DP-X1 DAP Birthday ~ Awesome 21Nov16

For my birthday Kala got me the Onkyo DP-X1 I had lusted for after attending the RMAF. This portable Digital Audio Player (DAP) is like an iPod on steroids. I put it through some paces over the last couple days and I have to say it's awesome. In part success is about the UI for DAPs but this is only part of the story for me as it also needs to support a number of HD Audio aspects and here's where the DP-X1 soars. The DP-X1 effectively integrates a good solid state headphone amp with a very good DAC with a fine Android-based content library. The firmware around the DAC enables support for all key file formats (MP3/AAC/M4A/OGG, FLAC, DSD and even MQA) directly; it does so at all appropriate sampling rates. And, spectacularly, it also does a real-time transcode from any lesser format to DSD! The most important thing of course is that it simply sounds great. I tested with my full size Audeze cans which it actually drove "ok" ~ a tough test for the amp section. It did much better with my Shure IEMs (In Ear Monitors) and other less power-hungry headphones - the 1st pic shows the DAP with my IEMs. I still need to verify and hear how it does through the balanced output, another fine feature, as I have no balanced cabling for my headphones (yet). Other pics shows support for MQA, a comparison of MP3, FLAC & DSD64 on Pink Floyd's Breath from Dark Side of the Moon. My in-laws also joined the DAP birthday with a cool red top-stitched leather case. I've been loading my favorite music on the DP-X1 and the copy and library synching system seems to work well ~ the display and metadata in the library is not as compelling as some other music apps I use but that's fine as the display is often off, saving energy. I'll get almost .5TB on board the pair of MicroSD cards. This DAP also connects directly to streaming sites (TIDAL, Spotify) and music stores (Google Play, etc.) but I've not tested those aspects and they are less important to me here that the ability to play my high def stuff. It does jump on my WiFi no problem and connects to Bluetooth stuff for output there. Long term reliability and battery life will be as important as the great sound ~ so far, this thing is all it should be.