Also I would say it’s still slightly less wide than a combo I’ve tried like the LP plus bifrost but it does widen up a fair bit after burn in where I wouldn’t say it feels constrained. Definitely a bit less wide.
Very interesting impressions 
Gotcha gotcha, it’s only been burning in for like 2 days so far, so I’d assume it’s got a few more to go
Gotcha
It is pretty strange, enjoyable, but strange
I do have my doubts that stage is going any further, because it feels pretty well defined spatially already, so I’d be pretty surprised if that changes more. I can totally see dynamics and timbre but stage seems as intended, but no way to know for sure yet
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I would only assume it’s possible because to me it dosent feel constrained but I mean that might just be difference or opinion. But I will say it’s definitely not as wide as other dacs I’ve heard, something that surprised me.
It’s very interesting for sure lol. I was surprised because it’s definitely not super colored a dac, felt reeeally linear to me but that in particular gave it a very particular sound. That I ended u falling in love with haha
@Littledrummerboy let it rest tonight and now there’s about 72 hours of burn in on it. I do think dynamics have improved to being acceptable, still don’t think they are that strong but it’s more than enough for the price point, specifically microdynamics
Overall so far, this is pretty awesome for the money, best overall dap I’ve heard at this price point sound wise. And likely UX as well
Pros so far:
- Texture - real good for the money and well represented
- Resolution - can pull a fair amount of lower level information and present it organically, with the refinement of presentation being more impressive to me here than the raw resolving power
- Separation - while not the quickest it does separate things in a holographic way which adds immersion and while not the most organic in how it does it, I think it is more positive than negative overall
- Vocals - might be suprising coming from me, but they do stand out as being very very well represented on this dap, noteworthy for others, but I don’t really care myself
In the middle:
- Signature wise is interesting, it’s a neutral slightly more bodied signature, but a bit too tame in the treble for me personally, could use more energy there. Still reasonably balanced though, I could see the tonality and tuning easily being standout for someone else
- Spatially is pretty accurate, has lots of depth, I still think stage is on the smaller and more intimate side but now not in a negative way, it will just depend if you like that or not
- Timbre - I’m still mixed here, it’s both really good and slightly off putting at the same time, that sorta hyper realistic or almost more accurately overdone sort of sound. Need more time here
- Dynamics - They are good but not great, I think it’s great for more microdynamics but a somewhat lack in macrodynamics makes things a bit less engaging at times
Ehhhhhhhh:
- Attack and decay/representation of transients/harmonics? - It has a sort of roundness to it’s attack and decay that is off putting to me personally, sort of an ethereal representation of things that while making them all sound somewhat sweeter leads to it sounding a bit dull and sometimes inorganic, bothers me personally. Could it be harmonic balance perhaps actually? Whatever it is, it’s distracting and I think might sabotage some potentially good pairings otherwise
But honestly it’s hard to really complain given the cost here, enough to where I can pretty easily overlook some of the problems
For all the tweakable settings, I personally like the sound of high gain the most as it gives the largest amount of punch and a bit more clarity, and it’s not high enough gain where the volume isn’t usable with iems either, so I’d go at least medium pref high if possible. MESB is cool but personally not for me, not really a positive sound benefit in messing with it unless you have some signature/tonality qualms that it might be able to address. I do think there’s more interesting stuff in the Darwin controller though, right away just enable NOS, it’s just plain better. I personally didn’t like atmosphere enhanced since while it did seemingly add more space, was less natural. For the DSD filter I liked darwin-1 more, sounded more lively. The harmonic controller is actually cool, and does make an appreciable difference without really harming fidelity, you can enhance the richness of the dap and also make it sound more soft or more snappy. At either extreme it doesn’t sound good, personally I have it set at 100 for a bit more bite, but I’d say it’s sweet spot is around 100-160 from my experience and just tune to preference/better suit your iem. I don’t have any iems within the custom iem setting so I can’t test that
When it comes to pairing iem wise, I do think with some of the more already relaxed iems might not fare well, I can easily see it getting too chilled out for my preferences. I personally wasn’t that big of a fan to what it did with the MMR (needed better grip and control, a bit too mushy, spatially less involving, less explosive dynamics), but I thought it was fairly pleasing with the Traillii as it kept it overall fairly balanced and technical given the cost, while adding a bit more smoothness and sweetness without really messing anything up. Jury is still out on the Infin, but I’m really not enjoying that pairup that much. Sarda is actually pretty pleasing, it overall adds more balance and organicness while taking a bit of the energy and slam away but not enough to mess up the experience, while I don’t think it’s ideal for the sarda I do actually like this pairing. I have yet to give other iems a run, and not really touched with headphones. I’d also like to give some of my portable amps a run too
While I’m not exactly satisfied with the pairings of my current iems, I think for the level of iems most would be pairing this dap with it’s going to fare much better, and just as a line out dac it’s pretty awesome, you can really tell they went all in on the dac here and it’s turned out quite well
But that’s just initial impressions, likely will change with more time
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Understood, fair enough!
