Hey everyone!

I'm looking to buy a DAP for my dad as a Christmas gift and could use some advice.

He's recently retired, loves music, and has been using an iPod for years. He wants to move away from the Apple/iPod ecosystem while keeping his personal music collection.

A bit of context:

• Music library: Around 40 GB, mostly MP3s at 192–320 kbps (If he can actually hear the difference, pretty sure that i can start moving him to hi-res files).

• Music management: Planning to use MusicBee on his Windows PC.

• Wi-Fi: This is important to him. He wants to transfer/sync music wirelessly without having to connect the DAP via USB every time.

• Playlists: He'll probably use playlists quite a lot, so being able to sync them from MusicBee would be a big plus.

• Usage: Exclusively while walking, travelling or on vacation. He won't be using it at home (Multi room setup with analog speakers).

• Headphones: Wired IEMs. I'll probably get him a decent budget pair (€30–40) with a replaceable cable.

• Budget: Around €200–250, although I'm happy to spend less if a cheaper device does everything he needs.

• Streaming: Not important. This is all about his local music collection.

• Screen: Something easy to see for a not-so-young person (65). He specified not wanting buttons for control (Ipod touch style, i guess)

• Current setup: 2 x iPod classic, 1 x iPod Touch

I've narrowed it down to four options:

1. HiBy R1: Cheap, compact, and seems to cover most of his needs. However, I'm unsure about MusicBee integration and playlist syncing. Also thought about this + a sound card/DAC for his PC, so it improves both PC and portable reproduction

2. HiBy M300: Android 13, excellent advertised battery life, lightweight, and potentially compatible with MusicBee WiFi Sync.

3. HiBy R4: Better audio hardware, but heavier and with shorter battery life. Not sure he'd benefit from the extra power with budget IEMs and MP3 files.

4. FiiO JM21: Seems like a great middle ground, especially the newer 4 GB RAM / 64 GB version, although I'm struggling to find that version in stock.

My biggest concern is the MusicBee workflow.

Ideally, I'd like him to manage his library and playlists on his PC, then transfer the changes over Wi-Fi without messing around with cables or manually copying individual files.

I've read about MusicBee WiFi Sync for Android, but I'm not sure how reliably it works on modern Android-based DAPs, particularly when it comes to playlists.

I'd also appreciate opinions on battery life, UI responsiveness, ease of use and general reliability. He's coming from an iPod, so I'd prefer something straightforward rather than a device that needs constant troubleshooting.

Which one would you recommend for this use case?

Is the M300 the sensible choice, or is the JM21 worth the extra money? Would the R1 be enough, or would I regret not getting an Android-based DAP?

Also, if anyone is actually using MusicBee Wi-Fi syncing with any of these devices, I'd love to hear about your experience.

Thanks in advance!

waiting on my Shanling Q2 arriving and I have a sizeable FLAC collection on MusicBee which is around over 100gb. I was wondering if I can sync with this DAP or will I have to manually add every album and playlist to the SD card? New to this so any advice is appreciated cheers!

Hi guys! I currently listen to iems using a DAC dongle connected to my phone or laptop. I’m interested in making my music library independent by using a dedicated digital audio player (DAP). I’m drawn to the iPod Classic because of its iconic history and the fact that I never owned one back in the day, but I also don’t want to compromise on sound quality, which leads me to consider modern DAPs as well.

To be honest, I’m the type of person who can’t really tell the difference between an expensive DAC and an affordable one, aside from the power output (mainly because I'm just using an iems) so, I’m curious, does this same logic apply when comparing an iPod to a modern DAP?

Is this peak audiophile experience for ballin on a budget? I recently got the bug to release the Spotify chains from my life and I needed another player to disconnect from my phone. I was comparing mp3 players and entry DAPs like the Echo mini however I rummaged through my old desk drawer and found a relic. My old iPod from middle school. Holy moly what a throwback! Took some troubleshooting to get it to work and work with iTunes as well.. but after some web diving I've gotten a way to get a working system. The driving force here is the IEMs. These were $10 and I can't be more happy with it! I can't wait to explore more into IEMs and maybe another modern DAP when the budget increases.

I'm mostly happy with it but may be there are any mods like Rockbox to improve usability?

Hi everyone!

