All feedback is interesting, we all hear different, have different preferences, different gear synergy listen to different genres at different volumes... that's why it's so important do detail the context of impressions
This being said blanket statements are blanket statements and they don't help much especially when they contain circular references ("bad is bad. failure is failure")
This DAP is no "failure". After 200+ hours of constant burn-in (for those who believe in it) I am thoroughly impressed by the possibilities of this player. HiBy has done well for it's first foray into R-2R tech IMO. Sure it's a different flavor sonically but the space, clarity and resolution are all there...especially for female vocals. I like lots of genres of music and it does my local rips, hi-res files and DSD well enough. MSEB is a bonus. The hardware is sublime. It has solid bluetooth strength and range with strong streaming capabilities via Qobuz and it has become my daily pleasure. Just my two cents...YMMV.
Oh yeah...one more thing...of course NO DAP IS PERFECT.
All feedback is interesting, we all hear different, have different preferences, different gear synergy listen to different genres at different volumes... that's why it's so important do detail the context of impressions
This being said blanket statements are blanket statements and they don't help much especially when they contain circular references ("bad is bad. failure is failure")
You are not alone there, I definitely have a similar experience with my unit, compared to my other R-2R DAP its definitely got a digital edge and a shortened decay past the lower mids.
Agree on vocal jazz—that’s the one place I’ve enjoyed the RS6. Maybe that’s a strength of this player (vocals), and why it has so many devotees. It might be great if you listen to a lot of vocals. I’d guess especially the modern stuff, which is all heavily multitracked and won’t have the problems with resolving the acoustic space that I hear.
Can’t agree about classical tho. That’s the biggest miss for me with the RS6. Gapless is key, but I need that resolution, proper reverb, and acoustic space to keep my “suspension of disbelief” and focus on the music. Also, the thickness/warmth makes some instruments like piano sound odd (when combined with lower resolution and truncated reverb). I listen to a classical album every morning while making coffee and unfortunately I’ve gone back to the ZX507 as the RS6 was very unsatisfactory in that role.
This DAP is no "failure". After 200+ hours of constant burn-in (for those who believe in it) I am thoroughly impressed by the possibilities of this player. HiBy has done well for it's first foray into R-2R tech IMO. Sure it's a different flavor sonically but the space, clarity and resolution are all there...especially for female vocals. I like lots of genres of music and it does my local rips, hi-res files and DSD well enough. MSEB is a bonus. The hardware is sublime. It has solid bluetooth strength and range with strong streaming capabilities via Qobuz and it has become my daily pleasure. Just my two cents...YMMV.
Oh yeah...one more thing...of course NO DAP IS PERFECT.
Agree it’s not a failure. You point out some things I really like: the hardware is really great, and although I haven’t used Bluetooth with it I’d add to your list that wifi performance is flawless for me. And the size is excellent! It’s still pocketable.
That said, I’d say space, clarity, and resolution are actually its weaknesses as I hear it. To me the RS6 struggles to reproduce space (I’m talking “real” space as recorded by simply-mic’d recordings), it’s super warm and thick, and my perception is the resolution is lower than much less expensive DACs/DAPs. Whether this is psychoacoustic perception due to the thickness, I’m not yet sure, but clarity is the last word I’d use to describe the sound.
But I see you mentioned vocals, and that hits on something I found this player did well as I mentioned above. I don’t listen to a lot of vocals anymore (defined by vocals being the main aspect of the performance, certainly a lot of music has vocals of course), but I’ll add some to the rotation and see if that changes my perceptions.
Does it mean that enabling any effects like MSEB makes the audio stream go through default Android sound subsystem and be resampled to 48/24?
So basically you can either listen to original sampling rate OR apply any system-wide settings like MSEB or plugins?
In other words, could someone listen to e.g. Apple Music Lossless in hi-res and apply MSEB at the same time without resampling?
Not MSEB. There were some other plugins within HibyMusic that were developed, having high computing requirements (e.g. upmixing to surround then rendering through 5 stereo HRTF channels) that could only be realized at 48kHz. That's not MSEB.
