The Year of Portable Audio

You may remember the days of the; Walkman, iPod & Mini Cube Radios - iconic instruments that changed the game for on-the-go music. No longer did you have to carry around a VCR on a trolley, a record player in a pizza box or a shoulder mounted radio to enjoy music on the go – there were new compact players in town.

However, the killer of legacy instruments – the jack of all trades, one again relentlessly pressed down. Yes, you guessed it – the rise of the Smartphone opened up a new avenue of media consumption. No longer was a separate device needed to store all your media files and songs – all was just a fingertips distance away in a single package. It was not without it’s teething issues, however once people transitioned to a more convenient form factor there was no looking back.

The media industry has not been a stranger to change from Live Performances 🡪 Phonograph 🡪 Record Players 🡪 Radio 🡪 Tape/ Cassette 🡪 CD 🡪 MP3 🡪 Streaming 🡪 Procedurally Generated/ AI Made Music (but that is a topic for another day!).

Back on topic, public opinion has taken some time to adjust to new formats, but the most important considerations other than quality have been - price, library size in format and ease of use. Streaming has by far crushed the competition on all three fronts, albeit the fact that any Juan can post a piece of music on Spotify that could just be bear growls, is a sacrifice most are willing to endure.

In price alone, buying any enthusiast audio format – be that physical such as Vinyl Record and CD’s or online such as Flac, Wav & DSD, are expensive. It is a lot cheaper to get say a Spotify Subscription to access Millions of songs for a monthly fee than buying tracks or albums individually.

Listening to audio on a Record Player is definitely an experience, but you need time to change from one record to another and the physical space to store your library. In terms of available content, there is now a large amount of content available online – even small artists are opting to add content onto streaming services. So, in terms of convenience for accessing library and the fact there is more than enough content means more individuals tend to lean towards an online medium.

And finally ease of use, you can pull out any electronic device and start listening to music – at home, in a commute or on a trip, but you can’t exactly listen to a record player on the go. This is a reason why even enthusiasts are moving towards online storage. They may have an expensive system at home, but on the go they still have the option to listen to their library.

For the general public, the smartphone & Bluetooth earbuds/ headphones combo has replaced any alternative solutions for listening to music. There are still a decent number of enthusiasts that listen to records, cassettes and CD’s – but for more convenience audiophiles/ enthusiasts also like to use portable media players and for some that may be all they need/ have.

Honing on the topic of portable media players – the first thing that may come to mind for most is the iPod. Whilst the iPod made for a great portable media player for most – it was pretty much an iPhone with a headphone jack and no sim card. And there are valid reasons enthusiasts would have passed on such a device – which is one of the reasons there are no more iPods and the last one (from 2019) has officially lost support. As it was a device that didn’t hit any specific target market. The general public has moved away from portable media players and enthusiasts did not see it as a good device.

So, what is it that enthusiasts are looking for? And why are there devices like the Walkman NW1AM2 and NW1ZM2 coming out which are priced in the grands? Before we get into that, let’s define the portable media player market as it currently stands.

The typical name tag associated with these portable media/ audio players is DAP (Digital Audio Player) – as we have moved past cassette’s and mini CD’s for portable audio. They come in all sorts of shapes and sizes, you can get something as small as a smartwatch dial and on the other hand something the size of a literal brick.

Now in terms of pricing you have the Ultra Budget (Under £150) segment where you would find something like the Hiby R2, Shanling M0 & xDuoo X3II. This is mostly targeted for someone who wants a separate streaming device to their smartphone – could be to preserve smartphone battery when out, could be as it has a headphone jack, could be as it is easier to control music without the worry of walking around with a £1K+ smartphone in public, avoiding theft of a more valuable device, could be to just access music on an old sd card.

Next you have the budget segment – under £600, this has been an innovative space with tech trickling down to a more affordable level. Essentially this is “entry” level or where you get a taste of different types of DAP’s. And this is the most competitive area in recent years marketing to not only enthusiasts but individuals in general who have a love for music. People who are buying these is more for just than the convenience of a second device. It’s kind of like buying a point and shoot camera separate to your smartphone as a dedicated photography device that will take better pictures.