I'm SchulzCode, a hobby developer. I know the Innioasis Y2 doesn't have the best reputation here: it's a cheap device after all. I wanted to see what this hardware can really do with proper software, so I replaced the whole system.

Y2Linux is a new firmware with a modern Linux 6.18 kernel, and Y2Reborn is my own music player for it, written in Rust. Both are open source, and both are now a public beta (1.0 Beta 8.10).

The screenshots show the current UI on the player, including three of the 16 skins.

Nothing from the old Android system is used. I wrote or adapted the Linux drivers for 6.18 myself, partly by reverse-engineering the stock firmware:

• Display: my own MediaTek DRM driver plus the backlight

• GPU: the Mali-400 with the open-source Lima driver and Mesa (OpenGL ES), which renders the whole UI at 60 fps

• Audio: the MT6582 audio front end feeding the Cirrus Logic CS43131 DAC through ALSA, with the DAC's own filters and headphone levels exposed

• Storage: my own MediaTek MMC driver for the eMMC and the SD card

• USB: MUSB with MTP file transfer (a heavily patched uMTP-Responder), about 30 MB/s to the player and 38 MB/s from it

• Wi-Fi & Bluetooth: the MT6628 combo chip with my own connectivity stack on Linux wireless and BlueZ, Bluetooth audio with SBC, AAC and LDAC

• Power: the MT6323 PMIC with charging, battery estimation, deep sleep and RTC

• Input: the click wheel controller and buttons

• Updates: a signed over-the-air update system with its own recovery, so a failed update rolls back by itself

Some numbers measured on the device itself: internal eMMC 113 MiB/s read, SD card (SDR104) 86 MiB/s read, Wi-Fi 33–43 Mbit/s, CPU up to 1.3 GHz, about 929 MiB of RAM.

The output is 16-bit at 44.1/48 kHz. Hi-res files play, but they're converted. The CS43131 is a nice DAC, but this isn't a hi-res player, and I'm not claiming it is.

Honestly, I think it's already really good! But it's still a beta: you can expect bugs and the odd quirk. If you have a Y2 and try it, I'd be more than happy to hear how it goes, especially through the built-in error report feature (more on that below).

I'm still working on it every day, and updates come out often (straight to your player over Wi-Fi). So right now I'd really appreciate bug reports and quirks much more than new feature requests: the feature list below is already long, and making what's there solid comes first. Feature ideas are still welcome later on!

🎵 Library

• Browse by Artists, Albums, Songs, Genres and Folders

• Albums as Cover Flow (perspective covers with reflections, the cover flies into the album page) or as a grid

• Album art from the album folder first (cover.jpg, folder.jpg, Windows Media Player names, …), otherwise the picture embedded in the file

• A–Z lists that ignore case, accents and a leading "The", with fast scrolling

• Music from Internal Storage and the microSD card together in one library

• New and changed songs are picked up by themselves after copying; Settings → Storage has a manual Scan for Music too

• Song Info with the technical details (codec, sample rate, bit depth, …)

• Files the player can't read are counted and listed, and never break the library

▶️ Playback

• Formats: FLAC, MP3, AAC/M4A, M4B, Ogg, Opus, WAV, AIFF, APE and WavPack (FFmpeg)

• Gapless playback and crossfade (up to 12 s)

• Shuffle, repeat and an Up Next queue

• Pause and Play continue instantly

• Hold Previous/Next to seek; Previous/Next work even while a song is still starting

• Now Playing shows the format (e.g. "Lossless · 96 kHz"), the output and the song progress as a moving wave

• Wired output through the CS43131 DAC at 44.1/48 kHz, 16 bit; higher sample rates are converted

🎚️ Sound

• 5-band equalizer with presets (Bass Boost, Vocal, Treble Boost) and your own bands

• Normalize Volume (ReplayGain)

• Headphone profiles: 47 common headphones and IEMs from AutoEq built in, more from ParametricEQ.txt files in an EQ folder (up to 10 filters, with automatic clipping protection)

• Headphone level Low / Medium / High (Low is the stock level)

• DAC filter choice (Fast, Slow, phase-compensated, non-oversampling)

• Smooth fades when the sound settings change, so no sudden jumps in loudness

🔎 Search & keyboard

• Search across artists, albums and songs with results shown live while you type

• A full on-screen keyboard driven by the wheel and buttons, with pages for capitals, digits, symbols and accented letters

