And by the way I agree with pretty much everything in this post. it popped up after I put my last reply in. Yes, trying to sort out marketing BS from fact is while we are all here. I am not trying to perpetuate any incorrect myths, I'm actually trying to sort facts from fiction out a lot of the information I see which is substantial. If I knew everything I wouldn't need to post here.
And yes, you can usually only do better than the OS if you have a special limited case where you have tight control over the data as opposed to the more general case the OS is made for. On the other hand, improvements in small bits of code that are hit frequently can have substantial impact on overall performance. Do these people really do that? Not sure without measuring every DAP out there, but it is certainly possible as a DAP is a very limited case. I agree that not saying exactly what they have improved makes me skeptical as well. Modifying an OS also can lead to issues down the road with adopting new features so it certainly better be worth it.
All of the benches for all the daps are out there and all of the user experience corresponds. It's not hard to find them all. That's the point, I've already done that legwork for you. I've gathered that data too many times to count and it's a hard post to put together. And I don't want to make this too long this time lol.
The end conclusion is the same. You really do want the fiio m11 if you don't need Google play. You pay ~$400, same as the other daps, and get an soc that's far superior. It's one with big cores, like your current smartphone, vs little cores like the background cores on your smartphone for multi tasking. Those little cores make the cpus of hiby, and Shanling daps. There's an actual reason behind the fiio m11 user experience. This is a science forum... Are you seriously surprised that better socs performed better? Lol.
I've wanted a dap for years but the industry didn't want to make a device with performance specs I'd use, on the android platform, while getting around android src.
I have messaged every manufacturer multiple times to start using socs like the hiby but Better, and I've bugged hiby about lte access.
I'm a patient fellow so I'm happy using my es100, and now they've all hopped on except Ibasso, but I have options so they can enjoy losing sales. And hiby announced lte access.
So I care because I've invested time actually asking them for this. Because I don't think the SoC in previous daps costing $600+ was acceptable and I'd rather message a manufacturer for what I want, than just capitulate and give them money unless the device is actually good.
So far, I was wrong about the fiio m11 (on basically everything long other story) and it's good in every regard if you don't need Google play.
From all of the scientific knowledge we know about the daps. Until someone reputable provides other data (there's a chart showing all these daps Snr, amp power etc. From someone in China but who knows who reputable that is), the fiio is your best bet because we can't logically conclude any of these daps have any significant sound performance difference. But we can easily conclude fiio is giving you a large amount more of soc performance (and a more modern soc design, the snapdragon is on 28nm vs the Exynos used here on like 14nm process) I mean... It's a steal. The rep didn't understand dta, and said they bypassed the src, but then said something to the effect to make me believe they hadn't. So I had disregarded the product. I must have misunderstood, because they do say it right on their site. So I hope it does.
This is why I want to send amir an m11. And maybe someone can buy a worse dap soc and send that in, so they can deal with the crappy user experience, and we can see if there is a significant scientific difference. I was not impressed by the Ibasso dap review on here.