I also bought an aux for my car. Lady looked at me crazy in the store when I asked for aux earbuds and a aux cable.

Hey guys, like the title says I just got my Walkman a26 from Japan and I love it, I had previously gotten the Sansa fuze + for a very good price still in the box and I loved it but being new to DAPs I didn’t know the batteries go bad on untouched and just overall legacy mp3s.

The Sansa barely holds charge if any but I did some digging and found the Walkman A series and it was pretty similar to the fuze + with a few changes that I was okay with, I just got it today and it works wayyyy better than my fuze +.

Honestly for the price I got it for I could’ve gotten a newer DAP but I love the buttons, the classic MP3 look and the no WiFi, I got into DAPs cause I hate subscriptions and doing a million things on my phone so I figured just have something for music when I go camping or anything else where I can’t or don’t want to use my phone. Only thing that sucks is I can’t install rockbox.

My first review. I paid for this myself and Hiiiman has no idea who I am. This is my early impressions after 3 hours of use, so apologies for any minor inaccuracies. I also had to rush to work so I had to take photos with my iPhone in the early morning. I will take nicer shots with my mirrorless camera later today. So ignore ignore the grain because I took these at the brink of morning.

I’m an “practical” audiophile with a Bachelor's degree in motion picture filmmaking & photography. I have a solid background in audio and video, but still analyze from a real world perspectivv rather than hyper analyze extreme depths of data and charts. So take my impressions based off of this. I also

Build Quality - It’s really nice. I was quite shocked with the build. The sides are made of aluminum metal with a matte finish. The back and front seems to be made of glass and smooth quality plastic with a glossy finish. There’s some heft to it without being heavy. Pictures taken are next to the Shanling M1 Plus.

However, the buttons feel a little mushy. The Back, Play/Pause, Forward, and Power buttons have very little play. I was hoping it would feel more tactile. The brass volume knob also rotates a bit too easily for my taste. I would’ve preferred more resistance, but volume adjustment and button inputs (track skipping, pause/play button) don't change while the display is turned off, acting like a built in lock-mode to prevent accidental nudges. So once you wake the screen back on, then you can adjust the volume levels and skip tracks. I could not find if this could be changed in the LOCK SCREEN or ACCESSIBILITY settings.

Audio quality - I tested this with LETSHUOER S12 Ultra and Simgot EW300.

Audio is subjective, everyone’s going to have their own personal preference. To me, the audio quality is good, above average, but not amazing. The lows are there and mids and highs are all “good”. Overall tuning leans slightly warm for most tracks, though I did notice the certain highs can lean a bit cool on certain songs. Clarity is not super sharp, and doesn’t have the depth as my FiiO K13 R2R DAC, but that’s not a fair comparison. This only costs $129, so it’s very solid for the price. I would say it punches above its weight,

UI/UX - Running on Android, I expected it to be very sluggish, but it seems to be smoother than the FiiO M21. Perhaps as smooth as my Shanling M1 Plus. I’m an iPhone (17 Pro Max) user, so most Android OS tends to feel clunky for me, but I wasn’t too bothered by this.

The main music app is called Hiiiman Music app. I notice when you try to exit the app by pressing BACK twice, it crashes the app (not the OS) and auto restarts the Hiiiman Music App, and then you can exit the app. Not sure why it does this. I’m pretty sure they can patch this in a future firmware update.

Since it’s Android, it has the Play Store, Spotify, Apple Music, Tidal, etc. I haven’t tested those out yet. I’ve only been running off my local files from my microSD card. I believe the maximum capacity for a microSD card is 512GB, I may be wrong.

Playback Stutter: Tracks occasionally stutter for a quick split second right at the start of a song, as well as when scrubbing forward or backward through a track. This may be a deal breaker to some. Hopefullt they patch this up asap.

Battery Life - Seems really good. I’ve only owned this for a few hours so I don’t have a precise gauge on it, but I expect this to last 12+ hours of real time use. There is a battery saver option, but I haven’t tested it out yet so I’m not sure how efficient it is.

Initial Verdict: Keep in mind these are just my early impressions after about 3 hours only, so take them as a quick first look. I know people are curious, so I wanted to share my early impressions. I’ll follow up with more detailed review after spending a few more days of use. Every DAP has its quirks, but even with the ones I’ve noted, personally it’s a really solid device. At $129, the value is damn good.

The main issues so far are that minor track start stutter and the fact that physical buttons lock out while the screen is off. This may be a deal breaker for some, but if you can look past this, it’s overall impressive for $129.