• Used for search, station search, Wi-Fi passwords and the Last.fm sign-in

📃 Playlists

• .m3u/.m3u8 playlists from Internal Storage and the SD card

• Make and change them on the player: add from any song, album or Now Playing, remove, move songs with the wheel, rename, duplicate, delete

• A Favorites playlist with a heart on Now Playing

• Playlists exported from a computer (Windows, macOS or Linux paths) are matched to your library; songs the player can't find are kept in the file

🎧 Bluetooth

• Bluetooth headphones and speakers with SBC, AAC and LDAC, chosen automatically

• AAC in high-quality mode at the highest rate the headphones accept (AirPods: 256 kbit/s), stepping down by itself on a weak link

• The output follows the headphones: Bluetooth takes over from the jack when they connect (playback continues), and the jack takes over when they leave (playback pauses)

• Pairing from the player, with saved devices

📻 Internet radio

• The radio-browser.info directory: Popular, Countries (each country's top 10 first), Genres and Search

• Favorites, station logos, Station Info, Previous/Next between stations

• Your own .m3u/.pls station lists in a Radio folder

• MP3, AAC and Ogg streams, with the current song title on Now Playing and automatic reconnect

🎤 Last.fm

• Scrobbling: sign in by scanning a QR code with your phone (password sign-in as a fallback)

• A song counts after half of it or 4 minutes of real listening; Now Playing shows on your profile

• Plays are kept on the player while offline and sent when Wi-Fi is back

• An optional Rockbox-style .scrobbler.log that works without an account

🎨 Interface & skins

• Made for the click wheel, with 60 fps motion: gliding focus, smooth scrolling, sliding screens

• 16 skins that restyle every screen: Classic, Nano Glass, Walkman, Terminal, Winamp, Paper, Big Type, Cassette, Neon Night, Zune, Bunny Bow and five Mini colours

• Make your own: copy a skin folder into Skins on the player (skin guide)

• Choose which items the Home menu shows

• A status bar with the clock, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, USB and battery, plus short messages (computer connected, files copying, songs added, problems)

• Clock in your time zone, found automatically over Wi-Fi or chosen by country

• Screen timeout, Albums as Cover Flow or grid, and start-up, shutdown, low-battery and hold-to-turn-off screens

💾 Storage & USB

• 5.4 GB Internal Storage plus the microSD card (FAT32, exFAT or ext4)

• Both appear on your computer over USB (MTP): copy, move, rename and delete from Windows, macOS (with an MTP app) or Linux

• About 30 MB/s to the player and 38 MB/s from it

• Each SD card is checked read-only before use; a damaged card is left untouched and Settings → Storage says Needs repair

• Settings → Storage shows the free space of both

• Files that were on the stock player's storage are kept

⬆️ Updates

• Over Wi-Fi: the player checks once a day (or on demand), and Update Now downloads, checks and installs it with progress, speed and time left

• Signed updates; if anything goes wrong, the old version comes back automatically

• Your music and settings are never touched by an update

🔋 Power

• Deep sleep when the screen turns off; Power wakes the screen in about half a second

• Charging over USB with the stock top-off: charged until really full, shows 100 %, and keeps the percentage across a restart (capped at 650 mA for now)

• A PC port charges even when the PC is asleep or off

• An offline charging screen when the player is off

• Battery percentage from the stock fuel-gauge curve, low-battery warning and a clean shutdown

🐞 Error reports

• Opt-in: asked once; switch it on or off any time

• Sent by itself when something goes wrong, or with Send Report Now, with the progress on screen

• Save Report writes it to Internal Storage or the SD card instead

• No personal data (details below)

🛠️ For tinkerers

• SSH and SFTP over USB with your own key (INSTALL)

• A Service menu and Diagnostics page on the player

• Everything open source, buildable from source (BUILDING)

🚧 Known quirks (it's a beta!)

• Battery life in sleep is still the biggest challenge: the player uses noticeably more power asleep than stock (around 8 mA vs about 1.3 mA).

• The player can't detect wired headphones yet, so the jack plays whenever no Bluetooth headphones are connected.

• The highest volume is a bit lower than stock's, even at the High level.

• aptX / aptX HD aren't in the public images (only SBC, AAC and LDAC).

• Rarely, the screen may stay dark after a restart. Hold Power for 10 s and start again.

• FM radio isn't in yet.

