The littlest of the 3 M models sent to me to review. At a very respectable $150(ish) I’ve a lot of high hopes for this to be a great entry point for those just starting out getting into audiophilia or the audio hobby. But of course I must give a heartfelt thank you to Shanling to approving me to be a part of this tour. I really enjoyed my time with these units and am glad to be able to share my opinions with others who’ll give me their time.
A little about me
I would like to say that first and foremost I am NOT an “audiophile” but rather an audio enthusiast. I listen to music to enjoy it. Do I prefer a lossless source? Yes, of course. But I can still be very happy streaming from Pandora or even my YouTube “My Mix” playlist. I also prefer equipment that sounds the best to me personally regardless of what frequency response it has or rather or not it's “sonically accurate” and I always have and shall continue to encourage others to do the same.
I'm a 26 year old firefighter, for the City of Concord, North Carolina as well as the U.S. Army North Carolina National Guard. The cliché of wanting to do this since I was born couldn't be more present with me. I've worked hard over the last several years to earn this position and now it's time for me to work even harder to keep it.
My interests/hobbies are powerlifting, fishing and relaxing to audio products and reviewing them to help other decide on what products would work for them. Few things make me as an audio enthusiast/review feel more accomplished than when someone tells me that I helped them find the type of sound they've always been looking for.
Now, the sound signature I personally favor is a relaxing, warm and sensual sound that just drifts me away in the emotional experience of the music being performed. Yes, accuracy is still important but I will happily sacrifice some of that if I'm presented with a clean, warm sound that can wisp me away into an experience that makes me yearn for more.
My ideal signature are that of respectably forward mids and upper bass range with the bass being controlled but with some slight decay. I like my treble to have nice extension and detail reveal with a smooth roll off up top as to not become harsh in the least. Examples of products that have given me chills and keep giving me the yearning for more feels are the (in no particular order) Bowers & Wilkins P7, Oppo PM-1/2, Empire Ears Hermes VI & Zeus XIV, Audeze LCD-XC, Meze Headphones 99 Classics.
I would like to say that first and foremost I am NOT an “audiophile” but rather an audio enthusiast. I listen to music to enjoy it. Do I prefer a lossless source? Yes, of course. But I can still be very happy streaming from Pandora or even my YouTube “My Mix” playlist. I also prefer equipment that sounds the best to me personally regardless of what frequency response it has or rather or not it's “sonically accurate” and I always have and shall continue to encourage others to do the same.
I'm a 26 year old firefighter, for the City of Concord, North Carolina as well as the U.S. Army North Carolina National Guard. The cliché of wanting to do this since I was born couldn't be more present with me. I've worked hard over the last several years to earn this position and now it's time for me to work even harder to keep it.
My interests/hobbies are powerlifting, fishing and relaxing to audio products and reviewing them to help other decide on what products would work for them. Few things make me as an audio enthusiast/review feel more accomplished than when someone tells me that I helped them find the type of sound they've always been looking for.
Now, the sound signature I personally favor is a relaxing, warm and sensual sound that just drifts me away in the emotional experience of the music being performed. Yes, accuracy is still important but I will happily sacrifice some of that if I'm presented with a clean, warm sound that can wisp me away into an experience that makes me yearn for more.
My ideal signature are that of respectably forward mids and upper bass range with the bass being controlled but with some slight decay. I like my treble to have nice extension and detail reveal with a smooth roll off up top as to not become harsh in the least. Examples of products that have given me chills and keep giving me the yearning for more feels are the (in no particular order) Bowers & Wilkins P7, Oppo PM-1/2, Empire Ears Hermes VI & Zeus XIV, Audeze LCD-XC, Meze Headphones 99 Classics.
Equipment used at least some point during the review
-Headphones
-Beyerdynamic
-T1 second generation
-Amion Home
-Headphones
-Beyerdynamic
-T1 second generation
-Amion Home
Disclaimer
I am by no means sponsored by this company or any of its affiliates. They were kind enough to send me a product for an arranged amount of time in exchange for my honest opinion. I am making no monetary compensation for this review.
