[kneelthepetal]

This looks fantastic. Direct ifi hip competitor. Wonder how it sounds compared to the burr brown chips. If similar it's a buy for me

Wondering this too. I have a hip dac 3, but was thinking of upgrading to something with more juice lately. The ability to work as a DAP is a cool bonus.

 

[eternalEquilibrium]

Wondering this too. I have a hip dac 3, but was thinking of upgrading to something with more juice lately. The ability to work as a DAP is a cool bonus.

Yeah that's the win for me

 

[Leairve]

Wondering this too. I have a hip dac 3, but was thinking of upgrading to something with more juice lately. The ability to work as a DAP is a cool bonus.

Had Hip Dac 2. I wouldn't say it sounds similar. For me H5 is better, as burrbrown chips are simply mediocre IMO. I had iFi Zen One as a stationary DAC, and replaced it with Aune Yuki dongle with no regrets. Just better. Have no idea how H5 compares to some higher end offerings from iFi, though.

Regardless of sound differences, Hip Dac is just uncomfortable to use due to it's inherent need of USB connection. Would choose H5 with playback from SD card or LDAC anytime.

 

[kneelthepetal]

Had Hip Dac 2. I wouldn't say it sounds similar. For me H5 is better, as burrbrown chips are simply mediocre IMO. I had iFi Zen One as a stationary DAC, and replaced it with Aune Yuki dongle with no regrets. Just better. Have no idea how H5 compares to some higher end offerings from iFi, though.

Regardless of sound differences, Hip Dac is just uncomfortable to use due to it's inherent need of USB connection. Would choose H5 with playback from SD card or LDAC anytime.

Curious, what about Burr Brown chips do you not like? I've read some that love it some that hate it, I guess it's a personal preference? I heard the BB are very warm sounding, figured it would balance my arya stealths a bit, but tbf I don't have much to compare it to other than a Fiio KA5.

I'm desperate for a knock-out reason to pull the trigger and buy them or just stick with my hip dac 3 lol.

 

[Leairve]

Curious, what about Burr Brown chips do you not like? I've read some that love it some that hate it, I guess it's a personal preference? I heard the BB are very warm sounding, figured it would balance my arya stealths a bit, but tbf I don't have much to compare it to other than a Fiio KA5.

I'm desperate for a knock-out reason to pull the trigger and buy them or just stick with my hip dac 3 lol.

I replaced Zen One because I felt that Arya are being held back. If you think that a bit dull sounding DAC will make your $800 headphones sound better, well, think twice. The difference wasn't night and day - as much as DAC to DAC difference can be, so rather miniscule. But while still kinda on the warmer (or: more analogue) side, Aune Yuki delivered something more, and lost something less over Zen One. Yuki retrieved more, and still presented it in palatable way. Rather difficult to explain other than just saying that Zen One for sure limited Arya's potential.

BB "very warm sounding"? Noo. If you want warm sound, look at headphones first, then amplifiers. DACs don't change sound that much, and a tinge of warmth is all you can count on TBH. And from my experience with Zen Dac v2, Zen Can and Hip Dac 2, they put rather neutral amps in their dac/amps, so the "effect" isn't particularly deepened on amplifier's side. As a DAC + AMP package, I wouldn't call H5 specifically "warm sounding", but iFi Hip Dac 2, I would for sure call a bit blunt sounding and limiting, at least when you want to pair iFi's entry lvl stuff with some nice headphones with good sound signature, that Aryas for sure are. After all, it's still iFi's variation on standard offering, Zen Dac, dating back as far as 2020.

Even though I can't go back and compare Zen One / Hip Dac 2 / Yuki / H5 against each other, as I now only own the latter two, let me tell you this: when I bought H5, I kinda liked it more than Zen One + Topping A90 (neutral AMP). And while now Yuki for me has a better DAC than H5, slightly more natural and full sounding while maintaining all the detail, I still think H5 is much closer to it than Zen One. You can blind yourself thinking iFi offers you a "analogue" and "warm" sound, but in the end it's just a waste of headphones potential, while other things can offer just that what iFi promises and more. And that really slight "dullness" isn't enough to save bad recordings from sounding bad, anyway.

Shanling H5 being a complete package of functions make it so much more worth it, too. I rarely ever used Hip Dac 2 due to it's form, and now I use H5 with playback from SD card almost everyday. Choose album, leave phone on the desk, go somewhere else.

However, maybe Hip Dac 3 is better than it's predecessors. It's newer, with new functions and maybe it even presents sound differently. You would need to check on your own, as I lack experience on the newest iFi stuff.

PS. If you want to make your Aryas sound significantly warmer, just buy Chord Mojo 2 and look no further. You can pretty much EQ it to your liking using these colorful orbs.