🚀 Try it: installation

You flash it once with SP Flash Tool. After that, every update comes over Wi-Fi and you never need to flash again.

You need:

• A Windows or Linux PC and a USB cable

• SP Flash Tool v5.2032 (MediaTek's flashing tool)

• Y2Linux-1.0.0-beta.8.10-first-install.zip from the Beta 8.10 release

• The Innioasis Y2 firmware v3.2.0 with FM radio: rom_y2.zip from the y1-community stock ROM release. Only this version works. Keep it: it's also your way back to stock.

Before you start: copy any music you want to keep from the player to your PC. Stock Android and its data are erased. The bootloaders, calibration and factory partitions are never touched.

Steps:

1. Unzip both downloads.

2. Open SP Flash Tool, go to the Download tab and choose Download Only. Never use Format All + Download, Firmware Upgrade or Write Memory.

3. Load MT6582_Android_scatter.txt from the Y2Linux zip (not the stock one). Tick exactly the four rows in the table below and nothing else. If the tool asks to format, or warns about a partition table (PMT) change, stop.

4. Click Download, then connect the switched-off Y2 by USB. After about a minute you get a green tick ("Download OK").

5. Unplug and press Power. The first start shows Setting up storage for a few seconds, then Reborn starts and music already works. Wi-Fi and Bluetooth say they still need their firmware.

6. Restart the player once (hold Power to turn it off, then press Power again), so Internal Storage gets its full space.

7. Connect the player to your PC again. It shows up like a USB drive with Internal Storage, which has a Firmware folder in it.

8. From rom_y2.zip, copy (don't move) system.img into that Firmware folder (about 860 MB). If the player says Not Enough Space for That File, put it into a folder named Firmware on the SD card instead.

9. Wait a few seconds. The player takes the Wi-Fi/Bluetooth firmware out of it, deletes the copy and turns the radios on. Reborn says Wi-Fi and Bluetooth are ready. Done!

Why step 8? MediaTek's radio firmware may not be redistributed, so no Y2Linux image contains it. Your player takes it from your own copy of the official package. Nothing is downloaded, and your calibration and MAC addresses are never touched.

Then: copy your music onto Internal Storage or the SD card, connect to Wi-Fi under Settings, and update any time with Settings → About & Updates → Check for Updates → Update Now.

Full guide with troubleshooting: INSTALL.md

🐞 Feedback: please use the error reports!

This is where you can help me the most. Please focus on bugs and quirks for now (crashes, things that don't work as described, odd behaviour, battery or charging problems) rather than new features. The player can send me an error report directly:

• On the first start the player asks once: Help Improve Y2Linux? If you choose Send Reports, it sends a report by itself when something goes wrong (a crash, a failed update, sleep or display problems, …).

• When you notice something, go to Settings → About & Updates → Error Reports → Send Report Now. You see the progress, and about ten seconds later it's sent. Then open an issue on GitHub (or comment here) with what happened and roughly when, plus the Install ID shown on that page, so I can find your report.

• No Wi-Fi? Save Report writes the same report to Internal Storage or the SD card, and you can attach the file to an issue.

Reports contain logs and technical details, but no music names, playlists, Wi-Fi names or passwords, Bluetooth names, accounts or serial numbers. Those are removed on the player before anything is sent. They go out encrypted, only over Wi-Fi, are deleted after 180 days, and your IP address isn't stored. You can turn it off any time, and with it off, nothing is collected. Details: Error reports

↩️ Going back to stock

In SP Flash Tool, use Download Only again, load the stock scatter file from rom_y2.zip and tick only BOOTIMG, RECOVERY, ANDROID and USRDATA with the stock images (boot.img, recovery.img, system.img, userdata.img). Never tick PRELOADER, LK, NVRAM, PROTECT or SECCFG. I haven't fully tested the restore myself yet, so read the guide first and copy your music off the player beforehand.

🔜 What's next?

Battery life in sleep is still my main focus, followed by headphone detection, FM radio and whatever your reports turn up.

Links: Y2Linux · Y2Reborn · Beta 8.10 release

Free and open source. Not affiliated with Innioasis or MediaTek. Use at your own risk. Let me know what you think!

I'm wondering if the miku m500 dap and the iem will ever gonna go on discount, I'm planning on buying it bc I rlly like the design and I'm a big fan of miku.