And at this point you have to ask the question – what makes DAP’s special or even different to a smartphone. To go into that, let’s highlight the journey of an audio file from your device to your ears. First of all your media player reads the file stored on the device, inherently DAP’s have an advantage over say a smartphone as they can read higher codec/ bitrate/ information files. Very much like how a point and shoot camera will take larger space taking pictures as they retain more information – there are files for your music that have a lot of information and these aren’t the same as what you listen to on a smartphone. Not dissimilar to cinematography where you have the full resolution (e.g. an 8K Red camera that records 281 Trillion Colours per frame in 16-bit RAW and what you play on your TV is a compressed 1080p version (16 times less resolution) with 16.8 Million colours and only if you own a 4K TV and a platform that showcases in 4K you see a compressed 4K version (4 times lower resolution) and if you have HDR equipment you see 1 Billion Colours – 60 times more colours than everyone else, but still for every 280’000 different shades recorded you only see one shade). This is so it is “livestreamable” and display tech is limited to what is publicly available, and of course the human eye is a limit (we can only physically see many colours and resolution – but TV technology hasn’t hit that limit yet, you can easily tell the recording in your TV is not quite the same as what you see in real life, but it is closely approaching a point where it looks more realistic).

The same is the case for audio. Where a version that is taken in the studio is compressed into a much much smaller mp3 file that can be streamed even in poor internet conditions. However, audio is more advanced than TV technology as you can commonly listen to a CD. A 16-bit CD quality recorded in the studio (1411kbps) is reduced to MP3 (320kbps) so you can listen to it on Spotify, so for every second you listen you are only getting 20-25% of the information recorded. Nowadays almost all studios record in at least the higher 24-bit format (9216kbps) – which means the compression to MP3 is much worse, you now hear less than 4% of the recorded information per second. Now it does sound like a massive difference, but there are diminishing returns, whilst the gap between MP3 and 16-bit is easily discernible. The gap audibly in what most people can hear 16-bit and 24-bit sound almost the same. However there are some people/ audiophiles that purely listen to music for the sake of listening to music, paying attention to each detail and in a quite room can tell the difference. But in most use cases 16-bit is very good quality, and it is the specification which is certified as “Hi-Res” Audio (High Resolution Audio) – which you may come across. As in can a device play Hi-Res files and can my earbuds/ earphones/ in-ear-monitors/ headphones/ speakers play back that file properly? The reason for the reduced perceivable difference is as our brain is super-efficient it can fill in the gaps – don’t quote me on the number (I’ve just pulled a random one for argument), but if we hear at least 70% of the information our brain will fill in the rest, so even if you hear 100% of the information later it will sound the same. And of course there are higher formats than 24-bit files (mostly saved as FLAC or WAV files), these are 32-bit files and DSD files (DSD64 – similar to 20/ 24-bit, DSD128/ Double DSD, DSD256/ Quad DSD, DSD512 and DSD1024 – 480 times the sample rate of 24-bit).

Moving on from the file itself, the process of converting the digital file to analogue sound is done by a DAC (digital to analogue converter). In DAP’s (Digital Audio Player’s) there is a separate chip to the processor that does this conversion. This can be done in two different ways, using a R2R Ladder DAC (which is multiple resistors in a ladder chain, that do a binary decoding) or using a delta sigma DAC using a chip that does the decoding in a loop by process of subtraction followed by an integrator and quantizer (hence the name) – basically this is doing real time calculations and takes longer to process. Delta Sigma DACs are more easily available and there are different manufacturers that make Delta Sigma DAC chips such as AKM, ESS, Cirrus & Rohm – each company has their own algorithm and take on how to do this which results in a slightly different sound signature.

The Analogue signal then goes through an amplifier, which leads to DAPs having more power output – so you can drive higher impedance equipment easily. DAPs can have different types of Amps, Class A (high fidelity, low efficiency – get very warm very quick), Class D (other end, higher efficiency), Class B (more efficient than A), Hybrid of Class A and B (Class AB) & Tube Amps (literal tubes integrated into the amp).

Finally the signal reaches the output port (DAPs have more of a choice – can have balanced ports such as 4.4mm or XLR outputs that treat Left and Right side signals separately throughout the decoding process, so each side gets its own signal). The output port on a DAP is designed in a way to minimise background noise – you know that buzzing sound you get when you connect your wired headphones/ earphones to your phone or laptop, that shouldn’t be there. This is called background noise and is something enthusiasts look to not have in their system or reduce as much as possible.

