There's never a final answer of course, but to me it sounds that the DX260 ticks most of your boxes at the moment... until you change a requirement or you're willing to spend more. As I said, you can't do wrong with the 260.

Price, size, neutrality, detail. That all speaks for the DX260 at the moment. If you want to paint something, most people begin with a white sheet of paper, some want something different and they take a sepia or other colored paper to begin with... and that's totally fine because your choice is...

You just made your choice actually :wink:

Guess you have several DSD options in the A8 output menus (depending what output you select e.g. SPDIF, USB, HDMI, XLR, Wireless,...). For example: D2P（DSD to PCM）：DSD decoding with PCM output. DOP：（DSD over PCM）：Transmitting DSD through PCM Native（DSD native）：Direct output of DSD My...

Don't fall for the argument "I don't care about output power because I'll only use IEMs with a DAP." There are IEMs which are pretty hard to drive for just 300- 700 mW on the PO port. My conclusion by reading a lot of reviews is, that if you wanna have sort of a future proof DAP, it should...

Sure! my goal was to find an android based neutral sounding DAP in the price range between 500 and 1000€ M15S: A friend of mine has it and it was for sure enough to be happy with, but the M23 was just to be released and the M15S was a tiny bit of an older model (OS wise) so I wanted to wait...

Yes, but I explicitly asked for it, since it was not on the Aune Europe shop-homepage. So the boss there was so nice and sent it even for free. But in general, the stand is not automatically included. Guess it's first come first serve as long stock lasts.

By looking at your case, my DX260 just told me, that he feels naked and ashamed. :scream::joy: Awesome case, congratz! :metal: How long did it take? Any additional customs fees or taxes to pay?

These were an impulsive and also blind buy, since you just cannot try them out anywhere here in Europe. For me, they just seem to be an ultra luxury for these ~20% of bass heavy music I maximally listen to, but since you're here, you know that they are just not made to play every kind of genre...

What a nice combo and truly very well spent 300 bucks: AR5000 with Aune's newly offered 4.4 mm balanced cable hooked up on an iBasso DX260

For me it was the exact same decision between M15S, M23, R6 Pro II, R6 III, or the DX260. Glad I chose the right one:

One of my reference headphone test tracks, I guess I never shared here so far:

Sorry for nearly "spamming" the thread with my posts here, but I am just so happy with the purchase of the 260 :L3000: Here's an excerpt of a review from Alex Schiffer over at majorhifi.com: "Sound Impressions Players from iBasso contain some of my favorite sound reproduction for these devices...

First, I'd like to quote jamato8 on that topic, he seems to have a short but very telling comparison which I don't, since I never had the chance to A/B thge 170. But what I definitely can tell you is that the 260 is even enthusiastically rendering textured, energetic/tight bass... when it's in...

What I like in the DX260 is, that it doesn't really alter the intended sound signature of an attached headphone. It's so close to neutral and well resolving that you truly get what the sound engineers wanted their developed headphone to sound.

Sound news review is out:

MM would be indeed very interesting, since they are in the same price range as the SM and maybe someone is willing to trade them in for my SM, they're still like new with only 20-30 hours on them?

No, unfortunately not, but you're right, I have an eye on them but I'm not willing to spend that much .. yet 😆 Tbh, my next acquisition likely is the Dunu SA6 MkII 🤔

After about 20+ hours of listening to the SMs (right from the start with Type E tips) with my DX260 (which is even quite a neutrally tuned DAP), I came to the conclusion that we both don't get along with each other. Strange, I usually love some good bass in IEMs but that was just too much for me...

Yeah, I also was nearly shocked when I had to look up the lyrics to that song... but something like that, nowadays, where western countries like to establish an extreme conservative society (rooting from the left, believe it or not), it is a small miracle that such lyrics still are allowed to...

My go-to heavy bass song is "Aphex Twin - Produk 29" ....if you want to destroy your gear 😂😬😉

And another YT review of the Aurora's from today:

If, by any chance, you're missing something new from Erykah Badu, Yazmin Lacey is the way to get your dose. Such a joy to listen to Yazmin's groove and awesomeness:

Perfectly described, @seanwee :beerchug: I just love the DX260 for being a "chameleon" among the DAPs I heard (or quickly was able to try out)... and with chameleon I mean, that it is basically a neutral player leaning into being close to analytic, but it manages to not overwhelm with an...

You could play around with the slow roll off filter, gives the DAP a fraction of warmth (begins to roll off a bit below 20kHz already). It costs a tiny bit of headspace and precision, but might sound better to you according to your sound impressions. Also you could try FIR 2x or 4x to equalize...