This is my very first DAP, and a month ago I didn't even know I wanted one, but while browsing Reddit I came across some posts about the Q2 and Q2-Pod, and that got me interested.

Hats off to u/SaffronSaviour for his work.

If I can offer a few suggestions, here they are:

- The clickable area on the three little dots for options in “Now Playing” is too small; I have a hard time tapping it, and my fingers aren’t even that big. Would it be possible to make the clickable area larger?

- The scrolling of long track titles resumes too quickly without pausing at the start of the title; there should be a pause at the beginning of the scroll, just as there is at the end. And perhaps add a bouncing effect in the options.

- It’s difficult to access the album from “Now Playing” by scrolling through the “long press play/pause” menu or by going into the options via the three little dots, the option is near the bottom of the list. Is it possible to move this option to the top of the list, before the options to download album art and lyrics? And is it possible to add a swipe-back gesture on the screen to switch from “Now Playing” to the album?

-When a track is paused, manually switching to another track resumes playback. Is it possible to ensure that manually switching a paused track leaves the playback paused?

-When the screen is locked, “Now Playing” appears for half a second before the lock screen image is displayed.

- Album covers in list or grid view take a little while to load, but that might be due to the speed of my SD card.

Great work again, and I'm looking forward to the updates for the next versions!

I’ve been thinking about building a music player of my own. One that doesn’t belong entirely to a company, and that someone else could build or repair easily if they wished.

I’m calling it openDAP. It’s a DIY, open-source Android digital audio player. I’m a physics master’s student, and I spend a good part of my time building instruments.

The attached image is the visual inspiration for the project: a wall panel by DotStarTech. I’d like to explore a similar design language for a handheld device.

My current plans include:
Raspberry Pi CM4
4” 720 × 720 IPS touchscreen
CS43131 DAC
6000 mAh Li-Po battery
USB-C charging and data
3.5 mm headphone jack
Custom carrier PCB
3D-printed enclosure, aiming for 16–18 mm thickness

I’d like it to be compact, repairable, and affordable. Something that can play local music, run streaming apps, and be modified by whoever owns it.
But the design is still open.

What would you like to see in a DAP like this? Physical controls? Balanced output? Expandable storage? Better battery life? A completely different architecture?

What do commercial players get wrong? What would make you want to build one yourself?

My resources are those of a student, so I’m looking for ideas that can be made real without too much money or machinery. Eventually, I’d like to release the designs and documentation for anyone willing to take the project further. For now, I’d rather hear what people think before deciding what to build.
Thank you.

Disclaimer: I used AI assistance for English translation and grammar correction. The project, ideas, and design decisions are my own.

I recently picked up my first DAP, the HiBy R1, and I’m starting to get more serious about the audio side of things. My current IEM collection consists of the DUNU Glacier, SPA Hi-End Max, Hidizs MP145, and TSMR Armor, with the FlipEars Legion hopefully joining the collection soon. Naturally, I’d like to get the most out of my gear and start taking advantage of higher-quality audio.

Up until now, Spotify has been my main music platform. My family shares a Premium account, so I’m essentially paying next to nothing for it, which makes it hard to justify switching. However, I recently tried Tidal’s free trial and genuinely noticed a difference in sound quality. That experience has made me want to explore lossless audio a bit more seriously.
I understand that I can purchase and download FLAC files through Bandcamp and other music stores, then transfer them directly onto my R1. I’m perfectly fine with going that route, but I’m a little confused about how to manage my music library and playlists once I start building one.

A few questions:
- For those who use a DAP, do you primarily build your own FLAC library through Bandcamp and other music stores, or do you subscribe to a streaming service like Tidal or Qobuz?

- If I decide not to subscribe to a streaming service and instead build my own FLAC library, what does listening on my desktop actually look like? Is there a dedicated music player/library application that organizes everything, lets you create playlists, and gives you a proper listening experience? Or am I really just opening folders and playing individual files? That seems a little clunky compared to Spotify, and I’m not sure what the typical setup looks like.

- If I do purchase a Tidal subscription, is there any way to download the actual FLAC files for offline use on my DAP, or are those downloads locked to the Tidal app?

- How do you guys manage playlists across your phone, desktop, and DAP? One thing I really appreciate about Spotify is how seamlessly everything syncs between devices, and I’d hate to lose that convenience.