 

[kneelthepetal]

I replaced Zen One because I felt that Arya are being held back. If you think that a bit dull sounding DAC will make your $800 headphones sound better, well, think twice. The difference wasn't night and day - as much as DAC to DAC difference can be, so rather miniscule. But while still kinda on the warmer (or: more analogue) side, Aune Yuki delivered something more, and lost something less over Zen One. Yuki retrieved more, and still presented it in palatable way. Rather difficult to explain other than just saying that Zen One for sure limited Arya's potential.

BB "very warm sounding"? Noo. If you want warm sound, look at headphones first, then amplifiers. DACs don't change sound that much, and a tinge of warmth is all you can count on TBH. And from my experience with Zen Dac v2, Zen Can and Hip Dac 2, they put rather neutral amps in their dac/amps, so the "effect" isn't particularly deepened on amplifier's side. As a DAC + AMP package, I wouldn't call H5 specifically "warm sounding", but iFi Hip Dac 2, I would for sure call a bit blunt sounding and limiting, at least when you want to pair iFi's entry lvl stuff with some nice headphones with good sound signature, that Aryas for sure are. After all, it's still iFi's variation on standard offering, Zen Dac, dating back as far as 2020.

Even though I can't go back and compare Zen One / Hip Dac 2 / Yuki / H5 against each other, as I now only own the latter two, let me tell you this: when I bought H5, I kinda liked it more than Zen One + Topping A90 (neutral AMP). And while now Yuki for me has a better DAC than H5, slightly more natural and full sounding while maintaining all the detail, I still think H5 is much closer to it than Zen One. You can blind yourself thinking iFi offers you a "analogue" and "warm" sound, but in the end it's just a waste of headphones potential, while other things can offer just that what iFi promises and more. And that really slight "dullness" isn't enough to save bad recordings from sounding bad, anyway.

Shanling H5 being a complete package of functions make it so much more worth it, too. I rarely ever used Hip Dac 2 due to it's form, and now I use H5 with playback from SD card almost everyday. Choose album, leave phone on the desk, go somewhere else.

However, maybe Hip Dac 3 is better than it's predecessors. It's newer, with new functions and maybe it even presents sound differently. You would need to check on your own, as I lack experience on the newest iFi stuff.

PS. If you want to make your Aryas sound significantly warmer, just buy Chord Mojo 2 and look no further. You can pretty much EQ it to your liking using these colorful orbs.

Thanks for the response. I guess at the end of the day I should just do some A/B testing. I'll order the H5 sometime and compare it to the hip 3.
I've been eyeing the Chord, but I didn't want to spend so much out the gate when I know so little about about this stuff.

 

[artkillen]

Thanks for the response. I guess at the end of the day I should just do some A/B testing. I'll order the H5 sometime and compare it to the hip 3.
I've been eyeing the Chord, but I didn't want to spend so much out the gate when I know so little about about this stuff.

I had a Mojo 2. Even with the EQ, it never sounded warm with my Ananda nor HE1000se. Technicalities were good, but the note weight never came, regardless of source, file format, etc. It was a bit sterile/robotic to me.

 

[kneelthepetal]

I had a Mojo 2. Even with the EQ, it never sounded warm with my Ananda nor HE1000se. Technicalities were good, but the note weight never came, regardless of source, file format, etc. It was a bit sterile/robotic to me.

You might be the first person I've seen who has a negative opinion about the Mojo 2. There really is no such thing as a universal consensus in the world of hifi.
In other news My H5 just came in. Gonna do some testing this weekend.

 

[Pretardo]

Nice! Enjoy your new H5 and happy listening. I’m interested to know what your initial impressions are to the Hip DAC 3.

 

[Erick Muller]

I have a question regarding the RCAs out from the H5, I tried a couple of days ago to feed my desktop amp with my shangling H5 through the RCA but I didn't get any sound out of them, I don't know what's the problem.

 

[spectacleDDeafmonk]

I love my Shanling UA3. Does anybody have UA3 and H5 and can tell me if there is any difference in sound? They use both the AK4493S so they should sound very similar if not the same. I’ve always wanted a portable DAC/Amp with integrated battery so the H5 might fit the bill.

 

[Polky74]

I love my Shanling UA3. Does anybody have UA3 and H5 and can tell me if there is any difference in sound? They use both the AK4493S so they should sound very similar if not the same. I’ve always wanted a portable DAC/Amp with integrated battery so the H5 might fit the bill.

