Well - I listened to the 380 in Munich
as well as to the AK100 Jr,
the Hifiman 901S,
the new X5
and the Questyle QPr1 Prototype.
(Sorry for the Picture quality - I only had my cell phone with me)
I do not have a 240 but an old modded AK100 (first edition - modded to 0 Ohm) so I cannot do A to B with the 380.
I listened to the 380 with Laylas and Angies because JHA shared the booth with AK. Honestly speaking I cannot judge the 380 as I just couldn't get a good seal with the Layla or the Angie.
I did like what I heard but I also must say that I was really impresed by the sound quality of the 901S (and the Questyle). Hifiman to me is an example for a company generating products for audiophiles and also keeping their "older" customers (Meaning customers who have been with them for a while and using older products) highly valued. Why?
As far as I have been told the 901S has been designed in such a way that You can use your existing amp cards from the older model in the 901S. Also they plan to offer the 901 customers a possibility to get their 901 "reshelled" to the new design. I think this is good customes service and worth mentioning! Also the 901S will accept 1 SD Card and uses 2 ESS 9018 DAC chips. The battery life may be too short - they say it can play up to 9 hours. It could drive the new HE1000 to very satisfying levels and with authority. This combination was very tempting.
The 901S together with its dock will cost less than or around 2000 Euro. (and I think it looks much better - than the old 901 though not good yet)
The Questyle QP1 will be available on the market in some weeks - They will improve the scroll wheel and the somewhat fiddly volume button before. The UI and the handling is very much ipod like but it was receptive and fast.
This player will also be very competitive, I believe. It sounded fantastic, and was even able to drive a HD800 though I believe it will still sound better with an amp. Afaik the price will be around 600 Euro for the kower end model and 900 Euro for the QP1R. They claim to use a pure class A circuitry and use a patented "Current Mode Amplification". Impedance will be 0,19 Ohm and it plays DSD up to DSD128. it will have a 3.5 '' combined optical and line out and a 3.5'' headphone output. It will have only 16 GB Storage on board but accept 2 MicroSD cards (up to 128 GB). The battery is a 3.300 mAh, 3.7 V LiPo unit.
It will be produced by Foxconn so we can expect a quality build.
The X5 II now also employs the new design of the X3 II and X1 - so they all look very similar now.
I believe there was no change regarding the interior qualities of the player.
A player that surprised me soundwise was the AK Junior - I must say this DAP sounded very very good for its price position inside AK - I was not able to hear differences between the AK100 II and the Junior- but of course in difficult listening conditions.
And for those who are interested in completely new stuff - there was a new Player Prototype from a company named Consonnance (The Opera Audio) - the Suzanne. It supports up to 32 bit -384 kHz, plays basically all file types and especially DSD natively (they said so). Unfortunately it only offers one TF Card (that's what they write) up to 128 GB. It sounded very good - but there were no tracks that I knew well enough to compare and I had no card with me.
This player is pretty huge - felt more like a brick in my hands and also weighs more than 300 gr. Definitely not for the pocket - but I think this is a promising start, maybe there will be more interesting players from this company
