[JasonNYC]

Thanks for replying, Luis! I don't know what's happened since the last time I tried, and succeeded, installing xapk on my SR25, and subsequently deleted it. But I can no longer install xapk on my SR25. I go through the process of installing via drag and drop from a finder window to the "Service Folder", and everything looks normal, but it isn't showing up on the SR25. The only things that show up in "Services" are Tidal, Deezer, & V-Link. There is no longer a horizontal division frame, and xapk, or anything I load into the Services Folder (like Apple Music) is not showing up. Has me scratching my head.

If you are installing an xapk file, you need to install the xapk installer first.

https://us.astellnkern.com/apps/help-center#hc-do-astellkern-players-support-xapk-files

 

[tbrobison]

Thanks, Jason! I was installing the wrong version of xapk installer, and I guess that's why it wasn't showing up on my sr25. I used your link and, finally, I'm up and running! Thanks so much! I'm not that familiar with android, being in the Apple universe. It's great having Apple Music installed on the sr25, especially with their upcoming changes to lossless audio. The best of both worlds arrives soon!

 

[tbrobison]

Download .apk files instead of .xapk.
You don't need to uninstall app to install another one, just install both or more

Thanks, Jason! I was installing the wrong version of xapk installer, and I guess that's why it wasn't showing up on my sr25. I used your link and, finally, I'm up and running! Thanks so much! I'm not that familiar with android, being in the Apple universe. It's great having Apple Music installed on the sr25, especially with their upcoming changes to lossless audio. The best of both worlds arrives soon!

For info, in case anyone else is trying to install Apple Music on their SR25, I installed, Apple Music_v3.2.2_apkpure.com.xapk, as suggested by Luis (thanks Luis!). It is working perfectly, so far. I noticed there was a version, 3.5 available, but I have no idea if that works well, or at all.
As far as wifi is concerned, the SR25 has great reception throughout our home, even outside! I haven't tried any wireless headphones (I have both the Sony WH1000XM3 & WF1000XM3) with the SR25's bluetooth ability, yet. Not sure if there's a point to using bluetooth, but glad it's there just in case.

 

[Luis Mad]

For info, in case anyone else is trying to install Apple Music on their SR25, I installed, Apple Music_v3.2.2_apkpure.com.xapk, as suggested by Luis (thanks Luis!). It is working perfectly, so far. I noticed there was a version, 3.5 available, but I have no idea if that works well, or at all.
As far as wifi is concerned, the SR25 has great reception throughout our home, even outside! I haven't tried any wireless headphones (I have both the Sony WH1000XM3 & WF1000XM3) with the SR25's bluetooth ability, yet. Not sure if there's a point to using bluetooth, but glad it's there just in case.

I also have the Sony WH1000XM3 which works wonderfully in Bluetooth ldac with the SR25. Even better, in my opinion, with cable (don’t forget to turn on the headphones) where you can eq the sound. You can tame the excessive bass with eq but only with cable.
i also use the Etymotion ER2XR with Bluetooth module in AptxHd and also works like a charm. Some situations is just so much more convenient not to have the cable.
Generally I prefer to use the SR25 with cable balanced connection with my favourite headphones, the Denon AH-D7200 or with my favourite iems Etymotion ER4XR.

 

[mentega]

is there any plan to implement the bluetooth receiving function (if at all possible)?

 

[tbrobison]

I also have the Sony WH1000XM3 which works wonderfully in Bluetooth ldac with the SR25. Even better, in my opinion, with cable (don’t forget to turn on the headphones) where you can eq the sound. You can tame the excessive bass with eq but only with cable.
i also use the Etymotion ER2XR with Bluetooth module in AptxHd and also works like a charm. Some situations is just so much more convenient not to have the cable.
Generally I prefer to use the SR25 with cable balanced connection with my favourite headphones, the Denon AH-D7200 or with my favourite iems Etymotion ER4XR.

Funny you mention using the cable with the Sony WH's. For almost a year I was only listening wirelessly when using them, and only within the last few months did I start using the cable, mainly connected to my macbook pro(and the fact that the battery hardly takes a hit when turned on), and sometimes with the SR25. My main listening phones for the SR25 are the Meze Solo Rai's via the balanced jack.
Question, when you say, "the Sony WH1000XM3 which works wonderfully in Bluetooth ldac", what does that mean? I'm not up on all the nomenclature terms, but I'm getting there. Is ldac the same as listening to aptxHD? I do listen to music, via blue streaming, from a Node 2i to my WH's. The Node 2i has aptxHD, and the WH's have that ability built in. It's a, as you say, wonderful sound!
All together, I was really hesitant on purchasing the SR25, but man, I'm glad I did. It is the bee's knees!