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Excellent! I appreciate that post, @Donald ZH , as I usually have wifi off. When I turned wifi on just now, an update message popped on the screen. I clicked download/update and it installed quickly and without incident. Really great work on that, Hiby--not all players make this process so easy and smooth!
I realized I should explain a bit better about what I'm hearing in the soundstage and ambiance reproduction that is troubling me. I'm not suggesting the RS6 can't reproduce hall ambiance--certainly it can, and I'm not sure any competent player can edit just the ambiance out of a recording. But what I hear is the soundstage appearing and collapsing throughout a performance. It seems to be related to busy or strong sections of the music. This might be related to the truncated reverb tails I hear, perhaps either a nonlinearity or a low-level detail retrieval problem, or something else entirely. I also hear a sharpness on attack (digital-sounding edge) that might be related to the decay issue? I don't know, but ultimately it is quite distracting and ultimately fatiguing over long listening sessions as I get lost in the music and then it sounds unnatural and I hear sounds (not music) and then the music comes back, and then I hear sounds... Ad nauseam.
Excited to see what this new firmware brings, and hoping these are issues that can be tuned out via Darwin refinement.
@Joe Bloggs : what exactly is "nonlinear harmonics control?" I see a new slider that says "Harmonic Controller" available, with "150" as the default. Can you also explain what "Atmosphere Enhanced" (on/off) does? Can you also explain what "Darwin Default" vs "Darwin 1" is in DSD filters? This obfuscated naming of filters is extremely annoying :/
Excellent! I appreciate that post, @Donald ZH , as I usually have wifi off. When I turned wifi on just now, an update message popped on the screen. I clicked download/update and it installed quickly and without incident. Really great work on that, Hiby--not all players make this process so easy and smooth!
I realized I should explain a bit better about what I'm hearing in the soundstage and ambiance reproduction that is troubling me. I'm not suggesting the RS6 can't reproduce hall ambiance--certainly it can, and I'm not sure any competent player can edit just the ambiance out of a recording. But what I hear is the soundstage appearing and collapsing throughout a performance. It seems to be related to busy or strong sections of the music. This might be related to the truncated reverb tails I hear, perhaps either a nonlinearity or a low-level detail retrieval problem, or something else entirely. I also hear a sharpness on attack (digital-sounding edge) that might be related to the decay issue? I don't know, but ultimately it is quite distracting and ultimately fatiguing over long listening sessions as I get lost in the music and then it sounds unnatural and I hear sounds (not music) and then the music comes back, and then I hear sounds... Ad nauseam.
Excited to see what this new firmware brings, and hoping these are issues that can be tuned out via Darwin refinement.
@Joe Bloggs : what exactly is "nonlinear harmonics control?" I see a new slider that says "Harmonic Controller" available, with "150" as the default. Can you also explain what "Atmosphere Enhanced" (on/off) does? Can you also explain what "Darwin Default" vs "Darwin 1" is in DSD filters? This obfuscated naming of filters is extremely annoying :/
In your analysis of RS6, are you comparing it to ZX507 or any other particular DAP? The only Sony DAP I have and familiar with is WM1Z, while hardly anybody talks about ZX507, and I haven't seen too many reviews to form an opinion about it. I was actually under impression that ZX507 sound was saturated with DSP effects which bring heavy processing and oversampling. Maybe you are just used to that sound type which is different from a more raw NOS sound of RS6?
Not sure there is a constructive solution if you have a preference for a different sound or you don't like pair up synergy with your particular set of IEMs/headphones. Did you sell or return back your RS6? If you did, perhaps, that is the only solution in your case. If it doesn't work, move on to something else. One of the great things about DAP market nowadays, you have choices in different price categories. So, find what works the best for you and don't waste your time looking for "constructive solution" of something that doesn't.
