iBasso DX50 HD Studio Mastering Quality Music Player 192kHz/24-bit DAC with ProStudio USB Charger and RCA Connection Kit [Full USA One Year Warranty]

Well to start off, let me say that I love this thing. The price is right, and with succesive firmware updates (of which they are as frequent as needed) are making the product an even better value.There are countless reviews, so I'm not going to go on saying things that are already repeated elsewhere. The only thing that counts is that the audio quality is excellent, both taking into account the price and in general. I have been used to iPod Classics and Nanos in the past, and have always found them lacking. This is the first time that I actually find my self wondering what could be done to make music sound even better, given the technology. It really is good.I originally bought the Fiio X3, wasn't totally satisfied, so I bought this one and kept it instead. I'm only getting happier that I did. The X3 is great, but more of a great because there aren't many competing products. It sounds great, which is a given, but it was the interface and physical factors what let it down. The buttons are a hassle, and finding them through jeans is just about impossible. None of these support headphone controls, so that is an issue unless you like walking around with an MP3 in your hand. The quality of the X3 is definitely inferior to the DX50, and the interface is harder to get around without the touchscreen. On the X3 I also had problems with the lineout, and with the device freezing. Basically, it boils down to which you prefer, since both are great but those little issues were deal breakers for me. The price difference isn't that great, and complaining about the 20-50$ difference when you will probably be plugging 200-300$ headphones in to it doesn't seem that important.What I did want to mention was the new USB DAC feature of the DX50 which has came out recently with the firmware updates. There doesn't seem to be much info on it, and even many links say that the DX50 can't nor ever will be able to function as a USB DAC (Digital Analog Converter, basically work as a soundcard). But it can. And heres how.1. Make sure you have the latest firmware checking the "Download" tab on the iBasso.com website. If you do, great, if not, you'll have to update it. Search for the user manual for your device on the iBasso website. In the manual, you'll find instructions on how to update the firmware. Pretty straight forward (for Windows).2. After checking your firmware version, download the latest USB driver.3. Extract files.4. Double click on the Setup.bat file to install the drivers. Follow the instructions.5. Here is where the drivers should work, but it doesnt. Now grab you iBasso, turn it on, click on "My Settings", and select "DAC" in Advanced, USB Settings. Connect it your pc via a Micro USB Cable.6. Press start and search for device manager. Open it up.7. In the list, there will be a USB device with an exclamation mark. Right click it and select "Update Device Driver". When it asks you where the file is, select the folder where the "Setup.bat" file from before was.8. Once complete, the device is properly installed. Now you will just have to select the device. Close everything from before, and right click on the speaker symbol (volume control) in your bottom righ taskbar.9. Select playback devices, and set "iBasso Mango HiFi Audio Device" as default. Remember which one was set before to select it later when you no longer want to use it as a USB DAC. Now it should properly be functioning! And with much crisper, low noise and high quality then the vast majority of onboard solutions!Also, on a another note, iBasso has confirmed that in the next few weeks (today is the 28th of October, 2014) a firmware update will comeout allowing the device to support M3U playlists, which are the most used playlist format files. Until then, my way to get around this was to use Mediamonkey (the absolute best media file library program) to export my music to the device organized in playlists. That is, instead of filling the SD like Music->Artist->Album: Album A, Album B...; it fills the SD like Music: Playlist A, Playlist B, Playlist C.... That way, if I have a song in more than one playist, it will be stored twice, but at least you can use your playlists playing your music via the "Directory".Well hope it was helpful. If you have any questions, feel free to ask! Thanks for reading