I am looking for a best mobile phone that I can use as a DAC music player, like only as a music player with custom rom like sony walkman or anything. Any idea which phone is the best and how to build a custom os

If you're using the HIDIZS AP30 Music Boy, I highly recommend trying out the recently updated 1.7.8 firmware. There used to be occasional lag during music playback, and playing certain tracks would cause the device to reboot, but these issues have been fixed in this firmware. This update is a huge improvement.

https://www.hidizs.net/pages/download-center

Hi all,

I’m looking for a DAP for my 10 year old for her Christmas. I’d like it to have a screen and be able to play Spotify. I’m hesitant to give her a phone (though this would be the easiest option) due to all the baggage that can come with it.

I’ve had a look at the Hiby R1 and R4 as well as Innioasis. I think I’m correct in saying I’d have to download something like Rockbox to be able to play Spotify on either of these.

Any advice would be appreciated. She’s really getting into her music so I want to encourage her.

Thanks in advance!

Hi, I currently have a Hiby R1 that I'd like to upgrade from, but I don't have a ton to spend. Maybe about $150~. I'd really like something that can do well with audiobooks if possible, syncing from audible would be amazing but I know that's not necessarily possible, so I can work around that part. And physical buttons would be nice over a touch screen but not a requirement. If anyone can help me, I'd appreciate it. There are so many models out there and reviews rarely mention audiobooks.

I've been working on a CFW for retro gaming handhelds for a bit, and thought some people here might like it. It's a little different than most, with a strong focus on music and audiobooks instead of just retro games. It's called TortOS and it boots fast, about 2 seconds from powered fully off to on and ready to listen to music or play games.

The main UI is similar to Cover Flow that was popular on iPods. The music player, Muse, plays music and audiobooks in MP3, M4A, M4B, AAC, FLAC, Ogg, Opus and WAV formats. You can play music instead of game audio, which is a bit different from most CFWs.

It's available on two devices, the TrimUI Brick/Hammer and the GKD Pixel 2. The Pixel has DAC support and it's planned for the Brick as well. Files can be transferred to device over USB or Wi-Fi (requires an adapter for the Pixel) via web browser.

AI assistance was used making it, but I've put months of work into it.

There's more info at https://tortos.games

If you try it I hope you like it! :)

I’m looking at Christmas gift’s to myself.
$350 budget
Requirements:
4.4mm output
Qobuz access
10+ hour battery (if possible?)
Physical buttons a huge plus.
Large sd card availability. 1tb preferably.

Primarily a deathcore listener.

£130 on Amazon UK. Cheapest I've seen it even on black Friday deals it rarely goes under £200.

https://amzn.eu/d/07GKJvQN

I have the Fiio M21 already, and it sounds fantastic – but it's not the most pocket-friendly beast, and now that I've installed Poweramp, I hardly need Android.

I have it paired with Simgot EW300s (balanced socket), and rarely even touch the EQ. I just made a slight tweak to the "Stereo Expand" knob, and a slight nudge to the bass. The only time I really touch the EQ is when I use my Bluetooth Sony XM4s (rare).

The Shanling Q2+ Q2 Pod Mod is a tempting purchase for my "outdoors player" for many reasons: Tiny, pocketable, socket in the bottom, nav wheel etc.

So, does anyone here have both? 🤔

If so, can you please let me know the sound quality difference, and (edit) additionally if it has a "stereo expand" or similar option?

Thank you!

Currently using a dongle dac for my iems.

My main priorities are:

- Smooth UI

- Build Quality

- Sound Quality

Currently I am leaning towards the Shanling M1 Plus, I like the way it looks and also haven't seen complaints about it so far.

Hey friends!

I'm currently trying to ditch my smartphone to manage my mental health and ADHD. Got myself a dumbphone already, but I need something different for music.

I am a bit overwhelmed by the amount of information here, so hopefully someone could narrow it down to a few options.

1) I really want a good Bluetooth connection for various reasons including the ability to connect to a Bluetooth speaker.

2) I mostly listen to metal, so I'd like the player to be able to handle it well.

3) I would like a clear, neat library with everything sorted by artist and album and a general playlist for all the songs, but I don't really need custom playlists. Nor do I need any streaming services.

4) Battery life can be not super long, as my Bluetooth earplugs die after 5 hours anyway & I can charge the player at the same time.

5) I live in Europe, so if you do too and know that a particular player can be shipped here with no problem, it would be very nice.

6) Please let me know if the player has any internal storage or needs a memory card right away, as I don't see it explained clearly a lot of the time.

Thank you very much and sorry if my questions sound dumb. I haven't used a player since I was eleven or twelve, lol.

Does anyone know if the interface allows for a quick scroll down through the various track "titles" via the "album" part of the menu?

