Best new DAP with CUE sheets

[Asterixke]

Hi, I'm new here on this forum and this is my first post. I'm asked to post it here so I hope I'm doing the right thing. I'm stuck with a basic question about DAPs. I have read many reviews on various DAPs and at many Hifi websites, but the tests and demo files used to assess sound quality are rarely, if ever, focused on listening to classical music. And that, for me, is now the problem in buying the right DAP. You have to take the term "classical" broadly: it ranges from 15th century polyphony to late 19th century romanticism.
I already have a Sony NW-A105 which I am very satisfied with, except for one thing: in no way does the NW-A105 support CUE files, and to me that is essential for an optimal listening experience. I also had a FiiO M6 until recently but it gave up after an accident. I also have an old FiiO X1 II, but the use of that wheel and the ramshackle interface is really out of date, so falling back on that would be a major setback.
At home, I mostly listen to music through my hi-fi system. Originally that was based on a Luxman L5 amplifier, Thorens turntable, Denon CD player and B&W DM12 speakers. Since about 15 years it is a Sony STR-DB 940 QS Dolby Digital DTS (second hand) and B&W DM6 speakers (also second hand). Many of my CDs (estimated collection of about 2.000 cd's) have already been converted to FLAC and are played from a NAS.
I currently use as IEM, among others, a 1MORE (https://www.headphonesty.com/2021/01/review-1more-quad-driver/) and as headphones a Sony WH-H910N (mainly via Bluetooth) and an AudioTechnica ATH-M40X.
So the main reason for a second DAP is to be able to play CUE sheet files paired with FLAC. I'm looking for a DAP that reproduces the music as neutrally as possible, but the sound may radiate some warmth. I mean the whole thing should not sound cold and cold flat. Bass may be there, but not too much and certainly not overpowering. After all, extra dynamics and punch should come from the music (orchestra) and not from tricks of the DAP. The DAP must have a good and consistent firmware interface and also have a touch screen. Android is preferable, but not a must. I'm not going to reinvest in a new IEM and headphones. So the best decision has to have that into account.
My question now is whether one of the following DAPs is good for my purposes: purely listening to self-ripped CDs in FLAC. I have no need for MQA, Tidal, Spotify or any streaming service whatsoever. However,I would like to enjoy my music equally via Bluetooth as regular wired headphones. I'm looking for a new DAP for the road. And yes, I'm a little bit of an audiophile, but a "poor" retired audiophile. So any real audiophile stuff over 250 euros/dollar is above my budget. So a new FiiO M11S or higher is out of the question, even if Santa comes at the end of this year (because I have to pay for it myself...).

I was thinking of one of these:

Hiby R4 (on paper the most advanced with the best specs, but I assume a little bit too heavy)
Hiby R3 II
Hiby Digital M300 (sounds great, but do I need balanced output with my IEAM and headphones? Can I use this?)
Hidizs AP80 Pro-X
HIFI WALKER H2 Touch

Who can give me some advice in this?

Dirk Peeters (Leuven, Belgium)

 

[InvisibleInk]

I’m sure if you ran this question by @Joe Bloggs he’ll answer quickly regarding HiBy players. He’s our resident HiBy sponsor expert representative.

Shanling mTouch players should support cue files as well.

Welcome to head-fi

 

[Roseval]

Wonder why CUE is important to you. Any media player supporting gapless playback will do the job as well.

 

[Asterixke]

Wonder why CUE is important to you. Any media player supporting gapless playback will do the job as well.

It has nothing to do with gapless or not, but with typical issues tagging classical music. It is not good enough to simply tag an artist, album and title, but also composer and director and orchestra etc. Most ripping/tagging software cannot do this the right way so most people put all those things in one long line, but that is clumpsy when it is saved in maps and submaps. Many DAPs have difficulties to handle this. The other problem is that, especially with cd's of polyphony or baroque music and also opera, a cd can hold 20 or more small tracks (30 tracks is no exeption). Given the limitation of many DAPs to have a maximum of 10.000 files or so, you can be quick at that level. Also, updating the library can be very slow.
Therefor the solution is using CUE sheets. You can rip a whole cd in one single FLAC and putting all the necessary info in a separated CUE sheet, a small text file with the same filename as the FLAC file but with the CUE extension. So for the DAP (but also the music library on my NAS that I'm controlling with KODI) the file structure is much simplier and straitforward. And at the same time you can skip some parts of the cd when you want. Best of two worlds.
I use EZ CD Audio Converter to rip all my cd's. KODI nore VLC have any problem recognizing CUE, but unfortunately de Sony NW-A105 has, and that is the main reason why I was looking for a new DAP since my FiiO M6 doesn't work anymore.

