Ok, quick write up here. I'm not an audiophile just a music lover.
I've only used the player for maybe 45-60 minutes but some quick observations.
I tested the player with the B&W PX7's. Rock solid connection, no issues at all. However the lack of any bluetooth EQ I suppose is a bit of a pain. I listen to rock and blues and that kind of music can benefit from a more "warmer" signature (for me anyway). So there is tonnes of detail on APTX HD but maybe a little tiring on the ears after a while it's needs to be a bit more smoother (if that makes sense). Maybe I'll adjust to it. No shortage of bass though, listened to some R&B and the headphones played the lower bass really nicely, kicked hard no problem at all.
Bizarrely the Pioneer 300R outputted the EQ sound settings via Bluetooth. Maybe that is one of the rare players that did. Maybe A&K will allow this in a future update.
Wifi works fine for me, no issues at all. I don't stream much though, I can use an iPad or iPhone for that, but on Tidal I had no issues. I tend to always use music on a sd card, purely because I'm travelling a lot and Wi-Fi is not always available.
I used a Sandisk Ultra Micro SD card 1TB (the gold coloured range). 16,000 tracks took about 20-25 minutes to completely upload to the player. Some tracks are a bit messed up on punctuation, but maybe I missed those before, For example. It's shows as It?!£">s instead. Need to check. All album artwork is there and hi-res files are picked up fine.
Tested out with the Sennheiser 660S this morning, about two thirds volume needed (so huge improvement over the Pioneer which was maxed out on both the 660S's and the AKG N40's). I tried out some jazz, played with the EQ and set a more V shape. Truly sublime, really nice. Launched the 1917 Soundtrack in Hi-Res. The final piece "Come Home". The hairs on the back of my neck stood up, the real emotion of the music comes through. Very nice as well.
I had no issues with sound distortion or connection issues at all but I'll listen some more this evening.
I wasn't sure at first if I would keep the player or return it, purely because I know when I'm on the plane or train I would opt for Bluetooth (usually because I don't want to accidently pull on a headphone lead). The kind of clinical sound they were producing wasn't nice to me at first, just different.
Nice features....
The player remembers the tracks, on some player apps I tried on the Pioneer they would catalogue the music every time you started the app, so you had to wait 5 minutes before you could listen to anything, so I just stuck with the Pioneer player.
Fast response time to user inputs, software is more or less well designed. Not an iOS experience for sure but good enough.
The extra headroom in the amp is really useful, I was using a Fiio amp with the Pioneer but it had no balanced output and just was a lot to carry around.
Battery seems to be good, listened for an hour last night, only lost 3% so that's ok.
Headphone sockets feel nice and strong. The Pioneer ones never broke on me but I was always very careful as they felt fragile.
Bluetooth and Wi-Fi seem solid so far, no issues.
Not so nice features...
For a player this expensive, it should have an OLED display.
Ok for me, but I can see some users being unable to read the screen type as it's very small on certain screens.
It does get very warm, mind you with the cold weather it's a nice hand warmer! lol
I would like an EQ output via Bluetooth, even a basic one.
I'll maybe add more to this when I listen some more but ok so far.
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