YESSSSSSSSSSSSS, MIDS and vocals are 
on it!
Lol totally fair, it’s also thanks to you that I know what made it sound so euphoric and dreamy to me, it wasn’t until you mentioned this on your impressions that I was like OH so that’s what it was! I ended u falling in love with it but I do understand why it’s not your favorite aspect and can Def see it maybe causing issues with pairings, altho mostly if you dislike it.
That’s the biggest thing I noticed too, most punchy, dynamic and just generally more capable when on high gain.
YESSSSSSSSSSSSS on Nos. Once you go NOS you never go back (think an ex had a similiar saying). I also tried the atmosphere enhanced just momentarily, it wasn’t terrible but when you are buying a 1.4k Dap one would assume you have some hard hitting headphones and IEMs and it really just kind of destroy the organicness not by a ton but enough to be like eh.
I should really get the update to try that out, seems interesting for sure.
Dope thoughts on it! Both negative and positive!
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Also actually fully agree here, you know me I like me some treble and the RS6 is a bit too polite there. It’s not a deal breaker, reminiscent of the questyle there for me but it would have been perfect for me if it did have more treble. Originally when I was using it in over sampling mode I ended up bringing up the brightness with the eq settings it has a bit. After using Nos I was OK with it, but certainly not up my alley there.
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To my ears it would seesaw eq, turning one thing up would add a little eq in one spot but also lower something else to emphasize it. It was ok if you didnt go over 15 out of 100, but i prefer just a normal eq.
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I thought up to 20 even its pretty decent, anything over that they are fairly honest as even in there it says things like +/- 40 meddling and ±100 excessive lol.
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also @M0N at the risk of sounding crazy i got to throw this out there. In preparation for the article i messed around with the Low-pass antialising filter setting and have been reeeeeally enjoying Darwin 10 i would really recommend you give that one another shot, listening to a fairly bright song, IOI - Hold On, it really brings back a fair bit of treble imo. Ive been listening to Darwin 10 since the morning and really enjoying it.Generally seems more energetic.
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Sure, let me go do that. I did test out the filtering modes, but I noticed that they generally took away some of the more intangibles that I really liked to give more energy. Let me go try it for a bit
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Gotcha, fair enough.I’ve only really tried the stock one, darwin 1 for most of my listening and only this morning tried darwin 10 and noticed the energy and treble. Currently test darwin 9 to see if it actually tames the treble a bit more lol, kind of like looking for a happy medium.
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Got my RS6 in a few days ago. REALLY great so far. Trying a bunch of different combinations of things. I’ll give some impressions when I have more time.
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@j.fopps is it me or is this why u asked me about the battery. The battery when used as line out seems top be shorter than actually using as a Dap no? Lol.
