offers good protection even to the top of the player (with the leather case the top of the player is exposed) and its best feature, you have access to the micro SD card slot, which is huge for me.
@Andykong I have some requests for future firmware updates.
- First, would be being able to sort the artist category by Album Artist, not just Artist.
- Next would be to be able to choose to scan short songs. I listen to full albums, and occasionally they will have interludes, or other short tracks under 1min. None of those scanned, so those albums are incomplete unless I play them from folder mode.
One problem I am running into is that many of the little artwork squares are not showing the artwork in the Album category, and Artist > Album category. This is not an issue with other DAPs I have that run Hiby software. I know the artwork is embedded into the file correctly, because when I click into the album I see the artwork, and when I play a song, the album art displays correctly on the player screen.