The more specialty features have been exclusive to flagship and mid-range tier. However in the last 2-3 years, a lot of attention in the audio segment has been going into entry level products. From in ear monitors, to budget headphones – there has been a big ramp up in budget offerings. Similarly in this price range, one can now find DAPs like the Hiby RS2 (a cheap R2R DAP experience), Hiby R5 Gen 2 (Class A Amplifier in a budget offering), Fiio M11S (Dual DAC design) & Cayin N3Pro (Tube Amp in a Budget DAC). Sony’s new budget Walkman – the NWA306 falls into this segment (it offers Sony’s proprietary S-Master HX Amp, Vinyl Sound via the Vinyl Processor which has trickled down this year, upgraded headphone port and 26-36 hours battery life). DAP’s in this price point also offer Micro SD Card support, so you can play stored music locally and expand offline storage.

Following the Budget segment, you then have the lower mid-range segment (£600 - £1100). This is the point of conversion, so you have tried the entry level devices and are now looking for an upgrade. Enter the mid-range region. This is the area, the new ZX707 walkman (with tech translated down from the NW1AM2), the Cayin N6ii (with a Modular Motherboard) and maybe the Astell & Kern Kann Max on a bargain (which offers a lot of power for more demanding gear) also slips into this territory.

The chunk of mid-range is in the £1100 – £1500K segment and the likes of the Sony NW1AM2 (between ZX707 and NW1ZM2), Hiby RS6 (between RS2 and RS8) and the Shanling M8 (with its flagship AKM4499EQ DAC chip) fit into.

Above that is the upper mid-range between £1500 and £2K, this is the price point where old flagship products retail, similar to smartphones – so you could grab the Cayin N8 and the Astell Kern SP2000 in this bracket or buy something new like the Cayin N7 (first DAP with a 1-bit design – binary like an R2R dap but converts everything into DSD format for playback).

Finally you have the Flagships, the Astell Kern SP3000, Cayin N8ii (Dual Tube DAC), Hiby RS8 (Fully R2R design), NW1ZM2 etc. which are above £2K.

Having covered all of that, are these DAPs worth the price? For an everyday user – however unfortunate, the answer is probably no. Most do not want to carry a separate device and to facilitate people already owning smartphones, dongle DACs are becoming increasingly popular. Instead of buying a DAP for it’s discrete DAP you get the DAC built into a dongle that converts your usb-c or lightning port to 3.5mm or 4.4mm. Of course, this is not going to compete with a mid-range or flagship DAP, but these are in the ultra-budget segment and offer a lot of the same performance at a cheaper price without needing a separate device.

But for those that are in the “hobby”/ enthusiasts – they definitely are all in for DAP’s – especially with the unique sound signatures these have, the very high sound quality they can offer, higher power output, built in features like EQ (Hiby is famous for its MESB), upscaling technologies, NOS (non over-sampling) modes – pure raw audio files without any processing, sound profiles, unique amplification technologies, playback of specific codec libraries, playing back content stored on an old SD card or just the joy of owning a separate device for audio.

So, bringing it back to the headline – this is the year of budget and mid-tier DAP’s. A lot of stuff has already launched this year like the new iBasso DX170, Aune M1P, Sony NWA306, Sony ZX707, Cayin N7, Shanling M0 Pro, Hiby R6 Gen3 and a lot of stuff like the Luxury and Precision E7, Hiby R6 Pro (2023), Fiio M15S and Fiio M23 are due for launch this year and that’s only what has already been announced. Outside of DAP's - there is an emergence of other portable tech like the Astell Kern PA10 (a portable amplifier - which are picking up as a new segment in the industry). There does seem to be a trend, last year the SP3000, RS8, Cayin N8ii & Sony NW1MZ2 launched which were the big players as flagships. This year more focus is on the mid-range and budget tier and there is a lot of new experimental tech being introduced which is amazing for consumers!

But this push for better quality and a wider variety of choice in portable audio players is not exclusive just to players - it is part of a larger push to make great audio products available in a portable format. Such as the Topping G5, Cayin C9, Shanling H7, Shanling EC3, Fiio Q7, Chord Mojo 2, Questyle M15 & many compact Schiit products (that is seriously the name of an audio brand that makes some groundbreaking products).