 

[Roseval]

Bit baffled by your response.
I'm familiar with the CUE sheet syntax and because of this, its limitations:
https://kodi.wiki/view/Cue_sheets
https://wiki.hydrogenaud.io/index.php?title=Cue_sheet

Composer, conductor, orchestra are simply not supported.

I don't use a DAP, my Android mobile or better my media player https://www.thewelltemperedcomputer.com/SW/Android/MediaPlayers/OnkyoHF.htm has no problems coping with 35000 files.

 

[Asterixke]

Bit baffled by your response.
I'm familiar with the CUE sheet syntax and because of this, its limitations:
https://kodi.wiki/view/Cue_sheets
https://wiki.hydrogenaud.io/index.php?title=Cue_sheet

Composer, conductor, orchestra are simply not supported.

I don't use a DAP, my Android mobile or better my media player https://www.thewelltemperedcomputer.com/SW/Android/MediaPlayers/OnkyoHF.htm has no problems coping with 35000 files.

An example:

REM APPLICATION "EZ CD Audio Converter 10.2.1 [64-bit]"
PERFORMER "Academy of Ancient Music, Choir of Christ Church Cathedral Oxford - S. Preston"
TITLE "(J.S. Bach) Magnificat BWV 243a"
SONGWRITER "Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750)"
REM DATE "2012"
REM GENRE "Barok"
REM COMMENT "The Complete Bach Edition (CD76)"
FILE "(J.S. Bach) Magnificat BWV 243a.flac" WAVE
TRACK 01 AUDIO
PERFORMER "Academy of Ancient Music, Choir of Christ Church Cathedral Oxford - S. Preston"
TITLE "Magnificat in E flat major, BWV 243a: 1. Chorus (SSATB) Magnificat"
INDEX 01 00:00:00
TRACK 02 AUDIO
PERFORMER "Academy of Ancient Music, Choir of Christ Church Cathedral Oxford - S. Preston"
TITLE "Magnificat in E flat major, BWV 243a: 2. Air (Soprano II) Et exultavit spiritus meus"
INDEX 01 03:17:00
TRACK 03 AUDIO
PERFORMER "Academy of Ancient Music, Choir of Christ Church Cathedral Oxford - S. Preston"
TITLE "Magnificat in E flat major, BWV 243a: 3. Chorale (SATB) Vom Himmel hoch da komm' ich her"
INDEX 01 05:30:12
TRACK 04 AUDIO
PERFORMER "Academy of Ancient Music, Choir of Christ Church Cathedral Oxford - S. Preston"
TITLE "Magnificat in E flat major, BWV 243a: 4. Air (Soprano I) Quia respexit humilitatem"
INDEX 01 07:53:50
TRACK 05 AUDIO
PERFORMER "Academy of Ancient Music, Choir of Christ Church Cathedral Oxford - S. Preston"
TITLE "Magnificat in E flat major, BWV 243a: 5. Chorus (SSATB) Omnes generationes"
INDEX 01 10:34:12
TRACK 06 AUDIO
PERFORMER "Academy of Ancient Music, Choir of Christ Church Cathedral Oxford - S. Preston"
TITLE "Magnificat in E flat major, BWV 243a: 6. Air (Basso) Quia mihi fecit magna"
INDEX 01 12:00:02
TRACK 07 AUDIO
PERFORMER "Academy of Ancient Music, Choir of Christ Church Cathedral Oxford - S. Preston"
TITLE "Magnificat in E flat major, BWV 243a: 7. Chorale (SSAT) Freut euch und jubilieret"
INDEX 01 14:04:50
TRACK 08 AUDIO
PERFORMER "Academy of Ancient Music, Choir of Christ Church Cathedral Oxford - S. Preston"
TITLE "Magnificat in E flat major, BWV 243a: 8. Duet (Alto, Tenore) Et misericordia"
INDEX 01 15:31:12
TRACK 09 AUDIO
PERFORMER "Academy of Ancient Music, Choir of Christ Church Cathedral Oxford - S. Preston"
TITLE "Magnificat in E flat major, BWV 243a: 9. Chorus (SSATB) Fecit potentiam"
INDEX 01 19:19:50
TRACK 10 AUDIO
PERFORMER "Academy of Ancient Music, Choir of Christ Church Cathedral Oxford - S. Preston"
TITLE "Magnificat in E flat major, BWV 243a: 10. Chorale (SSATB) Gloria in excelsis Deo"
INDEX 01 21:26:37
TRACK 11 AUDIO
PERFORMER "Academy of Ancient Music, Choir of Christ Church Cathedral Oxford - S. Preston"
TITLE "Magnificat in E flat major, BWV 243a: 11. Air (Tenore) Deposuit potentes"
INDEX 01 22:34:12
TRACK 12 AUDIO
PERFORMER "Academy of Ancient Music, Choir of Christ Church Cathedral Oxford - S. Preston"
TITLE "Magnificat in E flat major, BWV 243a: 12. Air (Alto) Esurientes implevit bonis"
INDEX 01 24:33:00
TRACK 13 AUDIO
PERFORMER "Academy of Ancient Music, Choir of Christ Church Cathedral Oxford - S. Preston"
TITLE "Magnificat in E flat major, BWV 243a: 13. Chorale (Soprano I, Basso) Virga Jesse floruit"
INDEX 01 27:29:00
TRACK 14 AUDIO
PERFORMER "Academy of Ancient Music, Choir of Christ Church Cathedral Oxford - S. Preston"
TITLE "Magnificat in E flat major, BWV 243a: 14. Trio (Soprano I, II, Alto) Suscepit Israel"
INDEX 01 30:23:02
TRACK 15 AUDIO
PERFORMER "Academy of Ancient Music, Choir of Christ Church Cathedral Oxford - S. Preston"
TITLE "Magnificat in E flat major, BWV 243a: 15. Chorus (SSATB) Sicut locutus est"
INDEX 01 32:10:32
TRACK 16 AUDIO
PERFORMER "Academy of Ancient Music, Choir of Christ Church Cathedral Oxford - S. Preston"
TITLE "Magnificat in E flat major, BWV 243a: 16. Chorus (SSATB) Gloria Patri"
INDEX 01 33:39:17