lots to like about this player, but for me, I ran into a show-stopper that I was not aware of. this unit does NOT output 192khz audio over spdif! it can output 44.1 or 48k but nothing else. all music gets resampled on the spdif-out (coax 75ohm) port. perhaps the internal data path is also forced to be resampled to 44.1k before beingg sent to the wolfson dac. this is misleading and the vendor should update the description. it is NOT a 24/192k player if it resamples the data down to 44.1 or 48k! wow. very misleading.if you have only mp3's or redbook (cd audio) style files, you won't care. if you have 88k or 96k or 176k or 192k high res files, you don't hear any improvement over normal 44.1. they will take up more disk space but not sound any better on THIS player.that said, the analog-out is quite good for its limitation, the player is well built, its nice to have user swappable samsung s3 batteries (a big selling point for me), its nice that it takes BOTH uSD cards AND usb otg (on-the-go) cables and flash drives. I was able to load up a 128gb usb3 flash drive with music, connect it to the ibasso usb port and see/hear all the files there. VERY nice! did not work for ssd's over usb but did work for thumbdrives.touch screen is annoying, though. too sensitive. the general controls are ok. could be better and better positioned but they are usable as-is.size of unit is nice (small but not too small or too large). case is aluminum and would hold up well.just wish it was truly a bit-perfect 24/192k player. darn. so close!

My iPod had its hard drive fail, so I needed a new music player. As this was the latest in a long line of Apple failures, I decided they would not be on my shopping list. I was torn between this and the Fiio X3, I did a lot of research and didn't end up finding a winner. What finally sold me on this model was the user replaceable battery. I figured the first time a battery failed it would pretty much make up the price difference. I like the physical buttons on the front of the unit, they remind me of the earlier iPods that had that feature.I have about 90gb of music in various formats, so I went with the 128gb card. I use Media Monkey to organize my music. When I connected the iBasso it immediately recognized it and the SD card separately. I synched the SD card, it took several hours to load it. Once it's loaded, you need to scan the card which takes a couple more hours.I took it to work the next day to play around with it. The sound is certainly good, I'm no audiophile, so to my ears it's easily a match for the iPod. The music does seem clearer, with better instrument separation. Not knowing what the gain switch is for, I found that I liked the high gain setting the best. After researching it, apparently the gain is used to boost the maximum volume level. I switched it back to low gain and boosted the volume, as if I understood correctly that conserves battery life. It sounds good at any level though.The UI is where my couple of issues come into play. My first problem is that compilation albums are broken out when you search by artist. That means I have to scroll through approximately 30 million artists (give or take a few). That alone is a problem, but coupled with the fact that it sometimes saves its last location, and sometimes doesn't makes it a bit more annoying. I haven't figured out the pattern of why/when it goes back to the beginning and when it doesn't. The other thing about the UI that takes some getting used to is that the touch screen is a bit quick on the gun to open an album. I notice this when I'm scrolling through the songs. It seems to happen less frequently if I scroll on the far left, maybe it's my finger motion there, or maybe that's the region you are expected to scroll in.Another issue I found, was that not all of my music loaded. This ended up being my fault, but I learned a few things along the way. When I was trying to debug this problem I read that the card needs to be formatted as FAT32. I thought that must be my problem, so I went to Windows to do that, and found out you can't from Windows directly. You need to download a utility to do it. I did that, reloaded the card, and the same songs were missing. The next thing I found were comments that this unit doesn't like songs that end in a single quote. So I went through, and renamed songs. Well that didn't make a difference, and I noticed that this bug must have been fixed as I had some songs ending in single quotes on the unit. At that point I wrote to iBasso. While I waited for a response, I kept looking, and found the problems. For one, I had a bunch of iTunes protected content, as I'd always used iPods/iPhones, it never dawned on me. That explained a bunch of missing songs, and the others were due to a funky mp3 conversion utility that must have done something wrong as there was no data tagged about the songs. I converted those and was back in business. Ibasso responded in 1 business day asking for samples so they could fix it in the next release, excellent service and response time.Overall this is an excellent player and I'm very happy with it. It's great that it includes screen protectors and a case (although I ordered the leather one instead as it was half price when I bought the player). I keep that inside of an AmazonBasics case (the one for the Passport Essential) so it doesn't get knocked around in my briefcase too much. I'm hoping those couple of UI tweaks get addressed, and I have no doubt they will, it looks like iBasso is constantly improving the software.