 

[Luis Mad]

Funny you mention using the cable with the Sony WH's. For almost a year I was only listening wirelessly when using them, and only within the last few months did I start using the cable, mainly connected to my macbook pro(and the fact that the battery hardly takes a hit when turned on), and sometimes with the SR25. My main listening phones for the SR25 are the Meze Solo Rai's via the balanced jack.
Question, when you say, "the Sony WH1000XM3 which works wonderfully in Bluetooth ldac", what does that mean? I'm not up on all the nomenclature terms, but I'm getting there. Is ldac the same as listening to aptxHD? I do listen to music, via blue streaming, from a Node 2i to my WH's. The Node 2i has aptxHD, and the WH's have that ability built in. It's a, as you say, wonderful sound!
All together, I was really hesitant on purchasing the SR25, but man, I'm glad I did. It is the bee's knees!

Hi trobison, the Sr25, although better with cable in my opinion, is pretty well served in Bluetooth tech with all the necessary codecs. It uses various codecs including the LDAC developed by Sony and AptxHD developed by Qualcomm. Also SBC, AAC, aptX™. It seems to me that the implementation is as important as the codec. I believe that at least in theory ldac is the best thing available and used among others by some Sony headphones. Anyway I think Bluetooth works flawlessly in the SR25. I am a big fan of the SR25, so I understand your feelings!
On another matter mentioned by mentega, I would also love to see the SR25 with Bluetooth receiver function!

 

[alpha Q]

Hey all...new to this forum, and I have a question concerning the SR25 with Qobuz vs Tidal 'offline' album listening. I first tried the side-loaded Tidal app with a free trial and downloaded ~347 albums for 'offline' listening. The app was very responsive, and download times were very quick for the 'offline' albums. I wanted to do a test with Tidal vs Qobuz on features etc....so I uninstalled Tidal, side loaded Qobuz, and downloaded the same ~347 albums for 'offline' listening in Qobuz. The download times for the offline albums in Qobuz takes MUCH longer to complete...but I have succeeded. I am now noticing that when I go to play an 'offline' album, it takes around 20 seconds from clicking the album to when the album artwork and play button loads. When I hit the play button, it takes an additional 45 seconds before the track starts playing. Is there a major resource issue between Tidal and Qobuz apks, or am I experiencing some unique issue? I really wanted to go with Qobuz, as I am planning on buying albums for my collection and listening to offline albums to find new music....but this app experience is killing my battery and patience. (****It seems that all the additional loading times associated with Qobuz are definitely having a major negative affect of battery life as well****)

Thanks for any insights...

Joey

I ran Qobuz on my AK, and I think there isn't enough ram to handle the Qobuz app. If I'm browsing for music and downloading at the same time, the app will come to a halt and stop responding.

If I'm lucky, it won't crash but most times it does. The slow album loading also happened to me.

Try playing from the Tracks section instead of Album / Releases. Songs load faster in the track section. There are times where all my imports on Qobuz would disappear on AK. It happens on my Shanling M3X also. So far it is running smoothly on my DX300.

 

[tbrobison]

Hi trobison, the Sr25, although better with cable in my opinion, is pretty well served in Bluetooth tech with all the necessary codecs. It uses various codecs including the LDAC developed by Sony and AptxHD developed by Qualcomm. Also SBC, AAC, aptX™. It seems to me that the implementation is as important as the codec. I believe that at least in theory ldac is the best thing available and used among others by some Sony headphones. Anyway I think Bluetooth works flawlessly in the SR25. I am a big fan of the SR25, so I understand your feelings!
On another matter mentioned by mentega, I would also love to see the SR25 with Bluetooth receiver function!

Hey, thanks for enlightening me, Luis! Always good to know more than I thought I needed to know. Now I just have to keep adding to my audio library.

 

[NCUS]

I ran Qobuz on my AK, and I think there isn't enough ram to handle the Qobuz app. If I'm browsing for music and downloading at the same time, the app will come to a halt and stop responding.

If I'm lucky, it won't crash but most times it does. The slow album loading also happened to me.

Try playing from the Tracks section instead of Album / Releases. Songs load faster in the track section. There are times where all my imports on Qobuz would disappear on AK. It happens on my Shanling M3X also. So far it is running smoothly on my DX300.

Even on my iphone, downloading music from Qobuz is a hassle, so I think it's just not a well optimized program. Updating to Qobuz 5.17 made the program more responsive on my SE200, but I still had to download no more than 100 tracks at one time or Qobuz sometimes crashed. To be fair though, when I had Tidal, downloading music also had some issues.

 

[Luis Mad]

With the announcement of Apple Music going hifi and hires, Amazon has reacted turning the normal subscription into the HD subscription. I my case I have Amazon Prime which is an access limited to a much smaller catalog. I have checked in my Ipad with my Dragonfly that displays different colors depending on source and it was showing than in the classical files that I have tried from Amazon Prime, the quality is al least 24/96 which is the maximum quality available in my Dragonfly. That means I believe it is either 24/96 or could be even 24/192.
I have tried then with the SR25 the sound quality is excellent but, is there a way in Amazon to see what is the quality? Does it display somewhere the type of file? I cannot find it.