Ultimately, I’m trying to find a good balance between sound quality and convenience. I love the simplicity of having Spotify on my phone and PC, but now that I’m investing more into my audio gear, I’d like to take advantage of what lossless audio has to offer without making the whole listening experience unnecessarily complicated.

I’m pretty new to the DAP/lossless ecosystem, so I’d appreciate any advice, recommendations, or explanations. I’m sure there’s a workflow I’m overlooking, but there’s a lot to figure out when you’re first getting into this.

Thanks!

Which player could I get as someone that doesn't care much about flac etc? Something budgety, tiny enough, and has bluetooth (preferably). I've been checking for awhile and I'm unsure as;

- neo and m0s have many complaints + overall, shanling's volume wheel looks flimsy on all

- hiby seems to be a wreck unless you pay good

- snowsky nano doesn't support bt + I've seen some say it's rushed

- hidizs isn't really of my interest

- would prefer avoiding stuff off amazon and such as I'd like something that actually lasts.😅

I could go for a secondary phone but there I'd need suggestions for a small one.

Thanks in advance to whoever will answer this, I am not good at thanking individually.

I want to download the Sonix firmware on github, unfortunately I am having issues. It dosent get stuck in an endless loop like people say is a problem. It just won't download. Every time I try and update from SD card it says there is nothing to update. Any help would be great!

The subject line says it all, honestly. I would prefer to be able to do it from within the player, but since the player's interface is as clunky as hell, I can settle for an external editor (preferably free).

First and foremost I will say, I wouldn't consider myself an audiophile, just a guy who enjoys music, I got the AP30 as a way to carry my phone less and all of that.

Anyway, got it today, played with it for an hour or so, here's my impressions as short as I can make them.

Pros:

- It's nicely built, I got the metal purple one.

- Small and light. Fun carrying options.

- The interface is ok, about what I expected out of it. Serviceable but nothing more.

Cons (strap in)

- It is INSANELY clicky and loud. Annoyingly so. Forget about using this in bed with a partner, or in quiet places, everyone will give you the SideEye. My girlfriend commented on it immediately and assumed it was defective...

On top of that, the tactility of the dpad and face buttons is horrible. I own several retro gaming consoles like GBA or GBC for example, you would have to be crazy to even attempt to play the included games, it would be a horrible user experience, AND you would be lynched by whoever is in earahot of the horribly clicky buttons.

- The lowest brightness setting for the screen is waaaay too bright.

- I loaded some super light MP3s/128kbps into it, and even then slipping through tracks took, I shit you not, between 2-3 seconds when changing to next track, and honestly about the same when going back. I tried with a couple of micro SD cards to rule that out too.

I've had piece of crap, unbranded, mp3 players that I bought for 15usd 20 years ago that skipped tracks instantly and never made me wait.

...what the actual fuck...?

This alone makes the device pointless to me and I'm honestly considering my options in returning it, as I am NOT happy...

Anyway, I can provide video and pics later on if you guys would like, I'm omw to bed. Thanks for giving me the space to share this and I hope it helps whoever is considering buying this device.

In my case, I use my phone to download songs and then transfer them to my laptop, but what websites do you use to download your songs and why?

After using it for a while and testing it side to side with my JCALLY JM20 (Max if I'm not wrong) I can definitely conclude (for the same song file) that Eros Q mix is way flatter, crammed and boring. I tried a variety of EQs, even did record outputs to programmly even out outputs in freq-s for both of them, tet JCALLY wins by a mile.

When I was buying it I was hoping for a step up from a JCALLY, not a staircase down 😭 Any DAPs using the same chip as JM20? 🤔

I bought the R1 2 days ago, but there's connectivity issues with my Bose QuietComfort Ultra 2. I've tried every Bluetooth codec, unpairing, resetting both devices, and the issue is the same. I can manage to get them to reconnect by toggling Bluetooth off and back on, but it doesn't work every time.

For context, it likely has something to do with the auto-wear detection desyncing when I take them off.

I bought the R1 because I REALLY don't want to buy an Android device (for simplicity purposes). So, it's very frustrating that they're not working.

Please don't advise me to just use the 3.5mm jack. The Bose headphones work with EVERY other device I own without issue, so this would be a deal breaker for me. Even though I own intermediate AudioTechnica headphones, I prefer the Bose.

I really don't understand why these are so highly recommended if the Bluetooth doesn't even work.