Like when you leave it playing music without it connected to device it’s battery is crazy long, when connected to headphone still fairly long and when just being used as line out connected to amp its fairly shorter right? Noticed rn as I left it playing to listen to music on my break and it was off
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Hm, I’m pretty sure that’s right, and If I’m thinking about it correctly, I’d kind of expect that to be the case
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I wonder if it’s because unlike connecting thru USB to transport dac information and doing so thru the line out auxiliry port kills more battery since it still does output energy? Idk
Was super surprising tho lol to find the hiby dead. I was like wut
OMG I have an interesting story to tell u guys. Scared the shit out of me just a few minutes ago. Made me worry something was wrong with my hiby or even worse with me!
So I’ve been listening to the Andros on a mix of RS6 and also the Questyle dongle dac. Been pretty fun! However suddenly like 16 minutes ago something changed where when I was listening to Flatbush zombies the volume was fairly low. Usually on gain high most of my music is playing around 26-31 or so on the Andros depending on the recording. But I had to be at least at 34-41 right now. I didn’t think too much since flatbush zombie apbums aren’t that loud. But when I connected the line out to my focal alphas I began to worry! Because the volume was so low, I’ll give an example of how where it usually is on the speakers vs how turned the knob had to be this morning to match that volume
As you can see terrifyingly high! I couldn’t think of any single change I made so I was both worried the hiby was capping out even after resetting it or that my hearing dramatically decreased!
THEN! I finally remembered that when I connect the questyle to the hiby through USB since it dosent have a volume control it actually uses the gain plus or minus within the actually USB audio app! And I had it way down low, raised it up and the “normal” volume levels came back! LOL
Was even going to write something to ask for help with troubleshooting it etc hahaha. Thankfully everything is OK UwU
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Had no idea about a gain setting within the usb audio player pro app
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Decided to write a bit more about my experience with this dap since i’ve had it for a bit more, it’s part of my daily use too so i’ve been able to find out quirks and develop more atitudes towards certain aspects of the dap.
Driving abilities: Like the R5 it’s pretty dang decent at driving headphones, stuff like the KSC75 and Grado Hemps sounded great on the RS6 and IEMs are surprisingly nice on it too. Because it’s so good at driving headphones I worried it might not be the best for IEMS but i use high gain on the Andromeda 2020s and it’s phenomenal. As mon mentioned before you really want to use high gain since its the most punchy/dynamic sounding mode. The volume steps on this thing are excellent, goes all the way to 100 and there aren’t crazy big jumps nor nothing with the volume steps so you can totally finetune your volume even on high gain with fairly sensetive IEMs like the Andromedas. I think headphones with less sensitivity and or higher ohms wouldn’t be the best on this, I would like to see how it would deal with a planar as well but to be honest higher impedence and planars in general i feel would probably be lacking on the amp section.
Android: Its impossible to downplay how nice it is that it’s Android not only because of how customizable it is but also because of certain doors that it opens. Of course i can connect it to my pc and use as the amp/dac for a headphone if lets say someone sends me a music link on discord but i can also legit just install discord (not allow notifications) and do it like that. Downloading spotify to it has been super awesome too because even though i don’t really use it for serious listening whenever i have a friend listen to some gear I don’t have to find music that they like within my library but instead I can play them anything through spotify. Also whether it’s google drive, sendanywhere or even bluetooth you can send music wirelessly.
Warm up time: Theres always a noticeable change in audio if you hear it from it being on standby to it playing music. It’s one of the negatives but it’s totally workeable, i’ve found 40 minutes to be very nice to get it to sound great if not it’s best. However due to me having a habit of leaving it playing every day right before work I’ve also noticed that it does not waste much battery when not plugged into something. So it’s just playing music from 6am without being connected to headphones, speakers or anything and by around 6pm it’s got like 43% battery generally (starting the day at 100).
Honestly kind of hard to find anything wrong with it lol, I mean i know someone who feels like it sounds a bit like a mentally handicapped child but even that person accepts that If it does it sounds like a mentally handicapped child with soul and that’s what counts. In all seriousness though I guess it’s fair critizicm to call the decay/transients a bit blunted. Even though it’s a stylistic design that has made me enjoy this dude like crazy.
