xDuoo X5 Digital Audio Player (DAP) Review

[A Surfer]

Disclaimer: no disrespect intention whatsoever. I understand your attachment to your phone. If you own an Iphone (no matter which one) you are confronted with limited/laughably expensive storage capacity. Any Android phone from 250$ on up supports SD cards up to an umpf of a lot Gb, and LDAC BT. If it does not fit on 256Gb it shouldn't be on your phone
A good music player app might cost a few dollars in the app-store. I'm very fine with my free SamsungMusic app. I'm also not that demanding.
Android supports a all but the most obscure audio formats. Apple does NOT. iPhones are very god devices. I personally wouldn't want one for free.

Many Android phones do not allow for adding storage via SD cards. I'll bet it is the majority in the North American market that do not.

I was an LG phone user until they exited the market precisely because they supported storage expansion when everyone else had stopped doing so.

I do not follow the phone offerings in the global south and Asia so perhaps those markets are different.

 

[AudioSceptic]

Many Android phones do not allow for adding storage via SD cards. I'll bet it is the majority in the North American market that do not.

I was an LG phone user until they exited the market precisely because they supported storage expansion when everyone else had stopped doing so.

I do not follow the phone offerings in the global south and Asia so perhaps those markets are different.

It looks like µSD slots are the exception now rather than the rule <https://www.androidauthority.com/best-android-phones-expandable-memory-696913/>

 

[AnalogSteph]

From the measurements I would conclude that:
1. The audio pipeline is stuck at 16 bits, either via USB or in general.
2. They are using one CS43131 per channel and one may have an assembly issue like a bad solder joint on its power pin. Which is unfortunate and casting doubts on soldering quality but not unheard of with a consumer product, and should be grounds for a replacement.

I would advise conducting the following additional tests:
1. 50 mV SNR with the volume turned down, ideally both balanced and unbalanced outputs. (Wasn't that standard for the dongle tests? Or just on the headphone amp side?) Otherwise there's no way I could tell you whether the thing is any good as a DAP.
2. Playing test files offline from the player's internal storage, to see whether it really doesn't do 24-bit audio or it's just a limitation of the USB DAC side. It goes without saying that something based on CS43131 should be capable of going far beyond 16-bit performance.

 

[Deus]

Im really don't know what to choose from the list:
Hiby R3 Pro II
Hiby R4
Hiby R6 III(2025)
Fiio JM21
Fiio M21
Shanling M3 Ultra
What i am expect: "okay" performance with good battery use
What im listening: many genres, but mostly post-rock
Where using it: mostly outdoor walkies, in car, just hanging out
Interested in R6 because of PEQ, but did it worth it? Its not about money, im just newbie to this
P.S. Sorry for not making new topic, but if need to, ill create one

 

[Nathan Raymond]

I've got an ancient iPhone SE, so don't know the answer: Does Apple support FLAC now? All my music is in FLAC format.

No, but FLAC is lossless, and ALAC (Apple Lossless Audio Codec) is lossless, so you could convert FLAC files to ALAC files with no quality loss and then they'd be compatible with everything in the Apple ecosystem. I use the free XLD utility (which has a nice GUI as well as command line options) to do that. ALAC files are supported by DAPs just as well as FLAC files are.

For iOS devices connected to a cellular data service or WiFi, you could also set up a media server on a computer at home and use apps to stream FLAC files from your library to devices on-the-go (no need to convert them ahead of time into ALAC, you can keep them as FLAC files). Popular ways to do that are with Plex and the Plexamp app, or Jellyfin and the Manet app. Plexamp and Manet also support Carplay so you can stream your music in your car easily if your car infotainment system supports Carplay.

 

[Somafunk]

Im really don't know what to choose from the list:
Hiby R3 Pro II
Hiby R4
Hiby R6 III(2025)
Fiio JM21
Fiio M21
Shanling M3 Ultra
What i am expect: "okay" performance with good battery use
What im listening: many genres, but mostly post-rock
Where using it: mostly outdoor walkies, in car, just hanging out
Interested in R6 because of PEQ, but did it worth it? Its not about money, im just newbie to this
P.S. Sorry for not making new topic, but if need to, ill create one

Hiby R4 has the same PEQ as the more expensive R6, so I’d get the R4, unless you prefer paying an extra £180 for a volume knob, and no carrying leash.

