[Nayparm]

Props to Fiio for strengthening the 2.5mm and 3.5mm in the m15, it wont stop the jack snapping though but much easier to change the jack than the socket.

 

[Nayparm]

Japanese review:

https://av.watch.impress.co.jp/docs/news/1248888.html

Reads OK with google translate

 

[.Sup]

At least its usb c but until it offers native Apple music playback im not interested

 

[glassmonkey]

So many people are talking about 4,4 being fragile. But one hardly hears real first hand experience that 2,5 plugs actually broke easier than bigger ones. I find it actually more annoying that plug standards seem to be changing every year.

I've broken two 2.5mm IEM cables. One was my fault, I sat down with it in my pocket. The other one was wore out over time and just snapped sideways. There just isn't much to a 2.5mm plug. It is a very thin plate of brass, interspersed with plastic with a steel rod to reinforce it in the middle. If you've seen a broken one, you know how flimsy it is. I have one 2.5mm jack that got damaged on the player that was plugged into the broken jack-plug the first time around, so I'm not blaming that on the 2.5mm jack. I have never broken a 3.5mm plug, and don't expect that I ever will break that or a 4.4mm connector. The 4.4mm connector is just better for portable use. RHA tried to make mini 4-pin XLR happen, which probably would have been a good solution, but 4.4mm had already gotten too much attention at that point.

I've never done tests of the same cable on the same machine in 2.5mm and 4.4mm (needs one of the newer FiiOs). It's possible the steel rod and the overall thinness of the 2.5mm plugs plating isn't as nice sounding as a 4.4mm plug. It's also possible that the opposite is true or that there is no difference. Without proper testing, I can't say.

 

[tomaster]

One would expect a modern Bluetooth in a 700$ device, especially when much cheaper competition is offering Bluetooth 5.0 for almost a year now?

 

[521994]

So this is a competitor for FiiO‘s M11 pro.?

 

[szore]

No 4.4 balance anytime soon I guess.

They will never adopt it.

 

[Whitigir]

The worse thing is when 2.5mm broke and stay inside the socket. LOL! I agree with @Nayparm that plug is easier than socket for sure

 

[Nayparm]

Cowon missed a trick with the Plenue R2 (also a competitor to the SR25 with twin CL dacs) thay finally added usb-c for the first time then went back to the darn 2.5mm after using 4.4mm on the L - crackers!

 

[szore]

I want the sp2000M!

 

[szore]

I want to 2000M to have glitter on it...

 

[godlikegamer]

One would expect a modern Bluetooth in a 700$ device, especially when much cheaper competition is offering Bluetooth 5.0 for almost a year now?

I wonder why you would want a BT 5.0 device? Lower power consumption?

 

[someyoungguy]

Japanese review:

https://av.watch.impress.co.jp/docs/news/1248888.html

Reads OK with google translate

Sounds interesting. I had the SR15 for a while but to be completely honesty (just being honest, not trolling!) I found the sound to really be a surprise - in the wrong way. It sounded very thin, like the whole frequency spectrum was shifted upward and the bass and body on the lower mids just wasn't there. Every now and then it would play a good convincing bass note and I'd think "oh so you can make bass, why don't you do that all the time!". I saw the phrase Schrodinger's bass used in a review (for another product) and in my experience that phrase fitted perfectly with the SR15 - the bass was simultaneously there and not there.

Judging from that Japanese review maybe things have been improved on that front. The increase to higher res formats etc is all well and good but in general I'm with John Darko that higher than CD quality is a bit of a wash when most music still isn't available in anything higher than 16 bit 44.1 KHz anyway. Certainly almost my entire library is like that, so I'm more interested in how is sounds reproducing normal-quality tracks than hi-res.

The increase in size of a DAP would usually be a negative but I think in this case is probably a good thing - SR15 seemed just a bit too small, like an odd-size which was neither a M0/Plenue D-sized small DAP nor a larger phone-sized player either.

In all, it's great to see a big manufacturer focusing on lengthening playback times - the DAP world has been stuck around 8-12 hours as a typical battery life for years, so 20 hours is a welcome improvement.

So yeah, color me intrigued, but so far the only AK player I've owned was the SR15 and it really dampened my expectations of what the AK house sound might be. If the normal-res sound quality is improved with more bass and fullness on the SR25, with the better battery life, LDAC and slight increase in size I would be interested.

 

[gerelmx1986]

How 4.4mm Pentacon balanced sounds better than 2.5mm balanced?

Perhaps he is referring as how durable the 4.4 plug is... tried it, you can easily step on a 2.5 or almost no force with pliers to break it. 4.4 took me many steps ons and stomps that I gave up and with plier also difficult only managed to bend it. You need some hydraulic power tool to break it apart a 4.4 with ease

 

[gerelmx1986]

Perhaps he is referring as how durable the 4.4 plug is... tried it, you can easily step on a 2.5 or almost no force with pliers to break it. 4.4 took me many steps ons and stomps that I gave up and with plier also difficult only managed to bend it. You need some hydraulic power tool to break it apart a 4.4 with ease

I didn't do it with my cables, but with an adapter that @Whitigir made for me, the other adapter was sold with my MDR-Z7. I really liked whitigir's job, good quality craftmanship, only wanted to test how durable the new plug format was