Initial impression on HIBY W3 II
As an audio enthusiast who favours analogue and wired connectivity over wireless, I still believe the wired sets is still the best option in terms of stable connection and offers better fidelity. But as technology keeps progressing on a yearly basis and new innovative components are introduced in this silicon-driven information technology era, so as wireless technology keeps its pace that we in the audio enthusiast community will be able to have the reliability and high fidelity performance akin to wired ones and convenience of wireless tech.
This is HIBY WB II, it's a bluetooth module device which is quite versatile as you can also use it as a DAC/Amp dongle. The good thing about this device is that it has independent key buttons like power and volume control. Its overall form factor is quite compact and it has a clip where I can put it either on my shirt, trousers or bags.
One of the important aspects of the device is that it can support more advanced bluetooth audio codec like APTX, APTX-HD, LDAC and its own proprietary UAT codec. This device can be used remotely via its own HIBYblue app and surprisingly, it has NFC-support.
On its internal parts, WB II has a reliable Cirrus logic DAC and Qualcomm's latest bluetooth module chip where both components can deliver a well-rounded sound quality from the optimal performance of its DAC and amp with a transmission and reliable connection of the latest generation bluetooth chip. This device is quite good for long listening sessions. I was able to use this one for up to almost 8 hours in LDAC mode.
For sonic performance, it has this warmish-neutral sound profile that pairing it to some balanced-warmish or warmish-neutral sets has a good synergy as it gives more depth and texture to its dynamics. Although on resolving aspects, it has more focus on macro-dynamics but micro-detail retrieval appears to be decent enough.
had to keep it closed with hair ties for 3 days, not fun to fly with