For a small part you are right. There is no tag named "Composer" and "SONGWRITER" is used instead. But that's not really the point. The point is that I can fill in the field "Composer" in EZ CD Audio Converter (and other info). OK, in the CUE format the tag SONGWRITER is used, but that is of no importance. What is important, is that the title (included the ':' that is not accepted in filenames in Windows) is correctly saved with all the details, although it is one FLAC file with the small filename "(J.S. Bach) Magnificat BWV 243a" in the folder "D:\Muziek CUE definitief\Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750)\Academy of Ancient Music, Choir of Christ Church Cathedral Oxford - S. Preston".
Without CUE sheet that would be a mess of long filenames and the limitation of Windows filenames (max. 256 bytes for the whole filename and folder path). Linux, what I normally use, doesn't has that limitation, but EZ CD Audio Converter cannot ported to Linux due to stricted use of Windows API's. Other people did asked a Linux version many times in vain. So that is one of the few reasons I have a Windows pc with rather limited use.
Believe me, I tried several options and formats and ripping apps before I defenitely choosed this way. And you can ask many other people struggling with tagging their classical music collection. It allways comes more or less to this point: ripping every cd in one large FLAC and using CUE sheets for the track info.

 

[Joe Bloggs]

It has nothing to do with gapless or not, but with typical issues tagging classical music. It is not good enough to simply tag an artist, album and title, but also composer and director and orchestra etc. Most ripping/tagging software cannot do this the right way so most people put all those things in one long line, but that is clumpsy when it is saved in maps and submaps. Many DAPs have difficulties to handle this. The other problem is that, especially with cd's of polyphony or baroque music and also opera, a cd can hold 20 or more small tracks (30 tracks is no exeption). Given the limitation of many DAPs to have a maximum of 10.000 files or so, you can be quick at that level. Also, updating the library can be very slow.
Therefor the solution is using CUE sheets. You can rip a whole cd in one single FLAC and putting all the necessary info in a separated CUE sheet, a small text file with the same filename as the FLAC file but with the CUE extension. So for the DAP (but also the music library on my NAS that I'm controlling with KODI) the file structure is much simplier and straitforward. And at the same time you can skip some parts of the cd when you want. Best of two worlds.
I use EZ CD Audio Converter to rip all my cd's. KODI nore VLC have any problem recognizing CUE, but unfortunately de Sony NW-A105 has, and that is the main reason why I was looking for a new DAP since my FiiO M6 doesn't work anymore.

In order for this solution to work the player software has to be able to be able to extract and actually make use of all the info you put in these cue files, I assume?

You may want to give HiByMusic the app on google play a try to see if it satisfies your requirements.

If it does, this same software comes preloaded on HiBy Android players (which are players with a 4 and the end and up).

These players support any android app in any case so if there's any android player app at all that satisfies all your requirements, you can also use that instead of HiByMusic on these DAPs.

The R players numbered 3 and down run a custom OS which probably doesn't satisfy all your needs.

The M300 is also Android based but only has single ended output. I don't think you have to have "balanced" connection with IEMs, but the R series does have more premium audio circuitry as well as audio software up its sleeve. The M300 is smaller though.