I don't have the H5 but I have the UA3 and the H7 and I still don't think the H5 sounds like the UA3. However, I think that the H5 surpasses the UA3 in all parameters (starting with the richness of the sound)... after all, having the same chip is absolutely not synonymous with "sounding the same". I have three dongles with the AKM AK4493S and they couldn't sound more different from each other. (UA3 - HC4 - CDA-M1P)

 

[Shanling]

I have a question regarding the RCAs out from the H5, I tried a couple of days ago to feed my desktop amp with my shangling H5 through the RCA but I didn't get any sound out of them, I don't know what's the problem.

RCA outputs are active when headphones are not connected. When you disconnect headphones, volume control now controls pre-out voltage, so try to slowly increase the volume of Pre-out.

I love my Shanling UA3. Does anybody have UA3 and H5 and can tell me if there is any difference in sound? They use both the AK4493S so they should sound very similar if not the same. I’ve always wanted a portable DAC/Amp with integrated battery so the H5 might fit the bill.

While they have the same DAC (Which by itself doesn't mean much), the amplifier section, power supply, USB input, signal processing, even amount of DACs, is superior on the H5.

As much as dongles are progressing, there are still some limits to their designs.

 

[Erick Muller]

RCA outputs are active when headphones are not connected. When you disconnect headphones, volume control now controls pre-out voltage, so try to slowly increase the volume of Pre-out.

Thx, I got it to work and it sounds amazing.

I have another question regarding the RCA pre-out, does it go through the amp section of this device or is it pulled straight from the DAC itself?

 

[kneelthepetal]

Nice! Enjoy your new H5 and happy listening. I’m interested to know what your initial impressions are to the Hip DAC 3.

Finally spent some quality time with the H5 after getting over a cold. Here's my illiterate baby take:

tl;dr: I like the H5, sounds better to me than the hip-dac3, but I get why people might like the hip-dac more than me.

So briefly some history, my first dac/amp was the fiio KA5. I liked the little thing, but when I upgraded to some higher level gear, I wanted to take a step up with the dac/amp as well, so I got the hip-dac 3 (HD3) after seeing a generally positive consensus on it and the Burr-Brown (BB) chipset. It also had everything I wanted like 4.4mm out, a volume knob, and some extra goodies like a bass boost button, power match, and iE match, all in a sleek package that people will definitely think is a flask if seen in public.

I generally liked the HD3, but the sound was a little disappointing, but I chalked that up to expecting too much difference in sound from a change in dac/amp alone. I also was not a fan of the phone to HD3 to headphone cabling, which was kind a pain.

On the the H5. I like it. It's a tank of a device, chunky and heavy, feels solidly built. I would not necessarily call it truly portable, in that I probably wouldn't be walking around with it my pocket listening to music on the go, but I could if I wanted to. That's not my use case anyway, I generally just move it about my house. Battery life is good, but I'm OCD about recharging so YMMV.

Operation is pretty straightforward, despite my dumbass constantly forgetting which wheel turns the thing on. I kinda feel like it only needed one wheel, and just some traditional buttons could replace the other wheel.

I love the ability to play off a microSD card. I kinda wish they would have included a maybe a 128gb card and even a PC card reader, since I had neither lol, and both are cheap. They did include a nice drawstring cloth bag with their logo on it. Playback is refreshingly simple, you can change the playback mode (shuffle, repeat, etc)... and that's about it. Turning the wheel skips to the next song, that's about how much control you have. One small annoyance, after the screen shuts off after a few seconds, if you want to go to the next track you actually need to click the playback wheel over 2 notches, once to turn the device's screen back on, then once again to actually skip track. If I had to guess, it's probably a feature to reduce the chance of an accidental rotation. There's also a delay after starting playback, which confused me the first few times of use since I kept pressing buttons and turning knobs instead of just waiting lol.

Yes, there is an app you can download on your phone to have access to a more traditional media player to control the H5 and even adjust a few settings, but I never bothered with it after the first time. I already have too many god damn audio apps on my phone.

And on to the sound... It sound great. It sounds "clean", I feel like I can hear every instrument if I focus on it, the details are all there, but I can still just relax and enjoy the music as a gestalt. Combined with my Arya Stealth, the sound is fantastic for most uses cases. Plenty of head room for volume.

I also learned something. I finally realized why the BB chips seem kinda divisive in retrospect, I've never really heard about any other chipset with such strong opinions. I realized that switching from the HD3 to the H5 sounded better to me, but also it sounded different. I can't quite place it, but the BB chips seem to put a certain flavor into the music that not everyone might like. If you're into that flavor, the HD3 might sound better to you than the H5 (maybe). It's like comparing a fresh, hand-tossed, high quality plain cheese pizza with with a pepperoni pizza from your average local pizza joint. The former seems objectively better, and probably is for most, but if you really like pepperonis you may enjoy the latter more. Yes I am hungry.