Recent content by JCM800

The Hidizs S9 Pro sounds great and mine survived a trip through the washer and dryer.

Glad it’s not just me. I can’t tell the diff between my magni 3+ (ss) or vali 2 (tube).

@Brian Hall Did you hear a significant audible improvement with the Midgard over the magni? I’ve been contemplating the same upgrade.

Two thoughts since the first time I responded to this thread... 1. Qobuz has a great download store: If it's on their service, you can buy it, lossless, DRM-free, no subscription required. And if you are a subscriber, their top tier takes a big discount on high-res titles, usually putting the...

Qobuz. If you buy music downloads, they have a store (lossless, DRM-free, no subscription required), and their highest subscription level gets you a big discount off high-res titles, usually putting them lower than the 16/44.1 version.

That’s weird. Glad you got it sorted out!

If you’re just downloading offline copies of your Favorited, you just download from the phone app. Little down arrow next to the play button when viewing an album. No pushing files from PC to phone or vice versa. Am I missing something?

I agree that Apple Music is a really solid streaming service, but there's a reason I use Roon & Qobuz now after a decade+ of iTunes and then Apple Music and that reason is bugs. I had a large collection of local files and while I never had any of the common "it ate my files" complaints, it often...

I haven’t used Tidal so maybe these aren’t points for Qobuz but they’re part of why I’m happy to use it: 1. Qobuz pays fair royalties (unlike Spotify) 2. You can buy lossless files from Qobuz’s download store (unlike Apple’s iTunes music store’s lossy files) 3. For the top Qobuz tier you get...

UPDATE: Sometime in Dec '23 / Jan '24, I wrote to Hiby about that issue and actually got a reply. They seemed to care. In Feb, they released a firmware update for the R2 II that fixed the track order bug I mentioned, greatly improving my feelings about the player and company.

I’m very happy with Qobuz, first for their lossless digital download store and now their streaming service. If you buy a lot of digital music they have a tier that offers a hefty discount on hi-res titles. I don’t care about high-res but they’re usually cheaper than the CD quality download option.

Tapes are great fun. Despite what all these negative Nancies say, there’s a small market for something like this (metalheads, punks, experimental underground music fans, etc.). I may be the only one but I’ve been dreaming of a compact bare bone desktop cassette player for the last few years...

CDs rule! I love the size and form factor of the sketch shown. Perfect for a desktop system. Bu the thing I want more than a CD player is a CD transport. And I don’t mean a CD player w digital outs, I mean a box that does nothing but spins discs and accurately shoots 1s and 0s out the back to my...

Earlier this year I bought a Hiby R2 Gen II and it’s been largely disappointing. The sync doesn’t work, phone control doesn’t work and worst of all it plays album tracks in ALPHABETICAL order instead by their track number. It’s usable and maybe a future firmware update will fix this stuff if...

Stay away from the HiBy R2 Gen II ($99). It's probably going to fit your specs but it's full of weirdness if not downright bugs. Wi-fi song loading doesn't work, the HiBy connect phone app feature doesn't work, etc., etc., but the most unforgivable is playing albums in alphabetical order instead...