dap

High End 2016: The fantastic Pioneer XDP – 100R – K Hi Res DAP

June 24, 2016

What a clumsy name, the XDP 100R K, but what a fantastic device this Pioneer DAP truly is. Under one slick aluminum machined body with removable bumpers lies a powerhouse of a portable audio player capable of everything. Full stop here. This is a [...]

High End 2015: Astell&Kern

June 8, 2015

I blame Astell&Kern for my “portable audio” problem. I had, wrongly, assumed that the iPhone was as good as it gets and that anything above and beyond that was pretty much just daydreaming. I mean, who would actually bother to make a [...]

Review: Calyx M Digital Audio Player

March 21, 2015

One thing you gotta thank Neil Young for? All the publicity around “sound quality”. It’s been so long since there’s been any serious public discussion of what our music could and should sound like, I think we (as a [...]

Coming soon: HiFi-Skÿn

February 18, 2015

IndieGoGo is all the rage, apparently, and perhaps for very good reason — it allows many smaller, boutique would-be vendors to get a real handle on their potential markets prior to actually building (and spending) anything. That’s a [...]

Review: Pono Music Player

November 19, 2014

Enter Pono Well, it happened. I got my Pono player. For those of you not keeping track, Pono is a music service, a portable digital audio player, a lifestyle experience, and more, that’s supposed to revolutionize the entire industry. No, the [...]

Newport 2014: Astell&Kern and the Hand of Glory

June 7, 2014

There are several legends about the so-called “Hand of Glory“. They refer to the hand of a hanged thief, amputated after death. Sweet, right? It gets better — stick a candle in it, and whoever it’s waved at cannot move until [...]

Newport 2014: CEntrance shows a Mini-M8 and Glove

June 5, 2014

The CEntrance table at Newport had two sweet surprises. The first was the Mini-M8. This is the new slimmed-down version of the best-selling headphone DAC/amp combo, the HiFi-M8, but this time there’s real (output) support for IEMs. A better [...]

Enter Pono

March 8, 2014

Chris Connaker at ComputerAudiophile has the scoop on the Pono Player coming soon from Neil Young et al. For those of you that missed the teaser blitz last year, Pono is not a digital Toblerone, it’s a portable high-resolution audio player. [...]

Amazeballs: Astell & Kern’s AK 240

March 2, 2014

An Audio360.org Review by Warren Chi & Michael Liang Avid personal audio enthusiasts know that hearing a wide variety of gear can breed apathy, making us jaded, blasé and hard-to-please. As such, it is indeed a rare occasion when a new piece of [...]