The problem with a player is that you are carrying an extra device. But then it really depends on your requirement level. I think that the best in terms of quality delivered is having a player. But for good enough, I think a phone with DAC is perfect. I haven't bought one with my new phone...

At the end I have chosen the Xiaomi Rednote 11S that is quite affordable (170€) and offers Bluetooth LDAC (so I am not using an extra DAC). I am using Poweramp App as a player and I am very satisfied of both.

Dear Unknown, Thank you very much for your reply! That is perfect! And what a nice review, I can now make my best choice! Cheers!

Dear Dunring, Thank you for your reply. Yes, the LG G7 ThinQ is quite attractive but unfortunately I am a bit unwilling to invest in a LG phone knowing that they have stopped producing them. Furthermore, as I keep my phone for many years, I prefer to buy one that is the most recent. Thank you!

Dear all, I have to change my very old Android phone. So far I listen my music on a FiiO M9 or use a DAC Fiio E18 with my phone which it is quite heavy. I need to precise that I have a limited budget for my phone (max 400€) searching for the lightest Android phone with the lowest DAS. So, if I...

Dear properlydeafnd, thank you very much for the advise. I have checked and it seems quite interesting. So I will start with the trial version and see how it goes!!

Thank you! Interesting to learn that the expression is not French but from Italy in the 17th century!! Nice your WTC website many interesting information!

Dear m-i-c-k-e-y, thank you very much for your comment. The soft seems very serious and good. So, I keep the link. But today, I first try to find a soft only dedicated to ID tags management (if possible). Thanks!

Dear Roseval, thank you for your comments. Concerning APE, I was not on the compression format but on the APE tag used in music files: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/APE_tag So, it seams that it is somewhere in the file but I haven't seen anything like that going into the metadata with Mp3tag and...

Dear friends, I have decided to shift from iTunes to MusicBee (windows 8.1). I would like to take advantage of it for erasing and cleaning some tags of my music files. 1. A part of my library is in aac, the other one in mp3. 2. Along the years, I have properly tagged all my files with iTunes...

I bit scary no? They are supposed to give you correct answers... But I will follow you advise!! :-) Thanks!

Ok, thank you for the input! Yes, apparently there is no limitation any more on the Fiio (confirmed by them for X3 and X5 and by you on X2). I know that few years ago there were one on the X1 (my own experience). But with a large library come the need of a powerful enough system not to be stuck...

Ok great. Thank you!

Yes, you are probably right even if I think that music lovers after 25 years of collecting music they necessarily end up with a large library. And I think that for some of us it might be even more complicated because on my side, I have made the choice to compress the files... ;-) Yes, that is...

Thank you very much Tinnutus for your feedback and advise! The AK Jr was tempting... but then no! I think that now I will definitely choose an Android based DAP and increase my budget. The HiBy R6 seems very interesting even maybe a bit big and heavy for me. But let's see what is coming out in...

Here are some answers received: - From Fiio customer service: "Theoretically, there's no limit on the number of files that the X3MKIII and X5III can manage in the library. But kindly note that when working with a very large music library, the player might get slow on response." - From an Astell...

Dear Dulalala, thank you very much, you have raised a very good point! I haven't really payed attention to the Android based DAP because they are mainly for top of the line devices. But it deserves that investigate that option!! Thanks!! :-)

Unfortunately, it doesn't work like that! My problem is not a storage capacity. My problem is a Firmware limitation. Even if I have my 30,000 files on the 200 gb SD card, only the maximum amount of files allowed by the firmware will appear in the library. Examples: - Shanling M2s and M3s: max...

Dear MA, two years ago the X1 was limited to 5,800 songs. I doubt that they have passed to 30,000 since then. But I just send an email to Fiio asking for the X3 and X5.

Dear friends, I have decided to shift from iTunes to MusicBee (windows 8.1). I would like to take advantage of it for erasing and cleaning some tags of my music files. 1. A part of my library is in aac, the other one in mp3. 2. Along the years, I have properly tagged all my files with iTunes...

Dear MA thank you for your reply. Unfortunately, I don't want to have multiple cards. My bliss since 25 years of collecting various types of music is to listen my entire library in random which my iPod Classic do perfectly up to now. I want the same but with a non Apple product. So, a DAP with a...

Dear friends, All DAPs I was interested in are managing libraries with less than 20,000 audio files. Do you have any suggestion for a DAP able to manage 30,000 files below 350$? If it has Bluetooth 4.0, that will be perfect!! Thank you so much! Laurent