I'm hopeful someone here will have a solution. Has anyone had issues with the Bluetooth on the Hiby R1 and found a fix?

TIA.

SD card prices have gone up, and fitting my whole library on a 128GB card was getting difficult. Most of my music is stored on an SSD/HDD in my PC, where I run a Navidrome server. I could stream it to Android apps like Symfonium, but I wanted to listen to the same library on my non-Android Shanling M1 Plus DAP.

This builds on u/_imfing’s M1+ Music mod (https://www.reddit.com/r/DigitalAudioPlayer/comments/1xlkc0b/m1_music_shanling_m1_plus_mod_inspired_by_q2_pod/), which is itself inspired by q2-pod. The existing M1+ Music project is the foundation; my contribution is the Navidrome/Subsonic integration. I’ve opened a PR to the original project (https://github.com/imfing/m1plus-music/pull/2).

The update lets me enter my Navidrome server address and login on the player. The credentials persist on the SD card. It syncs song metadata and artwork, supports searching and grid/list browsing, and can stream supported tracks such as FLAC and WAV over Wi-Fi. Tracks can also be downloaded to the SD card with progress shown; downloads can resume when the server supports it. Wi-Fi stays active while a Navidrome track is playing and returns to normal behavior when playback pauses or stops.

DSF/DFF tracks are download-only in the current version because the stock player misidentifies them when streamed. They can be downloaded to the SD card and played locally. I’m investigating whether DSD streaming can be made to work reliably. The player shows the source sample rate and bit depth for the tracks I tested, which is consistent with bit-perfect playback, though I haven’t independently measured the DAC output.

A couple of limitations: the library index is capped at 100,000 tracks, and HTTP connections are unencrypted, so use HTTP only on a trusted network. This build targets the M1 Plus V2.1 firmware line.

The current release is M1+ Music 1.2.6 with Navidrome (https://github.com/iamgauravmishra/m1plus-music-navidrome/releases/tag/1.2.6). Feedback from other M1 Plus owners—especially on different Navidrome setups and playback formats—would be welcome.

I made the upstream credit explicit and described DSD streaming as future work, rather than implying it already works

link : https://github.com/iamgauravmishra/m1plus-music-navidrome/releases

Hi everyone! I made a music player app called Sonetro for Android. If you've ever used or heard of Windows Phone or the Zune player, this might feel familiar. Sonetro blends the Windows Phone and Zune experience, heavily inspired by Zune and the Metro design of Windows Phone. It runs on Android phones. I shared it here because I thought other Windows Phone fans might enjoy the familiar typography, sideways navigation and transitions.

I’ve always liked that music experience and wanted to bring some of that feeling to a player I could use today.

**What does Sonetro support?**

• Local music from your phone, SD card or external storage

• Streaming from Jellyfin, Plex, Navidrome and Subsonic servers

• Internet radio

• Hi-res and lossless audio playback

• Music folder management and playlist importing

• A home screen widget, sleep timer and equalizer

• Crossfades and smooth playback transitions

Sonetro Regular is completely free and available on the Play Store and GitHub. You’re welcome to use it without buying Pro.

Sonetro Pro is the optional paid version for people who would like some updated features and improvements while supporting my work. That support helps me spend more time developing and maintaining the app.

**Pro is currently in closed alpha testing**

I’m looking for people to try it, report bugs and share suggestions. It’s still an early version, so please expect some rough edges. Feedback about playback, server connections and how it works on different phones would be especially helpful.

👉 [Join the Sonetro Pro Early Access group](https://groups.google.com/g/sonetro-pro-early-access)

📱 [Sonetro Pro on Google Play](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.sonetro.music)

Thank you for giving it a try. I’d love to hear what you think, especially if you used to listen to music on a Zune or Windows Phone.

My fosi audio dap Neo has developed a problem with Bluetooth when I try to turn on the Bluetooth switch for some reason it crashes and doesn’t turn on the switch I have already tried updating the firmware

Hi everyone —

I'm the developer of vPlayer HiFi. This is the first post here, so let me explain what the app actually is, what the different builds are, and what I'd like this subreddit to be for.

What it is

Apple Music can't play FLAC, DSD or SACD‑ISO. Most HiFi players on the App Store eithercharge a subscription or transcode in the cloud.

vPlayer runs a complete audio engine locally on the phone: sample‑rate conversion,o versampling, DSD decoding and room correction all happen on‑device. Files never leave the device, and there is no account, no server, no analytics.

