More impressions
<--
Sound:
I listened to the M5s till 03:00 in the morning. I really enjoyed the soundquality of the player and would always grab it over the M0 for home-listening.
I found that the the musical presentation is close to neutral without highs, mids and bass being elevated to stand out. The bassquality is pleasing and with the Denon AH-D5200 i was able to hear the lows go deep without sounding boomy or unlayered. The player can manage the music at high volumes without sounding forced or stressed. The player is able to provide a nice wide soundstage when its in the music file.
Overall i found the sound to be not harsh to my ears while using the Denon headphones. Every music genre was a pleasure to listen with the M5s and the Denons.
I plugged in my IMR R1 iems and that was a much pickier combination. For example listening to noisy metal songs the presentating of the highs on combination with the R1 was too much for me. Using the Denon headphones with the same songs and it was listenable.
this and that:
Coming from the M0 i directly enjoyed the UI. Im using 500 x 500 pixels cover art and it looked ok on the screen. Bluetooth is working very good and it was a pleasure to spontaneously send music to my homestereo.
Build quality and haptics are good.
I guess if you are worried about stability you could get an L shaped adapter. Plug that into the headphone jack and plug the headphones into the adapter. Then your headphone connector and cable would be horizontal instead of vertical. Less stress on the headphone connector and being oriented horizontally it would give more stability on the DAP sitting in your pocket.
I only found a few things that i dont like or that can be improved by a s/w upgrade:
- the player (set to german language) cant handle to show song names correctly when some special characters are involved. Example: „Khruangbin - Cómo Me Quieres“ The letter „o“ will be exchanged for a chinese letter.
- using ff/rw function of the hardware buttons (haptic feel and click is nice) feels a bit sluggish when using it while looking at the screen but when i ff/rw blindly i dont have any indicator how far i spooled.
- wifi is a nice option i like to have for comfortably updating the firmware. It was not possible to do that this way. Error message: "version query failed".
The one big personal issue***:
Theres one big issue for me due to the way i personally handle my daps. It was already on my mind before purchasing the M5s but i wanted to find out if this would really bother me. Sadly it does.
Im talking about the headphone connectors located on the bottom of the player. If you use the M5s out of your four walls and put it head-over into your pocket than i have to agree that having the headphone connectors on the bottom of the device is the best ergonomically way to be able to reach into you pocket and have good access to the hardware buttons of the device.
I personally use a big and heavy good quality player only on my couch or bed lying on the back. While listening to the music the player lies on my stomach. But i often push it a bit up so i can look at a nice coverart or some other song infos. I dont grap the player and lift it in the air and hold it in direction to my eyes. My noodle-arms just dont have the power (just joking).
What happens when my precious 2.5mm balanced cable is plugged into the bottom of the device? Yes. Theres no stability for the player to stand on my stomach and like „Count Bass D“ (was part of my bass test) would say: too much pressure... the cable bends under the players weight.
But thats only my personal preference. If you want a very good dap for 400 coins and you like bottom-connectors (sounds funny) you cant go wrong with this device. At least give your ears the chance to listen to it.
last words:
This device in epox white color, a bit wider in size and not so long, a new housing design (its not bad but its an streched M0 with a notch on the left side for the hardware buttons) and headphone connectors located on top of the device would be my personal dream
***