 

[rlw6534]

With the announcement of Apple Music going hifi and hires, Amazon has reacted turning the normal subscription into the HD subscription. I my case I have Amazon Prime which is an access limited to a much smaller catalog. I have checked in my Ipad with my Dragonfly that displays different colors depending on source and it was showing than in the classical files that I have tried from Amazon Prime, the quality is al least 24/96 which is the maximum quality available in my Dragonfly. That means I believe it is either 24/96 or could be even 24/192.
I have tried then with the SR25 the sound quality is excellent but, is there a way in Amazon to see what is the quality? Does it display somewhere the type of file? I cannot find it.

Just tap/click on the SD/HD/Ultra HD badge on the Now Playing screen and it will show information on the track being played.

 

[emorrison33]

Hey all...new to this forum, and I have a question concerning the SR25 with Qobuz vs Tidal 'offline' album listening. I first tried the side-loaded Tidal app with a free trial and downloaded ~347 albums for 'offline' listening. The app was very responsive, and download times were very quick for the 'offline' albums. I wanted to do a test with Tidal vs Qobuz on features etc....so I uninstalled Tidal, side loaded Qobuz, and downloaded the same ~347 albums for 'offline' listening in Qobuz. The download times for the offline albums in Qobuz takes MUCH longer to complete...but I have succeeded. I am now noticing that when I go to play an 'offline' album, it takes around 20 seconds from clicking the album to when the album artwork and play button loads. When I hit the play button, it takes an additional 45 seconds before the track starts playing. Is there a major resource issue between Tidal and Qobuz apks, or am I experiencing some unique issue? I really wanted to go with Qobuz, as I am planning on buying albums for my collection and listening to offline albums to find new music....but this app experience is killing my battery and patience. (****It seems that all the additional loading times associated with Qobuz are definitely having a major negative affect of battery life as well****)

Thanks for any insights...

Joey

I have noticed lag with the Qobuz app. Tidal runs really well. It has nothing to do with the SR25 becasue I notice lag at times on the Fiio M11 too. It's someting to do with the app design, is my guess. But it's not enough to bother me that much that I'd stop using Qobuz.

 

[tbrobison]

With the announcement of Apple Music going hifi and hires, Amazon has reacted turning the normal subscription into the HD subscription. I my case I have Amazon Prime which is an access limited to a much smaller catalog. I have checked in my Ipad with my Dragonfly that displays different colors depending on source and it was showing than in the classical files that I have tried from Amazon Prime, the quality is al least 24/96 which is the maximum quality available in my Dragonfly. That means I believe it is either 24/96 or could be even 24/192.
I have tried then with the SR25 the sound quality is excellent but, is there a way in Amazon to see what is the quality? Does it display somewhere the type of file? I cannot find it.

Holy crap(in a good way!), what a nice present to receive this morning, along with Apple's lossless streaming starting next month! I logged into Amazon and, sure enough, AmazonHD is now included in Prime membership! This is pure joy! This is going to be the nail in the coffin for Tidal, Quboz, and the other lossless quality streaming services out there, unless they offer something worth the price of the ticket. I had a subscription to AmazonHD for a year, and it was great except for the UI. I let it expire in November not really knowing what I'd be doing next, other than continuing to build out my personal lossless music library(CD's & flac downloads) and listening to them(along with the my favorite lossless station, Radio Paradise).
I haven't looked yet, but is there a reliable apk version of, AmazonHD, that will work in the SR25?

 

[Broquen]

Funny you mention using the cable with the Sony WH's. For almost a year I was only listening wirelessly when using them, and only within the last few months did I start using the cable, mainly connected to my macbook pro(and the fact that the battery hardly takes a hit when turned on), and sometimes with the SR25. My main listening phones for the SR25 are the Meze Solo Rai's via the balanced jack.
Question, when you say, "the Sony WH1000XM3 which works wonderfully in Bluetooth ldac", what does that mean? I'm not up on all the nomenclature terms, but I'm getting there. Is ldac the same as listening to aptxHD? I do listen to music, via blue streaming, from a Node 2i to my WH's. The Node 2i has aptxHD, and the WH's have that ability built in. It's a, as you say, wonderful sound!
All together, I was really hesitant on purchasing the SR25, but man, I'm glad I did. It is the bee's knees!

Quoting you, 'funny you mention' using the Sony's with the cable. I was reluctant to admit that they can sound so good (with proper use of some EQ, of course), when switched on and using the cable through the 3,5 SR25 out. But yep, I must admit that I use them for listening to music from time to time because the sound is now quite enjoyable (previously I only was using them to travel and in situations that a cable could be a problem).

I was really surprised for the separation in the high-lows/low-mids zone, especially when playing such a meaty and pretty convincing sound. Clarity in general improves, as well as mids and highs.
One thing to note is, when I EQ to my ideal signature and switch on the incoming ambient sound feature, some sounds distort noticeably (but I don't care at all).
Maybe we can share some EQ profiles here for the Sony's and other cans?