Impresions on Hiby RS6. Alrighty! So I’ve had the hiby for official a full day and listened to it for like 4 hours and a few minutes. As soon as I got it I left it playing music from 5pm to approximetally 11am today. Last night I listened to some music of course and there’s been some big changes it’s gone through etc etc. When I first got it even after letting it burn in for 5 hours it was fairly hmmmm how should I say, almost felt like a slightly half assed questyle in terms of sound sig? Like it wasn’t that bad because obviously by my first impressions I enjoyed it! But felt like the treble was fairly rolled off while having an emphasis on the mids and the bass. Now the great thing is that hiby is perfect for sliding some little things to modify sound (I believe they built it around that so that you can modify sound without affecting sound quality.) and so I bumped up brightness just a bit and it was fine. I would go on at times listening to it with it bumbed up and sometimes not to see if I could get used to it but I just couldn’t. However just about two hours ago I took it off after noticing a fair bit more treble sparkle and prominence! Since then it’s risen to be much more like the hiby I know, good warmth in mids, fun bass and sparkly treble! It’s not super sparkly but it’s much more neutral than it used to be with the recessed treble. Bass has also drastically improved in its becoming much tighter and faster. Layering of detail might be my favorite thing of this Dap atm, it’s layering is magical. You can hear layer of layer of vocals, instruments behind and in front of each other with perfect seperation maintaining all of them at seperate places at the same time and all vividly outlined! I may have expected alot from the hiby but so far it’s even out shining what I truly thought it would be capable of doing and is even better at many things that I thought. The detail and layering has been one of the main things that constantly improved almost hourly and the treble prominence took over a day to really start developing. I look forward to hear what other changes might come as time goes. Soundstage is actually fairly intimate. Sadly I didn’t get to test the dac alone today but I remember that I do have another cable tomorrow to hook it up to the alphas so I’ll be able to give more details in that soon
I think these are the main stand outs of what I’ve noticed in the last 24 hours. I hope to have more to write about in the next few days!
Oh also, buildwise there were some stand out differences in the R6 2020 where this Dap is actually substantially heavier, must be built with a different material I guess. Also the volume knob is much better! Used to have to change volume from the backside of the knob but now from the front it’s easy access too, much smoother
Seriously tho, I mean without the case I thought it was generally fine but with the case I was like hmmm. And you can’t expect someone to not use a case to protect such an expensive investment. People that don’t use cases on their phone are nuts.
Small update in case anyone is interested. I got some decent time with the Dac portion of this Dap on my Focal Alpha speakers which I’ve owned for a hot minute and I know fairly well. I also made sure to play music that I’ve listened on those speakers a billion times, mostly with the bifrost and also got to play other dacs before with the same speakers like the Ifi diablo dac, the schiit modius, the standard R6 dac and I’m probably missing a few from there. So I was able to verify a few things, some good some bad. I guess the main bad one is that the dac on the RS6 is fairly intimate (polite way of saying small width (like a micro penis in terms of human analogy)). I have a fairly standard view on stage width, the wider it is generally the more enjoyable (as long as it maintains a generally decent sense of space within of course) in my opinion it’s like having two pictures, one that is 8 by 12 inches versus a much bigger picture that’s 16 by 24 inches and both have the same ratio of dots per square inch, so both have the exact same amount of detail but one just looks bigger. It’s easier to enjoy it, same reason we get bigger TVs.
Now then, is it a shame that the stage is so intimate? Yes, am I okay with the tradeoffs? Yessss, now let’s talk about those a bit before I make some huge statements about the sound of the dac in this babe, I can confidently say that pound for pound in terms of technical abilities such as separation, timbre, tonal balance, depth, dynamicw, detail the dac within this and the amp inside completely go blow for blow with desktop setups in similar price ranges (new). Not only that but you have such similar performance in a portable to where it just dosent make sense to get a desktop amp in certain cases over something like this which is fully portable. After hooking up the dac to my speakers and listening to music for an hour or two I came to the conclusion that the main differences between the hiby RS6 dac and the bifrost dac in terms of how they affected my speakers was that the bifrost had a fairly wider stage, bit more impact, fairly more mid forward and I feel like that’s it. Even though it is better at highlighting certain small details I don’t necessarily feel like depth-wise the RS6 falls behind at all. Imaging is also somewhere that is just as good as the bifrost (altho due to bifrost having wider stage and just as good imaging it’s definitely debatebly better imo). When it comes to bass, that’s what separates the boys from the men and things like a modius fail at reproducing much bass and even a more decent dac like the diablo dac are just thumpy in the bass without much texture but the bifrost and the hiby RS6 have phenomenal bass quality and the RS6 also ended up being a surprisingly bassy dac to where its bass quantity really stands out. In terms of midrange timbre I’ve been reeeally enjoying the RS6, feels a bit more cohesive than on the bifrost it’s hard to explain but it just feels more “right”.
Sound signature feels fairly different from both dacs, bifrost is a bit less rich in lower mids and bass than the RS6. Bifrost also has fairly more forward mids than RS6 with slightly more prominent treble imo. Both feel relatively relaxed and focus on organicness.
Another thing, there’s also something special about having a, in my opinion, equally good Dac and Amp inside of something where you can tell they were actually made for each other. Nothing feels mismatched.
