Onkyo DP-X1 Digital Audio Player

I rate it 5 stars not because it's perfect but for the money it's a deal. Not to many bad but I was surprised this didn't have a speaker like the single DAC model made by Pioneer. Also, it doesn't contain information on how to use the balanced output. After much research I had to buy an $85 cable and a special connector that needs to be attached to a modified headphone. There are no such thing as balanced headphones that can plug into the unit, at least that I can find. The included player is not that good because seems it wanted me to select one of Onkyo's earphone and couldn't select none, then later somehow, "other" showed up so chose that then I could use it but the user interface is poor. Then when I went to use it again the earphone menu showed up again and the "other" was missing so just chose a random Onkyo earphone. The player then locked up and had to reset the device. After resetting the player worked ok. I downloaded HiBy so I use that player so the included player is not a real issue but unless you get the right DSD player most free ones won't play DSD. So regular output works fine and no problems and plays DSD well with excellent audio. Most my stuff is FLAC which sounds about as good as DSD. The player handles over 400 megs and is the primary reason why I got this as all my audio is FLAC and DSD HD. Also another great feature is it is Android 5.1 and obviously supports thousands of apps from the Play Store. But I also have lots of movies and t.v. shows stored so and they all play great and sound good also. I have tons of photos also. I wish this had a camera and gps. The wifi works excellently and all my apps on my other Pioneer XDP 100R transferred fine without any effort. Obviously this is good for traveling as I can watch movies and listen to HD music or play games, etc. To take advantage of the dual DACs however you need to have balanced headphones configured. I am new to this balanced stuff and still learning but it seems from what I read there are balanced headphones for sale somewhere but super expensive, much cheaper to buy headphones then mod yourself, so that's what I will do, but Onkyo should have at least provided the 2.5mm adapter and have instructions on how to wire it up. You are not going to find a better DSD player at this price and even the super expensive ones don't support this much memory. This will upscale MP3 and lower resolution but I don't need to because I only have HD loaded. I haven't tried MQA format as haven't seen any and not sure if the software is ready for updating. The unit has fairly sharp edges which would hold better if rounded like phones. It is heavy on purpose though as the metal case is used for shielding and heat sinking. I had to use DSD download service from Europe because I was in Hawaii and when I tried to download and pay with paypal for a U.S. DSD provider it said I was in a foreign country so cannot download and pay from this service. So that ended that and went straight to Nativedsd.com and haven't looked back. They are an excellent DSD provider and reliable and no problems with downloads. The music I listen to is strictly classical so I am picky on how music sounds obviously. They have lots of unique versions of classical pieces which I don't have in my traditional collection. Transferring the music is a no brainer and haven't used their PC interface because I can just put the micro SD card in my computer and copy right over, very fast especially if you got to transfer several gigabytes. Battery life seems good and much shorter however if you are watching movies. I have lots of music videos I ripped from DVDs also and all work fine. For the money this has all the others beat. My previous one I bought before I learned about this was the Hifiman dsd player and it was totally garbage and returned it. I would prefer Burr Brown DACs but you can't have everything for this price. The ones with Burr Brown DACs can't compete with the value this has.

My experience is coming from iPad 4 and 5 and Cowen that reads FLAC files. Far and away, it is superior in sound quality with Bose QC 15 and Etymotics ear buds to any portable music source I've experienced. I'm sure that it sounds even better with higher-quality earpieces. I can even detect an improvement in low/medium-res MP3 files over listening on the iPhone and Cowon. I recently purchased a DSD version of M. Jackson's Thriller, and I could hear instruments and riffs I've never heard before. Summary: from my prior experience, this is far and away the best media player in its price range. The A&K, Pioneer and others were rated lower in the A/V publications, so I'm happy with the purchase for sound quality alone - EXCELLENTI've taken some time loading files onto 2 200GB SanDisk storage in the 2 open slots. Using the X-DAP software, it works ok, but is a little awkward. Once you get the hang of the interface, and it copies pretty easily and quickly even on a USB 2.0 link. It seems to want to try to re-load files that you've transferred before, but as others have said, it ignores duplicates. Even loading several GBs of AIFF and FLAC files at a time, it plowed through them in a reasonable duration. I'm starting to work through playlists from scratch, and that is time consuming and not streamlined or particularly enjoyable. If possible, I hope to figure out how to transfer playlists from iTunes to avoid the drudgery of creating them from scratch. I also understand that there may be limitations in searching and grouping files across the 3 storage media (internal, and 2 SD slots for 400+GB). My current collections will not bump up against that limit any time soon unless I start to purchase DSD versions exclusively. Summary: X-DAP is ok, but immature and needs to flesh out both features and "how to" documentation. It is more than adequate to load data, but not close in quality to the playback features. - FAIR/GOOD.The Android interface is fine and from what I've read, appears to be better than the competition. I am not a big Android user (IOS and Windows 10 mostly on devices), but it's familiar and seems pretty complete, at least for an inexperienced user. While I would not use this as a primary all-inclusive device outside of the music playback functions, it seems pretty good as a basic Android platform. I would also say that having to purchase SD cards does make the DP-X1 more expensive in practice, as the 32GB internal storage is minimal for a collection of any size. Summary: The Android platform and storage expandability are generally positive features in spite of jacking the price up with SanDisk SD cards - GOODMy learning to use the DP-X1 is still a work in progress, and I'll provide additional feedback when I have it. I'm not experiencing loose headphone jacks or loss of music files as others have reported, and the quality of the device appears to be very high. I have no current regrets about purchasing it and mostly agree with the positive feedback that most have provided, both A/V magazine writers and users like myself.Summary: Recommend purchase if you want an affordable, portable device with large capacity and excellent sound quality - VERY GOOD