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I got my ifi go blu today. Super impressed by fast delivery by Bloom Audio. Placed order Friday night 10pm and received my ifi go blu Monday 12pm. They included a personal handwritten thank you note and packet of skittles. I am tasting the rainbow and enjoying go blu. Highly recommend bloom audio ..best part no shipping or taxes charged ..
I got to listen to ifi go blu today for few hours with various sources..
Sources - wired using balanced 4.4mm pentaconn
- One plus 8T with openSL ES output and Hi-Res output (prefer OpenSL ES) using poweramp player.DVC enabled
- Ipadpro 2020 using Flacbox player
Sources - wireless
- onplus 8T openSL ES output and Hi-Res output (prefer OpenSL ES) using poweramp player with LDAC ,APtX HD. Prefer LDAC with OpenSL ES
- iPad Pro 2020 with AAC using flacbox player
- Sony WM1Z with LDAC with sound quality priority and Aptx HD . Prefer LDAC
Here are my first impressions. Need to listen more before I can make a full judgement
- It sounds very good. It has a warm lush sound which makes it musical. Compared to lotoo paw S1 which I had before and returned which had a clinical sound with bigger soundstage but I found vocals to be flat as well as bass compared to ifi go blu and I didn’t seem to enjoy it much to reach for it every time.
- It had amazing power to drive vast range of iems and headphones.. I am using it to drive noble K10s ciem and Sony Z1R full size headphones with enough headroom. I am using just 30% volume with K10s and 50% volume with Sony Z1R when using Bluetooth. 50% with K10s and 65% with Sony Z1R when wired. It can too loud in a hurry if you choose it to be
- Xbass and xspace are guilty pleasures and love using them for some EDM tracks . The implementation is real good. I normally don’t eq at source ever but with go blu I love to experiment and it makes player very musical
- The controls are very intuitive and when using playback controls there is a slight lag but it doesn’t bother me
- The player is super tiny, well built and very lightweight. Love that small leather pouch. Perfect portable device
- wired connection gives more bass and soundstage atleast to my ears over Bluetooth. Also detail retrieval is better with wired. But nowhere close to dedicated DAP like Sony WM1z or has it smoothness . But for device that costs 1/15 the cost of WM1z it is acceptable
- No RFI with my mobile phone. I had huge issue with RFI with lotoo paw S1
- Sound signature is non fatiguing. With lotoo paw s1 I couldn’t listen for longer periods
- Bluetooth connection is very stable on all devices
- No lag on YouTube, Netflix or Azul. Both on iOS , Android and also on Mac
here are some things not that good
Few firmware upgrade requests
- There is a noticeable hiss with K10s . None of player or dacs I have used in past hiss with K10s
- The volume knob is plasticky and feels cheaper
- No smooth volume increments but stepped and those steps are huge. On poweramp one turn is 4% increase. So I control vol at source
- For a $200, they could include a USB-C to USB-C cable.they have usbA to usb c cable . But I wish they did like some competition which includes usb-c to usb-c cable with usb-c to usb-a adapter.
- The connection range is not as good as my other tws devices. This has about 80% coverage of my house vs 99% for most tws devices
- the battery status light should turn itself after few secs and if want to state of charge one click of power button gives battery health
- The dac should turn itself off say 1 min after no activity or maybe 5 min, it be awesome if tuneable with some combo clicks
- so far it is meeting my expectations on how I plan to use it and I love the sound signature..
On another note can someone recommend a good small USB-C to USB-C cable.
I do but…well, unfortunately it is broken for the second time and I have no more warranty.
Gorgeous photography! Hope you enjoy it.
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Some very quick first impressions(I love this thing and my FiiO BTR5 is going in the drawer).
A double click of the power button announces the selected codec.Is there a way to determine which BLUE TOOTH Codec is being processed - LDAC, APTX, AAC, etc?
Looking forward to a detail comparison with BTR5Some very quick first impressions(I love this thing and my FiiO BTR5 is going in the drawer).
I assume that this uses the same FiiO Control app for iOS. The App Store shows screenshots for the BTR5. Would the Go Blu be exactly the same? I'd love to see a post with screenshots. thx!!