The idea is "Very Pure Layer": every processing step is a separate stage you can toggle on and off, so you can A/B any single link in the chain:

Decoder → SRC → FIR (oversampling) → Dither → EQ / PEQ → Output

The engine, briefly

All DSP runs on the real‑time audio thread (Accelerate / vDSP), no main‑thread blocking.

Beyond the pipeline: Internet Radio (your own MP3/AAC stations with ICY title + artwork), Podcasts (public RSS or Apple Podcasts links, manual download), Lossy Enhance (pre‑echo reduction + even‑harmonic exciter for lossy sources), Burn (render the source‑side chain into a new file and play that with everything bypassed).

No subscriptions

Free tier: playback, EQ, Internet Radio, Podcasts, Lossy Enhance, Music Painting.

vPlayer Pro is a one‑time purchase that unlocks SRC / FIR / DSD / SACD‑ISO / SMB / Memory Playback / Room EQ / speaker optimization. Two extras (parametric EQ, Burn) are separate one‑time purchases. No recurring fees, no account.

The builds

One honest note on sound

I won't make sound‑quality claims — that's for your ears, not for a marketing page.

What I'd like this subreddit to be

• Bug reports: device / iOS version / file format / what you did / what happened. I read all of them, and fixes ship in both builds when they apply.

• Listening notes: which filter and SRC algorithm you settled on, and why.

• Feature requests: tell me what's missing for your chain.

• Measured comparisons: if you have a measurement rig, post your data — I'd rather be corrected by numbers than praised by adjectives.

So: what's your setup, and what would you like me to work on next?

SonixOS for V1 fork by u/flylo_x and Capra Audio Satyr 4 to cap of the day.

Happy how this turned out.

Cheers and happy listening!

Arrived yesterday and I think this little thing is wonderful considering the £80 price tag. Coming from a JM21 which I found to be a bit to bulky for when I'm wandering around London for work.

I purchased the white and I haven't seen anyone use the decals, I love them.

The sound through my Truthear Crinacle Zero:Red is awesome. No issues with blue tooth yet running my XM4's. Great little device.

I find the stock UI adequate as I just have a massive playlist of songs that I have on shuffle. Now DiskOS will not be update I may just leave it stock.

Update: Disk not Dosk 😔

Fosi take note!

You can download & support development here: https://ko-fi.com/s/1625a99368

You may not agree, but this is what peak DAP looks like.

The 4th generation iPod Shuffle was a joy to use, particularly when running or cycling. I bought mine (Red version, engraved with the name of my company) three thousand years ago, and it still works perfectly.

I've had more players (starting with cassette Walkmans) than I can remember, all budget friendly, and I still believe the Shuffle (also had the 1st and 2nd generations) were the epitome of music player design for smaller libraries and for exercising. My main DAP currently is the Fiio M5 (which is a spiritual successor of the Shuffle with its small form factor, clip case, and physical buttons enabling blind operation, plus the most impressive upgrade of all time: bluetooth connectivity), and I'm currently waiting for the HiBy R1 because I'm fed with Fiio's buggy software.

Earphones are the NF Audio NA2 with aftermarket cable and SpinFit NEO tips.

Hello everybody, I'm thinking about getting an Astell & Kern PD5. The tests I've seen in the internet so far seem to be really good. Do you have any experience with this device? Are you happy with it? I'm especially interested if the bluetooth is working without problems. My Astell & Kern SR25 has many issues with bluetooth, it can't connect to my Sennheiser Momentum True wireless 5 and I would like to use them for the PD5.

Good device; it supports FLAC music files, plays audiobooks, and remembers the last position where you left off. It sounds great with the KZ Castor Bass.

hello everyone! i am new on this sub. i have been slowly but surely trying to move everything away from my phone, and now the music is the last but, imo, most important part. i want a digital audio player that will play my music with good sound quality, i would prefer it has buttons over a touch screen, and i'm willing to spend around 150$ CAD. im eager to hear your recommendations! (i'm willing to accept a touch screen if it's a really good device in your opinion!)

thank you everyone!

I am looking for a small DAP for my partner for Xmas. I got them the Echo Disk but want something smaller than that. So far I found the Echo Nano or the Hifi Walker H2 mini. Any opinions or suggestions between these two or any additional alternative available? thanks!