There are 3 distinct models of R4, the new model below seems to be a good compromise

HiBy - Official Online Store - Music players, Earphones, Headphone amp

Explore everything about HiFi! Choose from entry-level DAPs to hi-end Android DAPs from HiBy online shop, and earphones, headphone amplifiers and more.

store.hiby.com

 

[Nathan Raymond]

Disclaimer: no disrespect intention whatsoever. I understand your attachment to your phone. If you own an Iphone (no matter which one) you are confronted with limited/laughably expensive storage capacity. Any Android phone from 250$ on up supports SD cards up to an umpf of a lot Gb, and LDAC BT. If it does not fit on 256Gb it shouldn't be on your phone
A good music player app might cost a few dollars in the app-store. I'm very fine with my free SamsungMusic app. I'm also not that demanding.
Android supports a all but the most obscure audio formats. Apple does NOT. iPhones are very god devices. I personally wouldn't want one for free.

Plexamp in iOS automatically transcodes audio on the fly. I have multiple ways to play my music. Most of my lossless files fit on the 1TB MicroSD card in my DAP, but all my music is on my NAS at home (Network Attached Strorage device). I have a NAS share dedicated for my iTunes library which gets mounted by AutoMounter when I log into my Mac. That same share also gets mounted to my Ubuntu server that runs my Plex server in a docker container, where it is set up as a Plex music library. That way, Plexamp can stream all my music from my home server to whatever device I have anywhere I have cell service or WiFi. I have some Android gaming devices which I can also stream my music to as well, but I mostly just play games on them.

 

[AudioSceptic]

No, but FLAC is lossless, and ALAC (Apple Lossless Audio Codec) is lossless, so you could convert FLAC files to ALAC files with no quality loss and then they'd be compatible with everything in the Apple ecosystem. I use the free XLD utility (which has a nice GUI as well as command line options) to do that. ALAC files are supported by DAPs just as well as FLAC files are.

For iOS devices connected to a cellular data service or WiFi, you could also set up a media server on a computer at home and use apps to stream FLAC files from your library to devices on-the-go (no need to convert them ahead of time into ALAC, you can keep them as FLAC files). Popular ways to do that are with Plex and the Plexamp app, or Jellyfin and the Manet app. Plexamp and Manet also support Carplay so you can stream your music in your car easily if your car infotainment system supports Carplay.

I also use XLD, for both ripping CDs and converting between formats. Our music is in ALAC on our NAS and we stream using minimserver and volumio.

 

[Kevinfc]

Looks like a cool form factor where much could be done. Too bad this one falls short. I hope that a better, similar product is released soon.

 

[JPA]

No, but FLAC is lossless, and ALAC (Apple Lossless Audio Codec) is lossless, so you could convert FLAC files to ALAC files with no quality loss and then they'd be compatible with everything in the Apple ecosystem. I use the free XLD utility (which has a nice GUI as well as command line options) to do that. ALAC files are supported by DAPs just as well as FLAC files are.

For iOS devices connected to a cellular data service or WiFi, you could also set up a media server on a computer at home and use apps to stream FLAC files from your library to devices on-the-go (no need to convert them ahead of time into ALAC, you can keep them as FLAC files). Popular ways to do that are with Plex and the Plexamp app, or Jellyfin and the Manet app. Plexamp and Manet also support Carplay so you can stream your music in your car easily if your car infotainment system supports Carplay.

I appreciate all the responses to my question. My music library (about 1000 CDs) used to be in ALAC format. I converted it all to FLAC and turned my back on Apple (other than my iPhone) because
1) I hated iTunes with a passion
2) I was tired of being locked into Apple's ecosystem
3) Apple refuses to support add-on memory on their phones

I'm quite satisfied with my current setup and don't see any reason to go back to the Apple world.

