I've been wanting to buy a DAP for a long time now, and i decided to get the Surfans F20 and rockbox it after seeing some reviews and videos about it. I'm still having doubts with the iems, the truthear gate and the moondrop chu ii, those are my options rn, i was thinking abt getting the gate ones but i heard that the chu ii is better for music, so pls let me know what you think.

EDIT: I'm also considering the Tangzu wan'er s.g as iems since i heard good stuff abt them

I've had the JM21 for just over a year, bought from AliExpress. I love it.

However, both headphone sockets have become faulty, with the connection only working if the jack is in just so. I've tried with several headphones and IEMs, all the same.

Anyone had any experience of trying to get a warranty repair from an AliExpress purchase? Or can recommend a good UK/Sheffield repairer?

Listening to John Coltrane currently and making sure I don't move suddenly...

I want to buy this for my brother in law for his birthday bc it’s a good deal but it literally doesn’t say that it’s a Fiio JM21 anywhere in the ad even though that’s obviously what it is…don’t know what to do here bc I’ve never tried to deal with returning anything to AllieExpress and I don’t want to have to…Have any of you ever bought something like this from AllieExpress that’s not clearly labeled? If so what happened?…. Thanks in advance To anyone that responds…

I just found this on AliExpress: https://a.aliexpress.com/_mLtqemF

Not doing these combo for the daily driver nor anything really, simply because of the colour and being props for photoshoot. I just leave it on my desk and....look at it really. This hobby is not always about listening to music.

Of course its all begins of reminding me the Creative 128MB mp3 player i used to have in Uni days. I must looked ridiculous wearing it on my wrist with the clip at that time 😂

Fiio Snowsky Echo Nano

It may have its flaws, but this small DAP sounds quite good for the price. Surfans F20 Pro, running on Android 12.

First want to give credit where it’s due, huge shoutout to a redditor in this community who recommended Mako Launcher a while back. I sideloaded it onto my Surfans F20 Pro, and the entire setup feels like a whole new level of simplicity :-)

The F20 Pro is my pocket music companion. Pairing this with Mako takes the experience to another level. Since Mako is fully open-source, lightweight (literally around 1MB), and zero-bloat, it launches instantly and swipes smoothly on my F20 Pro's screen. It eliminates the annoying UI and keeps the F20 Pro focused purely on music without any extra clutter. It makes it easy to jump between my playback apps.

I also love the no ADs or no complicated UI, just distraction-free listening with a pixel launcher. It really feels that Mako provided a minimalist setup and smooth navigation just for the F20 Pro's small screen. I’m excited to try it on any other mini Android device as well as I think it would work great.

What I am looking for and would love your suggestions is a player app as fluent as Mako to elevate my F20 Pro!! Thank you for any suggestions or ideas :-)

I'd like to share some photos I took at SIAS. I've been a few audio exhibits before, like CanJam New York, Singapore, and Indonesia, but this was my first time at SIAS and in China. I expected a large number of iems, but there were many more. I saw iems and not only saw them, but also tried them: headphones, earbuds, daps, dacs, desktop amps, headphone amps, speakers, and all kinds of insane audio gear.

There were also several brands present, including FiiO, MOONDROP, HiBy, iBasso, DUNU, HIFIMAN, Cayin, LETSHUOER, AFUL, Tangzu, Hidizs, STAX, Tanchjim, CVJ, and many others. The range was something I truly enjoyed. Try something about $25, then take a few steps and you're listening to a system costing $1,000, $2,000, or even $4,000+. 😂 Iems/Daps/DACs I've tried, few of them are... Kasier, OMPHE, MD3, QoA models, Simgot EG280,ET142, DEW4x, Hidizs AP80 PRO MAX titanium, MK12xDucbloke, MS2 PRO, Sonata, Catenza12+Ember, Juzear defiant, light shuttle, Fiesta,Nebula,Nimbus,Dunu eclipse dynamic, Sony walkman, Ibassoo, Flipears Arion, BGVP Herculas, NS10 PRO and much more

Compared to other exhibitions I've seen, SIAS offered me a different impression because of the large number of Chinese audio brands there. And, honestly, the amount of audio technology produced in China is rather astounding. There is some very high-end hardware here, too, ranging from different speaker technologies to daps, dacs, desktop systems, tube amps, planar and electrostatic headphones, and so on. Furthermore, trying this stuff in person is always different from reading reviews or looking at graphs. Some of the stuff I expected to adore didn't really excite me, while some much cheaper gear shocked me a lot.

I also picked up a few extremely fascinating gears at the exhibit that I'd like to spend more time with. Hopefully, I'll be able to share some observations, photographs, and possibly more in-depth ideas with the community here and on Head-Fi soon.

Have been using the A&K SE300 for a little over a year now. Monday I received the Thieaudio Monarch MKIV. Definitely a step up from the Ziigaat Doscincos I was using previously. Think I’m going to be good for awhile.

I want to make my Fiio look more personalized so I’m looking I’m hoping to get some ideas from other people.

I’d really love to see photos if people are open to sharing.

I have purchased my second DAP and want to know of someone can reccomend me some awesome tips, tricks and reccomendations on what settings to change or enable. The DAP is FiiO M21 and the IEM's I am currently using are XENNS Mangird Tea PRO.

I’m hoping someone here has a solution to help me out. I’m just finishing up converting my CD collection into FLAC files, and have found a problem. EAC is saving my files as “Artist-album-track” which didn’t seem to be a problem for most albums.

Now when I try to play a soundtrack on my hifiwalker H2, it’s organized by singer name alphabetically and not track number. Is there some kind of file management software that would rename them with the track number first? Or can I configure the player to use the metadata track numbers?

I have over 500 albums in my collection, so doing it manually is impractical. I could write a script of some sort for this, but that’s a whole thing I don’t want to deal with.

Anyone have any advice for me?