This is my first really good quality Digital Audio Player. I have used a range of Audiophile headphones on it.
If you're used to digital Sony Walkmans of days gone by you will recognize the simple, efficient, responsive user interface (a pleasure to use), and appreciate the range of different ways to tweak audio settings, although I prefer to leave them off (apart from the equalizer) to achieve a natural sound. Also this can play videos and display photos, though the portable, non touchscreen nature of this makes these features pretty useless in practice. This is a very sturdily built yet lightweight player. The SD card slot allows you to expand the rather limited internal memory up to 128GB more for what is these days a very cheap price, and file transfer is very easy as the player and SD card show up in "My Computer" as external hard drives. All popular file formats are supported.
The immense battery life on these is why it has the edge on every other Hi-Res audio player as I can go a week of listening for several hours a day at high volumes before the battery goes empty.
The Sound quality is very good, providing a lot of intricate detail other players miss, realistic tones, a wide soundstage, and clean, controlled bass. Sony has obviously put a lot of work into the S Master Digital to Analogue Converter and Amp must be really good for the price. Don't get me wrong, however, I know Astell and Kern stuff would put this to shame.
I don't use Hi-Res Audio and these work well even with high-bitrate MP3s,CD standard FLACs and AAC files and show how good lossy can be, although obviously the pre loaded HR sample files sound great.
The 10+10 mW headphone jack output can drive all of my relatively efficient headphones to enjoyable volumes, however anything above 40 ohms impedence will not be driven to anything resembling a "loud" or "exciting" volume, and frankly for anything above a 50-ohm Sennheiser 598 you will need a strong headphone amplifier/DAC to take the clean WM-digital-port signal to get even adequate volume, so that's about 80% of BeyerDynamics out of the window! And isn't the point of this to be small and portable, which my FiiO E17 certianly isn't , not in my pocket! Having said that my M50X and MSR7 work a treat on this! I imagine Sennheiser Momentums would do well with this, given they are only 18 Ohm.
I rarely use the Bluetooth on this but when I do, it seems to work OK over short distances.
In Short this is a good value purchase for a budget audiophile. However after 2 years I have already upgraded to an Onkyo DP-X1 which is a significant step up in most ways.
If you're used to digital Sony Walkmans of days gone by you will recognize the simple, efficient, responsive user interface (a pleasure to use), and appreciate the range of different ways to tweak audio settings, although I prefer to leave them off (apart from the equalizer) to achieve a natural sound. Also this can play videos and display photos, though the portable, non touchscreen nature of this makes these features pretty useless in practice. This is a very sturdily built yet lightweight player. The SD card slot allows you to expand the rather limited internal memory up to 128GB more for what is these days a very cheap price, and file transfer is very easy as the player and SD card show up in "My Computer" as external hard drives. All popular file formats are supported.
The immense battery life on these is why it has the edge on every other Hi-Res audio player as I can go a week of listening for several hours a day at high volumes before the battery goes empty.
The Sound quality is very good, providing a lot of intricate detail other players miss, realistic tones, a wide soundstage, and clean, controlled bass. Sony has obviously put a lot of work into the S Master Digital to Analogue Converter and Amp must be really good for the price. Don't get me wrong, however, I know Astell and Kern stuff would put this to shame.
I don't use Hi-Res Audio and these work well even with high-bitrate MP3s,CD standard FLACs and AAC files and show how good lossy can be, although obviously the pre loaded HR sample files sound great.
The 10+10 mW headphone jack output can drive all of my relatively efficient headphones to enjoyable volumes, however anything above 40 ohms impedence will not be driven to anything resembling a "loud" or "exciting" volume, and frankly for anything above a 50-ohm Sennheiser 598 you will need a strong headphone amplifier/DAC to take the clean WM-digital-port signal to get even adequate volume, so that's about 80% of BeyerDynamics out of the window! And isn't the point of this to be small and portable, which my FiiO E17 certianly isn't , not in my pocket! Having said that my M50X and MSR7 work a treat on this! I imagine Sennheiser Momentums would do well with this, given they are only 18 Ohm.
I rarely use the Bluetooth on this but when I do, it seems to work OK over short distances.
In Short this is a good value purchase for a budget audiophile. However after 2 years I have already upgraded to an Onkyo DP-X1 which is a significant step up in most ways.