I really would try to have more negative things to say about the Dap, but its kind of hard to do when it just works so well. Drives what you would expect well (lower to mid impedence headphones, most iems) , uses a very universal platform (Android), very fast performance where you could use it as a phone replacement if they offered a 3g version or something. Dac on this, is just exceptional. For me the spatial abilities and texture are easily the biggest stand outs.
NOS vs Oversampling
I briefly mentioned this in my Article but i should probably touch on it a bit more. Oversampling which is the standard configuration it came in sounds so different from NOS it’s legit shocking. Its stage is much smaller, mids sound gritty like Grado headphones, treble is nonexistant, bass is fun af but everything feels generally constricted. When i heard it on NOS for the first time thanks to a late night call with Towa and Mon i was so shocked i legit had trouble sleeping. The sound signature was completely different, out of nowwhere the stage was much wider, like legit wide enough by any standards not to mention much more depth. Mids sounded the opposite as well, instead of gritty they sounded dreamy/etherial/soft, treble is still a bit on the polite side but totally passable for my standards, bass was much less a focus in terms of sound signature however the texture on the subass is ridiculously great. Sound signature wise it was just so much more neutral in terms of how linear it sounded but instead of being clinical, dry it felt like the opposite where it became this very dreamy type of sound. Just keep NOS on, it’s the way to go.
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OK so here’s the thing lol. I’ve found myself wanting a bit more “energy” just a few times. Because I don’t always want to just chillax which I feel like the Hiby does really well. That led me around to experimenting a bit, would be interesting to hear other people’s thoughts on this but essentially what happened is that I decided to experiment a bit and that led me to turning on oversampling just a few days ago. Here’s what I found: So I’m using Low-pass antialising filter Darwin 10, simply because at first listen it felt more energetic but I haven’t played around too much with other filters. First of all imo turning oversampling on does two things, I feel like it stops blunting the attack and generally to my ears feels more accurate in terms of attack and decay. It also does take away some depth and organicness that you get in the NOS setting, actually I would say a fair bit. 2. Oversampling also really makes the stage width smaller which would be a bit of a deal breaker (in fact it’s the biggest reason I originally switched to NOS fully) but there’s a catch, within the Darwin settings there’s a setting called Atmosphere Enhanced. Here’s the thing, when you use Atmosphere Enhanced during NOS mode it makes the sound a fair bit less organic however when you are already using it in the less organic oversampling mode It only adds more stage and more holographicness.
So my point is two things, I believe during the first stages of owning the RS6 It’s worth to have the RS6 on NOS all the time to really get great sound quality and while I still think NOS is the better sounding mode I also see that now that the RS6 Dac is fully burn in now It becomes a matter of taste. NOS is the more organic, beautiful and euphoric sound that the RS6 carries and is still imo the peak of it’s sound not by alot but by a decent chunk while Oversampling is something that removes that laid back sound signature by returning alot of the attack and decay’s more normal speed, also does bring down the stage width to a deal breaking level if there wasn’t an Atmosphere Enhanced option. In fact I’m pretty sure they added that not because everyone just likes a wider stage but because they specifically felt they needed it for their Oversampling mode. Funnily enough on my Focal Alpha speakers I actually don’t need the enhanced atmosphere setting, only did in the Andromedas. Not sure why though
But yeah, essentially my current thoughts on NOS vs Oversampling is that once the device is fully burnt in both are not only viable options but play off eachother well as I’ve been enjoying alot using NOS for the euphoric, laid back sound + higher technicalities like micro detail, organicness but I’ve also been enjoying Oversampling alot when I just want to have fun and feel more of the speed, attack, more treble energy (just a generally more energetic sound tbh). Would be curious to hear if other’s have similiar experiences.
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Very interesting, I’ll have to give this a try when I get a decent amount of time to listen and play around with the settings.
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