[Mimouille]

It wants to be many things all at once however given your willing to buy and carry the attachment with you.
For example I know of a R2R Dac attachment, pure tube attachment single ended, hybrid balanced, sold state dual 3.5 mm and also various Burr Brown Dac design.
They have also begun testing copper body casing while in the middle of trying to figure which of the board attachment is worth keeping.

This is one of the case where more option isn't necessary a good things.

Funny, where did you read all that?

 

[gr8soundz]

DP150 is one of the most confusing DAP out there, I dont think they know what they want out of it, neither do I. It surely set to do so many different thing, I just hope instead of confusing everyone they just get the most important part right, making it sound good.
Oriolus, the way I have found it is that they are too ambitious and they tend to get lost in their curiosity and either take too long to release a product or as a fear of needing to sale something they rush in releasing something brand new totally unrelated to what they have been working on.

If they had more resource, Oriolus has a lot of ideas and the people working for them are truly capable. They need a good COO to keep them in line.

Not confusing at all. I like that Oriolus goes in a different direction. They're the only ones who make a Nutube portable and I have their BA-10 which is among the few balanced, tube amps and a fraction of the cost compared to others. DP150 with tube module would make it their 2nd DAP and 3rd valve portable device in the past 18 months. Not a bad track record imo.

AFAIK, Hifiman was one of the first with swappable amp cards but multiple manufacturers including iBasso and Fiio are now making it commonplace. Don't recall anyone saying those products were confusing. There's even been a few designs with swappable DACs like Aune's original M1 and Speakertec's upcoming Kitty DAC.

We always want the latest and greatest DAC/amp designs anyway so modular designs have their place especially, imo, if R2R is one of them. There's no shortage of Delta-Sigma DAPs (currently have a handful of those myself) and I've been focusing more on R2R and multi-bit (at least ones I could possibly afford).

I for one would LOVE to have a DAP with built-in tube output; even searched for something similar months ago with no luck. Might be nice not having to stack just for tube amping. I'd prefer balanced out but no way to fit dual amps/tubes alongside screen and all the needed player components. Just hope that particular module doesn't have a DS chip.

 

[audionewbi]

I think what gets old isn’t necessarily sound but us getting bored of the device.

At least my opinion is in order for a device to not to be outdated it’s OS must be upgradable. Sadly I haven’t come across any daps that can best my iPhone music UI.

 

[musicday]

I think what gets old isn’t necessarily sound but us getting bored of the device.

At least my opinion is in order for a device to not to be outdated it’s OS must be upgradable. Sadly I haven’t come across any daps that can best my iPhone music UI.

Try the Tera Player, no UI so even better and the sound ...wow.

 

[audionewbi]

Try the Tera Player, no UI so even better and the sound ...wow.

I love the sound of Tera player however not cheap and certainly as an overall package to me it is worth more than its asking price.

Honestly at the very best it is a 500 USD device and that is only because of the sound.

 

[audionewbi]

The shanghai hi fi exhibition 2018 was on a few weeks a go. I spoken to few people i know who attended the show. They both talked about QA361 in a very positive way, and while one of them liked the R2R2000 more (sonically) they both agreed to them QA361 stand out a lot for what it offered. They both agreed for what it is predicted to be selling for (under 1K) if you care about sound only it will be again ranked at the very top of its price point, like its QA360 which sonically have been ranked the best for its price bracket.

UI is very similar to QA360, I dont know how I feel about it. I like the UI of my apple devices, my AK however if it really sounds that good I'm open to a more functional bare bone audio based UI which is what QA360 UI is.

I wish I could get them to talk about the balance out, non of them had 3.5mm balance cable. I think 3.5mm is still the standard in mainland China however my friend believes 2.5mm is slowly taking over the balance market in China.

 

[unknownguardian]

Finally gotten my hands on this

 

[artpiggo]

Finally gotten my hands on this

How is it?

 

[audionewbi]

QLS daps are always over engineered.

 

[unknownguardian]

How is it?

Initial impression out of the box

Bass presence and punch are pretty impactful yet not too excessive, with it being tight and well-controlled, so far I feel QA361 has excellent synergy with dynamic/hybrid iems. Coupled with the clear and detailed highs, I would say that it is a pretty balanced DAP across the frequency spectrum (not too colored or too analytical/bright). Mids can be said to be laid back in general, but there's a choice selection for the tuning flavor between mellow and bright (and mellow suits my preference of thicker and lush vocals more).

Driving power seem to be pretty good, requiring less than half (around 30-40 at low gain) to drive my KL-REF Type-S. And 1 great feature is when you switch from low to high gain, the volume will automatically drop by 10, to prevent the output volume from being excessive whenever there's a change in gain settings.

Beside the tuning selection, there's another setting of the amp (normal, large current, high voltage, double high), to bring out maximum compatibility according to the sensitivity of the earphone/headphone the QA361 is driving.

In short, there's really nothing much to complain about the sound for the DAP, the performance of the sound quality it brings definitely exceed its price point of USD $1000, however similarly to its predecessor, the UI remains simple and primitive, so people who definitely want a fancy UI with touchscreen on their DAP might find the DAP to be a product of several generations ago.

 

[audionewbi]

How is the effect of the DSD upsampling?

Thanks for your early impressions.

 

[seanwee]

Initial impression out of the box

Bass presence and punch are pretty impactful yet not too excessive, with it being tight and well-controlled, so far I feel QA361 has excellent synergy with dynamic/hybrid iems. Coupled with the clear and detailed highs, I would say that it is a pretty balanced DAP across the frequency spectrum (not too colored or too analytical/bright). Mids can be said to be laid back in general, but there's a choice selection for the tuning flavor between mellow and bright (and mellow suits my preference of thicker and lush vocals more).

Driving power seem to be pretty good, requiring less than half (around 30-40 at low gain) to drive my KL-REF Type-S. And 1 great feature is when you switch from low to high gain, the volume will automatically drop by 10, to prevent the output volume from being excessive whenever there's a change in gain settings.

Beside the tuning selection, there's another setting of the amp (normal, large current, high voltage, double high), to bring out maximum compatibility according to the sensitivity of the earphone/headphone the QA361 is driving.

In short, there's really nothing much to complain about the sound for the DAP, the performance of the sound quality it brings definitely exceed its price point of USD $1000, however similarly to its predecessor, the UI remains simple and primitive, so people who definitely want a fancy UI with touchscreen on their DAP might find the DAP to be a product of several generations ago.

Some comparisons with other Daps like maybe the DX200 or AK SE100 would be nice.

 

[crabdog]

I'm fine with a simple interface so long as it's snappy and responsive without input lag.

 

[bahamot]

I've QLS QA360, its UI responds as soon as you press the button.
The QA361 has 4x faster CPU than QA360, so I imagine QA361's UI at least as responsive as QA360's.

 

[kvik]

Did anyone else get QA361? I am curious about impressions. Online translation of the chinese thread on qls forum isn't always easy to understand.