Hi all. I'm getting slowly back into the hobby and was looking for a good bargain with a dap+iem to supplement my somewhat aging gear that sits unused in my home.
As I am digitizing my whole 30+ years worth of vinyls and cds so I wanted a somewhat good source for uncompressed audio.
The Agptek H1 (aigo 108) reviewed by kalo86 got me inspired, so in a moment of compulsion i took an H1 and pair of zircons and a pair of mula off Amazon.
I tough you might want to hear my impressions. There's a lot of good things about this dap and a few bad possible dealbreakers.
First of all, the H1 has a very sturdy construction. Feels heavy and nice in the hand and gives you a desire to just hold it while walking, or throw it in your jeans pockets and forget about it.
First thing I did was to update the software to the latest available (1.30.04, dated 2016-06-30). The procedure is simple so I won't deal with it here.
The software is not bad. The UI can do with some working, but in general it's very responsive and there's no delay after keypresses.
The navigation in simple. You get a choice of "All Songs", "Artists", "Albums", "Genres", "Playlists" and "Folder". Basically all are useless but Folder and Playlists.
The titles in all but folders are limited to 12 characters (ouch!). Generating the list the first time will stop the music and you'll have to wait.
Navigating the folders is better, where names are limited to 28 characters. This is not too bad, but still not enough for the folks like me who tend to use long, descriptive names.
For the folders, there is no sorting on the fly. The names come up in whatever order are in the directory. You'll need to use a FAT sorter on your computer if you want them in any specific order.
The screen is nice and bright. The "playing now" page could use some work. The album pictures are too small and there's too much wasted space on the screen that could be used for showing bigger cover art, and more information like format (I.e. FLAC 24/48 and not just FLAC) etc.
Ok, enough about the software, you want to head about the hardware and the music right ?
All I can say is: Not bad at all. Excellent for the money, but bear with me.
I'll start by repeating what was already said for the H1+Zircons and H1+Mulas.
The zircons are really "bassy" and distinctively heavier than the Mulas. The Mulas feel more open and airy. Mids and Highs are similar and neutral. The sound stage is wide and instruments are steady and precise. In the bass region the Mulas are more neutral and I would say "correct" for a monitor. The Zircons are overpowering there but manage to stay clean and tight. There's little (if any) leaks in the lower mids.
With that off, let's go back to the H1. It spots two outputs. A headphone and a Line-Out. Any difference between the two ? You bet, and a big one too. A nice feature is that the line-out can be set to follow the volume knob. Did I say that the knob and the fine control for output level are the best feature in the H1 ? It's superb.
Ok back to business. I was saying that there's a difference. The Line-out is very neutral. I bet it's flat and totally capable of driving an amp or a small IEM like the RZ and the RM. It's a perfect match for the portable amp or even that big bad box sitting on my bench.
On the contrary, the phone-out sounds like a "loundness" switch was turned on. The bass mids and highs are noticeably higher. The feeling is like an EQ is turned on with a W curve setting. Retrieval stays generally good and I cannot say bad things about this except that all fells a little unnatural. This is specially true with the Zircons where the bass region starts to be felt physically (your ears move).
So what this is good for is to adapt the dap to the hp used. Sometimes it's better to use the lineout and sometimes it's better to use the phone out. PO is also usefull when listening at very low volumes (like at night) as different frequencies come out different depending on the volume.
I tried a couple other phones, namely some old PX100-II and an old HD495S whose sound I like a lot. Why I use such old stuff ? Because I know how it's supposed to sound and can tell immediately what's going on.
The HD495 is a power hungry beast. It's hard to make it sound nicely without a proper amp. The PX100-II instead is easy and with good low extension for the size. They both did OK, but the 495 really needed the PO and higher volumes. I can feel it sucking all juices out of the H1 and wanting more. An external amp is definitely recommended with power hungly phones.
Now for the bad part. The Phone Out of the H1 is noisy! And for noisy I mean they could use a few more filters in the amp stage and could probably route the grounds better to separate the digital part from the dac and the amps. With very efficient IEMs like the Zircons you can clearly hear the cpu generated noise spilling the the audio band.
For this test I use a silence flac but also low volume classical music. It's clearly audible on the intro of Time and DSOTM too. If you play with the screen the noises follow louder. With the screen off they're much less, but still present.
You can't hear this with full size phones. I was thinking of some sort of capacity coupling with the RZ but moving them apart and orienting the cable in different ways makes no difference.
The line out is fortunately not affected.
However, I like this dap. It's a keeper. For the price, you can't do much better and now that amazon has it cheaper than ali and the others, it's a no-brainer.
