Andykong, did you have a chance to listen to QLS QA360? If yes, how does it compare to N6?
Yes, I have listened to the QA360 twice, the first time was right when it was launched, I was listening to the first production batch with initial firmware. The second time was about two weeks ago, I was in the middle of testing N6 and I get a short moment with my friend's QA360 just to check things out. I won't call this a detail audition, so please take my comment with a grain of salt (and that's why I didn't mention it in the first place).
I think QA360 is a surprisingly good sounding DAP at its price. It beats DX90 and X5 on audio performance, the moment I put on my favorite test track, I notice QA360 has very good high end extension, very forceful presentation, and the bass is slamming hard. When I gone through my basic 10-tracks audition list, I appreciate the hard core quality of the player, but the emotion of the music is not there. It is not cold but certainly feel hard and a little bit dry when I compare the female vocal tracks with N6 Beta. In addition, the decay is shorter, and the low level details is not as conveying, so I prefer N6 Beta over QA360 for sure, but will N6 justified the extra dollar? I think we'll have to wait and see as (1) We don't exactly know the price different, and (2) Will the production version N6 sounds a lot better then N6 Beta?
QA360 can sound very different when you applied different firmware, and the WAV-only version claims to sound superior, but since I am a FLAC guy, so that is not in my equation when I am comparing DAP.
That's the comparison base on audio performance only, the situation might be different if I factor in other issues such ad the 27mm thick body, text based interface, and click-based control button which is kind of inefficient when I run into a folder with 30 or 50 songs in it. There is one thing I really like about QA360 is that they used SD card instead of the smaller TF (or microSD) card.