Edit : FUCKING ESSAY IT ENDED UP BEING. But if you want to waste 5 minutes that you will never get back, go ham I guess
Don’t have concrete proof of this buuuut I think that this has some warmup time. Been noticing that if I leave it playing music for an hour or so before using it it sounds fairly better, wider more dynamic, accurate basically everything just sounds better. While if it’s on standby and I start listening to music on it it’s a bit more boring and as I mentioned less of everything else. I’m sure when I have more and more time with it I’ll be able to confirm this
Also bass on this thing sounds aggressive af lol, getting more time with it in my speakers that I’ve used for a long time with only bifrost so the changes I sound are way more apparent here
Sounds about right based on my experience with the P6P. Takes a good 20-30 minutes of warmup to sound its best. Something about resistor ladders temperature normalization. On the scale of a DAP, 30 minutes or an hour, but in some desktop stuff can apparently take days.
Gotcha gotcha, yeah I had heard something of the kind but I guess I assumed as long as it’s on it would be good. But definitely sounds different to me. Feels like if u wanna get anything to be super good it will always require patience lol. No just plug n play. Altho it’s not the biggest issue, I just leave it running a bit
Gotten mine in earlier than expected, really nice so far. OS off of course, I can already really tell the dac here is pulling it’s weight. But I’ve only let it warm up for an hour and it’s pre burn in, so I’ll let it run in for a few days and then come back to it. UI wise it really does feel faster than my phone lol, good stuff there. I have a feeling this is already going to be pretty good already, I’ll have to wait until it burns in to give it serious listening. Also feels very substantial and heavier than expected
Let’s fucking goooooooooooooo haha. On a serious note tho, very curious to hear your impressions once it burns in more. Personally I got mine B stock from musicteck , so it was technically used but It seems the previous owner only heard it without much burn in since it most definitely took a full day and a half to burn in and get to its current sound. Also since you have a wider range of headphones/iems than me even after your mass purges I’ll be very curious to hear more about that. Such as whether it can drive some maybe planars or not etc.
Just to note I use it in high gain with the VC, not a volume issue but just noticed that it’s much more dynamically alive and capable.
I still haven’t given it a fair shake, it’s mostly been burn in so I didn’t set up the player yet. Took it in with me today with the traillii, been giving it an actual listen now (nos on, medium gain). First off the background blackness is insanely improved from any hiby I’ve tried, that was always a weak point on then for sure, not p6p level but really good for the price. Signature is natural/neutral and a bit more relaxed, slightly also a bit more intimate in presentation. Has good tonal weight and body I’d say but not super stand out there. I do think it overall might lack some energy and also be a bit on the softer side of things which I’m a bit iffy about. A bit more bass and lower midrange focus overall, still decent treble extension but might lack a bit of bite there. Stage wise has great depth and separation but might lack some width that makes it feel somewhat constrained. Dynamics right now are somewhat weak and feel compressed a bit, hopefully that opens up with more time. Timbre is good but not great. Speed is weird, attack might be a bit blunted. Resolution and texture are real solid for the money though, good job there.
So far really good for the price, doesn’t stack up to the p6p in any way so far (not really done any comparison though) but is closer than any other dap I’ve tried in this price range nonetheless. I will be continuing to listen as it’s pretty promising. Also build and UX is fantastic
More of just looking for “roughly same sonic level/not roughly same level” more so than a direct comparison since the p6k is kinda my ~1k benchmark dap tbb
I would say in terms of what requires burn in and what will still be the same, the dynamics obviously are the biggest beneficiary of burn in with the Dap. When it comes to sound I would agree that treble will probably stay the same tbh. It’s something that I noticed at the beginning and still feels relatively same, Def not sparkly nor prominent. Timbre also big improvement imo buuuut guess we will find out ur thoughts on it once it burns in more . NOW THEN SPEED AND ATTACK, YES lol. I call the RS6 very euphoric and dreamy and I think that might be the reason. It’s hard for me to describe it but that might actually be the reason as to why it sounds like that
before I make some huge statements about the sound of the dac in this babe, I can confidently say that pound for pound in terms of technical abilities such as separation, timbre, tonal balance, depth, dynamicw, detail the dac within this and the amp inside completely go blow for blow with desktop setups in similar price ranges (new). Not only that but you have such similar performance in a portable to where it just dosent make sense to get a desktop amp in certain cases over something like this which is fully portable. After hooking up the dac to my speakers and listening to music for an hour or two I came to the conclusion that the main differences between the hiby RS6 dac and the bifrost dac in terms of how they affected my speakers was that the bifrost had a fairly wider stage, bit more impact, fairly more mid forward and I feel like that’s it. Even though it is better at highlighting certain small details I don’t necessarily feel like depth-wise the RS6 falls behind at all. Imaging is also somewhere that is just as good as the bifrost (altho due to bifrost having wider stage and just as good imaging it’s definitely debatebly better imo). When it comes to bass, that’s what separates the boys from the men and things like a modius fail at reproducing much bass and even a more decent dac like the diablo dac are just thumpy in the bass without much texture but the bifrost and the hiby RS6 have phenomenal bass quality and the RS6 also ended up being a surprisingly bassy dac to where its bass quantity really stands out. In terms of midrange timbre I’ve been reeeally enjoying the RS6, feels a bit more cohesive than on the bifrost it’s hard to explain but it just feels more “right”.