Shanling M8 Android Portable player

[Whitigir]

Tadammmm

Finally! Congratulations!!

 

[Vitaly2017]

Its time celebrate M8 arrival with the tiger special drink

 

[Whitigir]

Its time celebrate M8 arrival with the tiger special drink

Cheer to “Tiger Maul!!”

 

[Vitaly2017]

I just unpacked my new M8 I was pleased by the great unboxing the experience was very pleasant. Everything felt very high quality. The device is also very well built. Nice touch with the leather case!

The screen protector was not pre-applied and I found it not being so easy to install, I had many bubbles left. Hope they dry out in few days.


The volume know is super responsive I was very happy to see that finally it been accomplished.


Spotify seems to work fine, I haven't really yet had time to test it properly, I started the download process and burn in so we wait


I have encountered a different problem, my wave files dont load my album arts only flacs seems to work. I dont have this problem with Hiby R8 and 1z @Shanling
And also google service keep screaming in notification that the google service is not official and need to contact the manufacturer, I fixed this by muting the notification.



I found in battery menu you cannot disable battery optimisation feature but you can manually disable for each app. So I disabled it for shanling player and spotify.
@szore






As it goes for sound performance is yet to early to make any feedback so I can only share first impression.

I found M8 to sound fuller and warmer then R8 and for those who like more musical and bassier feel the M8 provides here.

Technically yet cant say but slightly feels the more advanced dac in m8 seems to perform a little more in an advantage here. I also feel the device need more burn in as the bass dont feel yet fully open and deep.
R8 on other hand is more thin and brighter a little, not as fun and bassy. R8 bass feels more rumbly and deep but that device has 500 hours of playing time so I expect m8 to improve significantly in 200hours.

Sound wise r8 and m8 are 2 different signatures and will fullfil different audiophile lovers. M8 for folks that are after warm and musical tuning and R8 more neutral natural with a slight musical twist. I feel R8 has a more technical approach while M8 more fun and musical.

M8 is dead silent ! Absolutely 0 hiss ! I am super impressed I did my most profound hiss test and its absolutely silent like a black hole! Just wow.
I also love the volume knob of m8 its so so tactile and pricise. Even when screen is off its still super responsive and precision adjustable with ease.
R8 in comparison has also a volume knob but its so unreliable and not responsive on first turn which is quiet frustrating. I could adjust volume while screen was on but with screen of its simply not intuitive and unreliable as you never know where did you end up with the volume level. With M8 no such problems!

Of course R8 is much faster in ui navigation and loading the album arts and menus. R8 is simply rocket fast, m8 is noticably behind. It doesnt make m8 bad at all as I prefere m8 sound over r8...

M8 also feels better built hardware wise, its elegant all black and sturdy stiffer buttons. The swappable idea with different connection types is ingenious! Works super flawlessly and feels like it will last for long time.


Will share more impressions later so stay tuned.

@simon740
I still think wm1z has an edge in sound performance but m8 is really there close close to it behind. If I am lucky I will meet with a friend and recompare the 1z vs m8
By memory I feel 1z sounds better. But but m8 can do streaming and has an absolutely dead silent noise floor !

 

[Shanling]

Is that qobuz related? Is tidal and spotify working in offeline?

We are looking into these, seems streaming apps might have problem if the offline songs are stored on MicroSD card. We did some adjustments for Spotify, that should make it work better.

So far can just recommend to stick with saving to internal memory if you encounter this issue.

I ran into the exact issue as reported by @szore yesterday as well. I was playing my songs in Prime mode and suddenly the playback speed was definitely at least -4x to -6x slower. Doing a pause or even a reboot did not cure this problem. Only when I shutdown the M8 and then turned it back on, did this issue go away. It could definitely be somewhere within the android audio stack or something in Shanling's current firmware implementation. @Shanling, can you ask your software team to inspect the current audio path implementation in your firmware codes and android audio stack to see if this kind of issue could have happened? I understand that this might be hard to produce on your side, but inspecting the audio path (from your Shanling app --> android audio stack -> Shanling audio HAL driver) might help to uncover this issue. This issue is definitely real and severely impacts user experience when the issue occurs.

Looking into it.

 

[szore]

Its time celebrate M8 arrival with the tiger special drink

meow

 

[Virtu Fortuna]

Hello, chaps. Just wanted to share some quick impressions here:

The build quality is very good but design-wise I didn't fully like the volume knob because it's a bit small. Other than that, it's built to last. The device is quite large but still very comfortable in the hand thanks to its rounded sides. I absolutely loved the screen for both sharpness and colors. Battery life is strong as well, as I've yet to charge the unit since it arrived and it still has around %30.

Sound-wise I think this is close to Sony WM1Z in terms of presentation; warm, very musical, and natural. The bass quality is especially noticeable from the first listen as it has great PRaT. The mids are lush, liquid with great resolution and transparency. It gives you a great instrument timbre as well. Treble is a bit soft but it has good detail and articulation.

The best parts however are the sound-stage and separation. The stage is wide and deep with great perception and imaging. The background is black and thanks to that it has excellent separation, hence stereo imaging.

Output-wise it's very powerful I think. I use it mostly between 25-35 volume on the lowest gain with my IEMs.