 

[Nathan Raymond]

I appreciate all the responses to my question. My music library (about 1000 CDs) used to be in ALAC format. I converted it all to FLAC and turned my back on Apple (other than my iPhone) because
1) I hated iTunes with a passion
2) I was tired of being locked into Apple's ecosystem
3) Apple refuses to support add-on memory on their phones

I'm quite satisfied with my current setup and don't see any reason to go back to the Apple world.

I didn't really recommend anything Apple-specific. While ALAC was initially developed by Apple and was proprietary for a period of time, since 2011 it has been open-source and royalty free, and I can't remember the last time I've encountered something that can play FLAC but not play ALAC. So there's nothing really Apple-specific about ALAC at this point. I can understand you not liking iTunes, it was retired by Apple and replaced with their Music app (also not really that great). The Plex and Jellyfin recommendations are not Apple-specific. Plex server is available for FreeBSD, Linux, macOS and Windows and besides a large number of OS-native clients, you can just use a web browser as a client so it's platform agnostic. Likewise Jellyfin runs on Windows, Linux, macOS and .NET and has a range of clients including a web client. I kept my old iTunes music library kicking around in Apple Music (through the NAS share that also serves my Plex music library) because I find it handy to rip a CD with XLD, tag it with MusicBrainz Picard, drop it into the "Automatically Add to Music" folder to have the Music app ingest the files and stick them into its album artist file hierarchy on the network share, which is useful for me to later populate the MicroSD card in my DAP because HiBy didn't support an album artist view (it has an artist view, but that's not helpful for compilation albums or albums with some tracks by a guest artist or tracks with a collaboration artist which then get indexed as unique artists). I like to listen to whole albums, so having my music files arranged by album artist and then album folder hierarchies is ideal because then I can browse the filesystem and get to an album I want to hear easily on my DAP. Plex will just ingest all the files and build it's own database and thanks to all the terrific tags embedded by MusicBrainz Picard, that data is great (and I also get to manually set a single genre when tagging instead of accepting multiple genres per album since I also much prefer to have albums live in a single genre since it makes browsing by genre more like browsing a real library or store).

I've been meaning to check modern alternatives to iTunes (like Vox, Musique, and Quod Libet) but I spend so much time listening to music on my DAP and in Plex, it just hasn't been a priority.

 

[Adornix_jitz]

Hiby R4 has the same PEQ as the more expensive R6, so I’d get the R4, unless you prefer paying an extra £180 for a volume knob, and no carrying leash.

There are 3 distinct models of R4, the new model below seems to be a good compromise

HiBy - Official Online Store - Music players, Earphones, Headphone amp

Explore everything about HiFi! Choose from entry-level DAPs to hi-end Android DAPs from HiBy online shop, and earphones, headphone amplifiers and more.

store.hiby.com

the R4 looks like a nice full Android DAP overall. BUT I just can't understand, why they dropped the more energy efficient Class D amplification (eg R5 Gen II) for a default Class A mode? In the R5 you could choose between that two modes (if one needs the last drops of power which the latter could deliver). So instead, the R4 has a bad battery runtime (as a lot of reviews mentioned).

 

[Somafunk]

the R4 looks like a nice full Android DAP overall. BUT I just can't understand, why they dropped the more energy efficient Class D amplification (eg R5 Gen II) for a default Class A mode? In the R5 you could choose between that two modes (if one needs the last drops of power which the latter could deliver). So instead, the R4 has a bad battery runtime (as a lot of reviews mentioned).

Dunno why they run class A either, I have the option on my R6 iii to choose Class A, utterly feckin pointless imho

The original R4 had bad battery runtime but was rectified with a software update to 10hr runtime, the rock edition (new black version above) has 11hr runtime on 3.5. The evangelion edition has 14hr runtime (dunno why?)

 

[GWolfman]

Pretty much every Android DAP does this to bypass the standard 16/48 Android resampling. It’s also one of the reasons they tend to be on the latest Android version: hard to keep up when it’s customized… for no or little benefit (DAPs are not smartphones, so the latest OS features and security is less critical).