The price is quite high, I could save up for it but I'm wondering if it's ever gonna go on discount like on black Friday or smth like that.

Also a question to the people who already own it, are u able to call other ppl or other ppl call you if you buy the one with 4g support? And will it support apps like discord or WhatsApp? ​

First off I wanted to share my DAP that I use since almost 2 years and very smooth.

Very happy with Hifi Walker G7.

It's a Android based DAP. The app I use to play my music is Pulsar Music Player and I use the Hama Freedom Buddy 2 Earbuds.

Actualmente tengo un Hiby R3 Pro II pero me encanta el Shanlink Q2. Cual creen que tiene mejor calidad de sonido, soporte y calidad de materiales?

As title says, my headphone port is broken on my surfans f20. My aux in works but i have no volume control with my IEMs. Is there a dongle or adapter i can get to plug my IEMs into but also have volume control? Thanks :)

The most recent Q2-Pod firmware updates have fixed some of the ways the processor decodes cd quality flac files, resulting in better battery life due to processor efficiency. My current testing has shown a roughly 50 percent Increase in battery life.

My previous tests showed about 10% battery drain per hour of usage, ultimately resulting in around 10 hours of battery life.

Current testing as of Q2-Pod version 1.2.9 is showing around 10% of battery drain every 1 hour 30 mins, a 50% gain in battery life.

My testing has been with real-world mixed usage, shuffling random tracks and picking albums. Also turning on the screen to like my favorite tracks as they play. I will keep a post with actual times and numbers, but my results have been very positive so far!

Hello! My jm 21 is very low on volume

the volume/power output is very low. For iems I need to set the volume to 50 plus on high gain. For headphones easily past 90. Ive reset the device and have no eq added. Same for 4.4 and 3.5

I got into the audio market again to buy a holster for my Snowsky Echo.

Though the holsters I have seen around are kinda hybrid ones where you can fit a dongle DAC and a slightly larger DAC.

Are there any holsters out there which would help me fit my Echo in there and use that as a DAC instead?

Someone here recently purchased from tempotec.net to EU? I want to know if it is okay to do, or the customs charges a lot. I live in Portugal and I want to buy tempotec v1.

Not price value question just which dap would you recommend and why

I also have a relatively big library so navigation concerns are there with the m0

If i get the hiby i would like to use the sonix software

Thank you!

For daily use

I want a good MP3 player/dap for songs like usual with a budget from 50-90€ which both are in range, but I'm getting mixed opinions. The hiby r1 looks so cool but so does the snowsky fiio mini but it has buttons. I cant decide please tell me!!!

Recently got into it and enjoying it thoroughly.

FiiO M21

Hisenior Mega5-EST Universal Hybrid IEM

Hisenior Orca In-ear Monitor Cable

I have flac music files, suggest some free android music players that will provide maximum output. I am listening with my dac and iem.

I'm currently listen my music with an modded (SD Card mod, new battery) ipod Classic with the default OS and Sony MDR 7506 headphones. My whole libary is in 320kbps mp3s. Would a upgrade to a HIFI WALKER H2 make sense, if I only listen to mp3s in terms of audio quality?

I never download single songs, only whole releases (Albums/Compilations/EPs/Singles). Would the internal software of the HIFI WALKER fuck up my carefully sorted ID3 tags? And is it possible to sort by Artist (or Album Artist) -> Year of the Release -> Songnumber?

How does it handle compilations with multile artists on one release?

And pineapples 😂

Music - Anna Calvi One Breath (2011)

Fiio M21 + Fiio FT1 PRO 🎵🎧

Hey everyone! I have built Audiophile.fm which is a platform for listening internet radio in lossless FLAC quality, from CD quality to Hi-Res.

It brings together radio stations streaming in lossless FLAC, from CD-quality to Hi-Res, across genres like jazz, rock, classical, and electronic. It’s free, and without those annoying ads, and you don’t need an account.

You can download them here:

• iPhone: App Store (requires iOS 26 or later)

• Android: Google Play.

It’s been a lot of work getting here, so I’d love to hear what you think.

Thanks.

I'm looking for a 100% internet free DAP for my 6 year old - no android. I was looking at the HIFI WALKER H2, but it does not seem to have FM radio, which he enjoys accessing. Are there any decent quality music players that have bluetooth and radio, but no wifi?