The following is my take on the product being reviewed. It is to be taken “with a grain of salt” per say and as I always tell people, it is YOUR opinion that matters. So regardless of my take or view on said product, I highly recommend you listen to it yourself and gauge your own opinion.
I am by no means sponsored by this company or any of its affiliates. They were kind enough to send me a product for an arranged amount of time in exchange for my honest opinion. I am making no monetary compensation for this review.
The following is my take on the product being reviewed. It is to be taken “with a grain of salt” per say and as I always tell people, it is YOUR opinion that matters. So regardless of my take or view on said product, I highly recommend you listen to it yourself and gauge your own opinion.
The Opening Experience
Why I feel so strongly about the initial unboxing experience
Please allow me to explain why I feel so strongly about the initial unboxing experience with a product. Maybe it’s due to my southern roots in the hills of eastern Kentucky, but I’ve always been raised under the pretense of when you introduce yourself to someone for the first time you present yourself with confidence, class, character, pride, and competence. You greet the other person with a true warm smile, eye contact and a firm handshake. Anything less or short implies to other person that you either don’t care about them, are too full of yourself, too busy to be bothered by the likes of them, or worse, just generally disrespectful.
As a consumer, I take this same belief to when I open a new product. Why? Because think about it this way. How else can a company introduce themselves to their customers? How do they present their products? Are they packaged with pride and presented in such a way that makes the listener eager to listen to them? Or maybe they’re just wrapped up and placed in an available space. How about the box itself? Is it bogged down with jargon that says look at this, look what I can do. I’m better than anything on the market and here’s why read this and check out that. Or, is the package clean, simplistic and classy? As if saying to the customer ‘Good day, pleasure to meet your acquaintance. Please give me a listen and allow me to show you what I can do and allow my actions to speak louder than my words.’
This is why I feel so strongly about the initial presentation of a product, and I feel it’s truly a shame more people don’t. But with all that aside, let’s discuss how this products introduced itself shall we?
Please allow me to explain why I feel so strongly about the initial unboxing experience with a product. Maybe it’s due to my southern roots in the hills of eastern Kentucky, but I’ve always been raised under the pretense of when you introduce yourself to someone for the first time you present yourself with confidence, class, character, pride, and competence. You greet the other person with a true warm smile, eye contact and a firm handshake. Anything less or short implies to other person that you either don’t care about them, are too full of yourself, too busy to be bothered by the likes of them, or worse, just generally disrespectful.
As a consumer, I take this same belief to when I open a new product. Why? Because think about it this way. How else can a company introduce themselves to their customers? How do they present their products? Are they packaged with pride and presented in such a way that makes the listener eager to listen to them? Or maybe they’re just wrapped up and placed in an available space. How about the box itself? Is it bogged down with jargon that says look at this, look what I can do. I’m better than anything on the market and here’s why read this and check out that. Or, is the package clean, simplistic and classy? As if saying to the customer ‘Good day, pleasure to meet your acquaintance. Please give me a listen and allow me to show you what I can do and allow my actions to speak louder than my words.’
This is why I feel so strongly about the initial presentation of a product, and I feel it’s truly a shame more people don’t. But with all that aside, let’s discuss how this products introduced itself shall we?
Again, Shanling continues their simplistic unboxing experience by making the consumer anxious to open and experience the product for themselves. The outer box, like its M2s brother, only has an outline of the dap laying inside. The sides only show the Shanling name and logo, and the back does have some writing about the features present on the M1 but with respect to the M1’s price I can most certainly look past it. In this price point there’s a LOT of competition and Shanling having the confidence in its M1 to only put a sentence or two on the box to describe it (albeit in multiple different languages), to me, says a lot.
As you open the box you’re greeted by a brief manual of what the buttons do, but directly under it lies the well placed and framed Shanling M1 sitting centered and recessed in its cut out foam housing. Laying underneath the M1 housing is where you’ll find the type C charging cable, warranty and instruction manual, and a screen protector. So I feel that Shanling did gave a great presentation and a firm handshake with their M1 dap. Truthfully I was expecting a lot of clear, cheap, plastic with this product but Shanling gave it the same level of care as their other, more expensive, dap offerings (that I’ve been able to review).