Not sure there is a constructive solution if you have a preference for a different sound or you don't like pair up synergy with your particular set of IEMs/headphones. Did you sell or return back your RS6? If you did, perhaps, that is the only solution in your case. If it doesn't work, move on to something else. One of the great things about DAP market nowadays, you have choices in different price categories. So, find what works the best for you and don't waste your time looking for "constructive solution" of something that doesn't.
Total agree with you and RS6 has a lot of tools to tune it with different iems to find the best matching.
This options need time and patience to find the best pairing but i'd never come back and i missed al lot MSEB when i sold Hiby R5 for Shanling M6 pro.
If you have only 1-2 iems you don't care about it, but when you own many iems MSEB, Darwin/plugin are jewels for me.
If you want a plug and play dap buy an iPod
In your analysis of RS6, are you comparing it to ZX507 or any other particular DAP? The only Sony DAP I have and familiar with is WM1Z, while hardly anybody talks about ZX507, and I haven't seen too many reviews to form an opinion about it. I was actually under impression that ZX507 sound was saturated with DSP effects which bring heavy processing and oversampling. Maybe you are just used to that sound type which is different from a more raw NOS sound of RS6?
Well, I have been listening to hifi stereo since the 80s, and although I always had a tape Walkman and later discman’s, I didn’t seriously get into headphones until about 2016. So that’s newer to me. I have most recently been using Sony ZX2, DX200 which I swapped for DX220, and then N6ii before I bought the ZX507. In between I still listen to a lot of speaker-based hifi, you can see my two setups in my signature. I’ve had the same tubed system for over a decade, so it’s a good reference point.
So my reference point is more speaker-based hifi than headphones, although I actually listen to headphones probably 70% now.
The music I am listening to right now happens to be music I’m very familiar with, and have also been listening to for decades. I’m very familiar with many of the recordings and probably more sensitive than most to “editing” of what’s on the recordings. I also have about a hundred live recordings I made myself over the years (I’m an old “taper”) which I have some likely fallible memory of the original performance, but also certainly a lot of experience listening to the output.
The ZX507 is absolutely heavy DSP! In fact, you can clearly hear differences between UAPP (direct to the DAC) and the Sony app. It is not the last word in resolution, I believe because of that heavy reliance on DSP and errors that likely creep in. But fundamentally, it’s a great development from the ZX2, imo—it has more resolution and a more neutral sound than that player. It reproduces what’s on a recording well. Not TOTL-well, but it is extremely coherent and a great player to just enjoy music.
So what I hear from the RS6 so far is reminding me very much of early digital—my memory says close to the single bit players I had in the 80s/90s. With some warmth like a wolfson. I don’t have DX220 (which was pretty high res) anymore to compare, but RS6 digs out less micro details than the ZX507, so I’d hazard a guess Dx220 would reveal a lot more there. I also just procured a SP200T, and quick comparisons there show that player to be far more resolving (in any mode) and not have the same low-level resolution and staging issues that the RS6 does.
I should also add: I’m a show/performance/whole album listener. It’s just how I learned to listen, and serves the live performances I love the most. These issues are revealed over hours of listening to a performance, and tend to irritate me cumulatively, by consistently breaking my suspension of disbelief (as they say in hifi) and pulling me out of the music. Eventually my brain tires. But it’s not like the RS6 is “broken” or sounds like garbage in 5 minutes. Most of us use some hyperbole to illuminate our points, myself included. There are certainly times the RS6 sounds very, very good indeed. I especially like the body it adds to certain treasured but “thin” recordings.
I hope that provides some context—we all hear differently. I’m just one data point.
And, all that said, there’s so much processing occurring in the Darwin controller that if these things that bug me aren’t a fundamental flaw of hardware, maybe they can be fixed. That’s honestly why I posted at all. I’m normally quite quiet and a lurker. Lol. I’m hoping Hiby can fix this.
After the upgrade to fw 1.3, when applying DSD Filter "Darwin 1" while playing DSD256, I'm noticing improved dynamics in sound, the sound feels a little more expanded; with default DSD filter it sounds a little flatter. Anybody else noticing similar? I'm not DSD expert, only have a few sample files, thus curious if anybody else had a chance to play with that filter.
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