In the ears of audiophiles, a smartphone is not enough to be
used as a music player. The audiophiles who have very analytical ears need a
device that's really created for processing the digital audio signals to be
analog signals which finally will be forwarded by the headphones/earphones to
the ears.
If you are one of them, by far the most common choices are
the Astell & Kern and Sony. Both of them have offered the PMP (Portable
Music Player) with hi-res standard, and the devices are sold in high prices,
above $ 1,000. Now another audio brand from Japan, Pioneer also wants to
enliven the portable hi-res audio player segment.
At first glance the Pioneer XDP-100R looks like the similar
products that are made by Astell & Kern. The chassis is made of aluminum,
complete with knob to adjust the volume that's also made of metal. Facing the
tight competition from Astell & Kern and Sony, can be understood if Pioneer
XDP-100R perform as premium as possible.
The heart of the device is decorated by two separate circuit
boards - one for SoC that's running Android OS and another as the home of all
audio components. This configuration is believed can destroy all digital noise.
As a hi-res audio player, Pioneer XDP-100R is compatible with a variety of
formats, ranging from FLAC, ALAC, MQA to DSD.
The navigation of Pioneer XDP-100R is using 4.7 inch touch
screen with a resolution of 1280 x 720 pixels. Storage capacity is 32 GB, but
there is an option to insert a microSD of up to 128 GB. According to Pioneer,
the battery can last up to 10 hours nonstop in a one-time charge.
So far there has been no official information about the
pricing and availability, but some media reported that November is the release
schedule of Pioneer XDP-100R in Japan.