Construction
The build quality of the Shanling M1 is something that I personally was very impressed by. Again, the M1 goes for roughly $150 and from experience products of this price rarely uphold any premium features to them. They traditionally are to introduce consumers to their brand and give them a taste of what they could have with more money. Shanling I’m proud to say did their customers right. The M1 is made with the same aluminum and glass body that their more expensive M2s and M3s brothers are. The M1 is very light weight and very compact, this for most is a very convenient thing, but I honestly like my products to have a little weight and size to them. But this little guy can very easily fit into just about any pocket you’d want it to.
I will say however that the button layout through me off some. Due to the M1’s smaller size the button layout had to be reworked a little bit. The top of the dap instead of a power button holds the selector wheel (that I personally like better than the other models use). This is the main thing that through me off because you have to actually push in on the side of the wheel in order to make your selection to whatever it is you’re wanting the M1 to do. And that’s also kind of a bad thing as well. More times than I would’ve understood, when I went to select something, do to the nature of the button, the M1 would scroll to another option as I’m pushing in on the button which caused me to have to go back and try and reselect the desited option again. After a while I got used to it but it still irritated me when it happened.
The left side of the M1, going from the top down, is where you’ll find the go back, track previous, and track forward buttons. The right side of the M1 is where the power button is. And finally the bottom is where you’ll find the up to 256gb microSD card slot, type C charging port, and the 3.5mm aux port.
Features
The M1 features the exact same features as its two more expensive brothers. That being the bluetooth 4 with AptX and HiBy wireless connection so you can control your M1 via your phone (app download required). Like I’ve said in the other 2 reviews, I can see this as a cool feature and may be beneficial in certain circumstances but, to me, I can just as easily pull out the M1 to change tracks etc… as I can my phone. But the feature that I really enjoyed is the ability to connect a combi unit (amp/dac) via the usb port and have the M1 be an interface.
Sound
The sound is something that while listening to it I actually looked at others reviews to see if I was hearing what I was hearing. What I mean by this is that both the M2s and M3s models presented a very neutral sound that, to my ears, didn’t offer any coloration to the sound. But with the M1, the sound is notably warmer and thus, to my personal tastes, more musical. Thankfully it seems others shared my findings as well so I wasn’t losing my mind. But as I said the music through the M1 was given a pleasant amount of warmth to it which I personally rather enjoy. The detail of the tracks still shown through surprisingly clearer than what I would’ve thought on a model of this price point. On mobile friendly headphones, I don’t think any detail would’ve been missed and users would enjoy being treated to small nicks of audio they’ve never heard before (on power hungry headphones like the T1 etc… not so much).
My issue still remains with having to scroll through SEVERAL pages of items to get to the artist, song, folder, etc… that I’m wanting to get to. There has to be a way for more optimal shortcuts to be added in.
But overall I am EXTREMELY satisfied with what Shanling did with their M1 dap. For only $150(ish) the sound quality is fantastic and rivals that of several products costing much more. On a personal note, the sound of the M1 was my personal favorite of the 3 models I’ve tried (if only it had a balanced output [but now I’m asking WAY too much for this price]).
Conclusion
My overall thoughts on the Shanling M1 is that it’s pretty much exactly what I look for in a true introductory product. It maintains the lion's share of what makes their higher end product great but is no lightweight itself. I’m able to listen to any, reasonable, headphone respectably with the M1 and though there’s a definite loss of potential when being used with higher power needs headphones the M1 still does a fantastic job. I’d strongly recommend the Shanling M1 to those who’re wanting to dip their toes into the audio hobby and are skittish about spending a lot of money.
Also, make sure to check out my unboxing and review videos. They’re pretty awesome AND you getta put a face to the Army-Firedawg name. If this review helped you out at all please hit that thumbs up button for it really helps me out a lot. Till next time my friends, stay safe.