Hi! I've been building Music Manager for a while because no program really convinced me for organizing my music library, so I made my own.

**What it does:**

- Edits tags (title, artist, album, year, genre, track, disc, composer…) for MP3, FLAC, M4A, OGG and more, on one or many songs at once

- Automatic high-quality cover art: searches iTunes, Deezer and SoundCloud and lets you choose

- Fills in tags with AI (Claude, ChatGPT or Gemini). It checks the iTunes/Deezer catalog first, so the album, year and track number are the real ones

- Synced lyrics from LRCLIB

- Spectrogram to tell whether a FLAC or a 320 kbps MP3 is genuine or upscaled

- Built-in player with a visualizer

- Song adjustments: bass, treble, tempo, pitch, speed, loop, echo, reverb, vocal removal… and you can save the result as a new song

- Format converter, plus MusicBrainz and Discogs lookup

- Cover art is saved so Windows Explorer shows it too

It's free, open source and updates itself from inside the app.

**Download:** https://github.com/PandxMax/MusicManager

I'm still improving it, so any ideas, feedback or bugs you find would help me a lot 🙌

I'm confused between Shanling Q2 (300$) vs Hiby R4 (270$) [prices in India].
The Q2-pod firmware makes it very appealing, but Q2 seems to be overpriced, and R4 looks more VFM.
Also, since R4 is android-based (Android 12), is it recommended to buy this 2-year old device, or wait for a new release in this price range?

I've gone through just file playing to trying poweramp and loving it but I had the trial version and then I found musicolet but it doesn't let you use replaygain without spending money so that isnt going to workout.

If theres no free audioplayer that allows me the freedom to have access to features like Playlist, metadata editing and album cover changing. While also allowing me to use replaygain. Then id suppose id want to know what's better between poweramp and muiscolet because if this app isnt lying musicolet is 150 for a one time purchase and that seems rediculous because I just want replaygain.

Does anybody know if a Tunezimp will allow me to quickly scroll through "title" info as seen below in the metadata? (The Sony on the left will -- but they're no longer available -- and the white unit on the right will not -- which is immensely frustrating.)

Hi all!

Been looking to decentralize my phone for a while and am looking for an audio player for music and also audiobooks!

From what I’ve seen… there’s not a lot. I really dont want to replace my phone with just… another android device? But I also REALLY value my audiobooks. I have an offline library and would love to be able to download them to a player that has proper M4B support with chapter select and remembering where I left off.

I don’t need fantastic audio quality or anything crazy nice. I’d love less of a touch screen device and more physical buttons if possible. Good battery life, usb c charging, micro sd card support would be really nice… and obviously file support for my audiobooks :)

Thanks a bunch!!

-Eliksni

Hi! Complete beginner here. Looking for a DAP under €100 to listen to my FLAC library offline and replace streaming apps.
What I need:
Storage: Smooth MicroSD support up to 1TB–2TB (no UI lag or database crashes with thousands of FLACs).
Bluetooth: Stable connection for AirPods (AAC) and car head unit.
Build/Battery: Durable, bug-free, good battery life.
Budget: ~€100 max.
I'm considering, Oilsky m308 / HiBy R1. what is the best choice in this price range? or are there better alternatives?
Thanks!

I went down a rabbit hole with Claude code once I was able to boot Linux in the nothing phone. It then created a music player app that connects to my navidrome server. I have voice to search for specific things or voice to search to activate audiomuse. I have offline mode and a dedicated dap mode on the phone that turns all the radios off and slows the cpu to just play music.

I just thought it was incredible that I managed to do all this inside the phone without needing a computer after flashing Linux.

Edit: corrected that I did need a computer for the first step

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Hey guys, just wanted to share my thoughts on the F20 Pro+. I've been using it for a few days, now let me show some highlight from my very personal view.

What makes me satisfy is the screen. It feels much closer to a proper 16:9 aspect ratio. If you enable auto-rotate, it's great for widescreen video playback and running retro console emulators (like GBA's). Additionally, its physical buttons and clickable scroll wheel are able to map. I hope there are more buttons haha.

In terms of sound quality, it is no problem in this price. You can always count on dual DACs to deliver a richer, warmer sound, which makes its 4.4mm drive my Fidelio X3 very well. Its bluetooth codec are also great when sometimes I use my old Sony XM-2(a museum piece haha). All in all, the sound definitely meets my expectations, especially considering the sub-$150 price tag.

Props to their customer support, too. I ran into an issue signing into my Google account right out of the box, but they pushed a firmware update almost immediately to patch it.

So if you’re after that retro charm without breaking the bank, something like the Surfans F20 Pro+ is definitely worth a look.