I’m not so sure many DAP manufacturers go through the trouble of doing this. If I had to guess I’d say very little do.

 

[Adornix_jitz]

Dunno why they run class A either, I have the option on my R6 iii to choose Class A, utterly feckin pointless imho

The original R4 had bad battery runtime but was rectified with a software update to 10hr runtime, the rock edition (new black version above) has 11hr runtime on 3.5. The evangelion edition has 14hr runtime (dunno why?)

oh I didn't know that differences! but my R5 has about 30h at 3.5 and after three years of using (mainly 4.4) it had still sufficient battery runtime.
for me that is very important for a DAP and the reason why I hesitate to buy a R4 (despite it's cheaper price). They should release a "R4 Lite" without Class A ^^

 

[EJ3]

I too use a older iPhone 6s plus, the last one with 3.5 jack out, and will keep it as long as possible (still 100% battery!). For some apps (banking) I have to use a newer iPhone model, but only if I really need to.

I don't know if this is true where you are but around here (and I am not in a place with even 1 millions people within a 30 mile radius) there are businesse that will relace the batterie for a nominal fee.
Or, if you are so inclined, you can get the tools, instructions on doing it & the battery from iFIXIT.com.
Don't allow them to push you into believing that the battery cannot be replaced. (or that the phone cannot be repaired, the screen cannot be replaced, etc). I have had it done on several older phones (and was even able to get a higher capacity battery into one of them.

 

[EJ3]

I'll go through these.
1. The Apple adaptor is just a short extension to the HP cable so doesn't get in the way. I would, however, like the adaptor cable to be a little more robust.
2. The only iPhone I bought new was the first one, and all later ones have been used, about ½ the new price, and only when I could double the storage at reasonable cost.
3. I recharge my phones overnight and the batteries have lasted OK each day.
4. The current max storage is 1 TB. This is not enough for all our music in ALAC (we use Apple Music as our library manager) so I convert to AAC 256 when syncing. This uses about 600 GB for ~69k tracks. OK, it's lossy, but I doubt that the difference is audible on the move. A µSD slot would be nice, however!
5. I fitted a Pioneer receiver with CarPlay to our car and the iPhone connects with USB. This gives us all the phone's functions, including music, while charging the phone.
Apologies to other members if this is drifting too far OT!

Great ideas, all:
#5 I did the same (but use Bluetooth that way anyone that is with me can connect) to my 2004 Chevy extended cab truck. A Pioneer DVD head unit (so I can play CD's & DVD's), too.

 

[CedarX]

I don't know if this is true where you are but around here (and I am not in a place with even 1 millions people within a 30 mile radius) there are businesse that will relace the batterie for a nominal fee.
Or, if you are so inclined, you can get the tools, instructions on doing it & the battery from iFIXIT.com.
Don't allow them to push you into believing that the battery cannot be replaced. (or that the phone cannot be repaired, the screen cannot be replaced, etc). I have had it done on several older phones (and was even able to get a higher capacity battery into one of them.

OT, I know… But I find the debate around replaceable batteries kinda of missing the point: everything can be replaced… It is really about how easy it is (or not), and whether it is worth the time and efforts to replace xxx (pick the component.)

 

[EJ3]

OT, I know… But I find the debate around replaceable batteries kinda of missing the point: everything can be replaced… It is really about how easy it is (or not), and whether it is worth the time and efforts to replace xxx (pick the component.)

To me, I just have no use for most of what's on newer models of phones.
And am totally unwilling to pay the price.
My old 4SE (my son gave it to me after one of his "trade ups") is more than enough & I will keep it going until it is uneconomical to do so. Then either my son or my wife (they always get a new one when the are 2 generations behind the latest) will give me a newer old phone they have laying around, I'll replace the battery & go from there.

 

[yo!]

We getting OT here, and yes, changing battery is not a big deal. I had many 2016 SE phones and liked them for the compact size and sturdyness.
Most times battery replacement worked out, sometimes not due hardware failure of the charging electronics in the phone itself.