 

[denis1976]

I just unpacked my new M8 I was pleased by the great unboxing the experience was very pleasant. Everything felt very high quality. The device is also very well built. Nice touch with the leather case!

The screen protector was not pre-applied and I found it not being so easy to install, I had many bubbles left. Hope they dry out in few days.


The volume know is super responsive I was very happy to see that finally it been accomplished.


Spotify seems to work fine, I haven't really yet had time to test it properly, I started the download process and burn in so we wait


I have encountered a different problem, my wave files dont load my album arts only flacs seems to work. I dont have this problem with Hiby R8 and 1z @Shanling
And also google service keep screaming in notification that the google service is not official and need to contact the manufacturer, I fixed this by muting the notification.



I found in battery menu you cannot disable battery optimisation feature but you can manually disable for each app. So I disabled it for shanling player and spotify.
@szore






As it goes for sound performance is yet to early to make any feedback so I can only share first impression.

I found M8 to sound fuller and warmer then R8 and for those who like more musical and bassier feel the M8 provides here.

Technically yet cant say but slightly feels the more advanced dac in m8 seems to perform a little more in an advantage here. I also feel the device need more burn in as the bass dont feel yet fully open and deep.
R8 on other hand is more thin and brighter a little, not as fun and bassy. R8 bass feels more rumbly and deep but that device has 500 hours of playing time so I expect m8 to improve significantly in 200hours.

Sound wise r8 and m8 are 2 different signatures and will fullfil different audiophile lovers. M8 for folks that are after warm and musical tuning and R8 more neutral natural with a slight musical twist. I feel R8 has a more technical approach while M8 more fun and musical.

M8 is dead silent ! Absolutely 0 hiss ! I am super impressed I did my most profound hiss test and its absolutely silent like a black hole! Just wow.
I also love the volume knob of m8 its so so tactile and pricise. Even when screen is off its still super responsive and precision adjustable with ease.
R8 in comparison has also a volume knob but its so unreliable and not responsive on first turn which is quiet frustrating. I could adjust volume while screen was on but with screen of its simply not intuitive and unreliable as you never know where did you end up with the volume level. With M8 no such problems!

Of course R8 is much faster in ui navigation and loading the album arts and menus. R8 is simply rocket fast, m8 is noticably behind. It doesnt make m8 bad at all as I prefere m8 sound over r8...

M8 also feels better built hardware wise, its elegant all black and sturdy stiffer buttons. The swappable idea with different connection types is ingenious! Works super flawlessly and feels like it will last for long time.


Will share more impressions later so stay tuned.

@simon740
I still think wm1z has an edge in sound performance but m8 is really there close close to it behind. If I am lucky I will meet with a friend and recompare the 1z vs m8
By memory I feel 1z sounds better. But but m8 can do streaming and has an absolutely dead silent noise floor !

The 1Z is more V shape, don't have the vocal density of M8, maybe that can be better for some, tastes are tastes, not for my taste and I say this with only 20 hours burn in

 

[Whitigir]

The 1Z is more V shape, don't have the vocal density of M8, maybe that can be better for some, tastes are tastes, not for my taste and I say this with only 20 hours burn in

I agree in a sense that the M8 is a better one than WM1Z. They are so very close in signature that whoever love the WM1Z just can not pass by M8 without seriously thinking about it. But who knows ? People preferences are different, and so is their thought processing.

 

[quodjo105]

Mine should be delivered today if all goes well.
Question : Is there a difference between android mode and prime mode sound wise using the shanling player?
Also has anyone played around the lowpass filters and found any difference?. favourite?

 

[Whitigir]

Mine should be delivered today if all goes well.
Question : Is there a difference between android mode and prime mode sound wise using the shanling player?
Also has anyone played around the lowpass filters and found any difference?. favourite?

congratulation and welcome to the club
Prime mode is android with minimalist features. I haven’t done extensive comparison but by far I don’t think there is any differences
There are very subtle differences between digital filters, and it depends, but mine is usually slow with sharp roll off

 

[Xinlisupreme]

I love my M6 PRO and i'm very tempted by M8 but i'd like to listen also A&K SE200 and iBasso DX300 that will be available soon.
New hiby R6 would be a M6 Pro side grade or can compete with M8?

 

[quodjo105]

congratulation and welcome to the club
Prime mode is android with minimalist features. I haven’t done extensive comparison but by far I don’t think there is any differences
There are very subtle differences between digital filters, and it depends, but mine is usually slow with sharp roll off

Thanks very much.. now can’t wait to receive it

 

[mzura]

And I'm still looking forward to the update that fixes all the bugs indicated so far in this thread (a lot of them), adds the Album Artist tab and MQA certification (especially in Tidal). Maybe I'm exaggerating, but it seems to me that the equipment at this price should be a proven product, not a tested product. Shanling - go to work!

 

[Whitigir]

And I'm still looking forward to the update that fixes all the bugs indicated so far in this thread (a lot of them), adds the Album Artist tab and MQA certification (especially in Tidal). Maybe I'm exaggerating, but it seems to me that the equipment at this price should be a proven product, not a tested product. Shanling - go to work!

Cut Shanling some slacks bro, have you even looked into A&K ?the so luxurious brands that cost 2X as much and don’t really care about the customers ? It took them 5 years to have APK supported, the same goes for digital filters