HiBy R3 Ultraportable Touchscreen Hi-Fi Network Music Player Bluetooth MP3 Player High Resolution Audio Player (Red)

Bought the R3 to stream Tidal on my home network. The R3 will not pick up my 5.0 wi-fi network on XFinity - only my 2.5 network. So, no Tidal playback. If someone has a clue as to how to get Tidal to stream on the R3 on my network, I'd love to give this player 5 stars. So far though, it's a frustrating 2 stars with the benefit of the doubt given.Now I learn that to get Tidal streaming to work on the R3 I must buy a micro SD card in order to download the latest firmware (weak documentation included. I had to contact MusicTek to find this out). In addition, while Tidal plays on the R3, it does not play with MQA but FLAC. Hiby says their working with Tidal on this issue. Disappointing. :(So while I'm sure that the R3 has wonderful, 5 star sound with many settings options (as so many positive reviews indicate), getting this thing going for the purpose for which I bought it has not been thrillingly easy thus far. I love my iFi xDSD. I just thought I'd give this one a whirl because of all the available sound adjustments that can be made. Not a picnic to this point. We'll see.Update on 12/15/18: Download finally did the trick. Nifty and good sounding little item. A bit more initial setup and firmware download instruction would have been helpful out of the box (wasn't excited in my case to have to purchase a micro SD card), but otherwise all is cool. Now, just waiting for a firmware upgrade on Tidal streaming to allow for MQA directly on Tidal

So let's get this out of the way first. Yes, this device is capable of truly excellent sound quality and I'm quite impressed. I did a lot of research before purchasing so I had some idea of what to expect. Where I was let down is some of the features. I was really excited for the WiFi DLNA feature as that means I could listen to audio from my Plex server and not be so limited by internal storage. This is where marketing is misleading. This device CANNOT access DLNA sources directly. It is only what they call a "renderer". You MUST use your phone to install an app called BubblePnP and play music from your phone to your R3. I tried this and while quirky and cumbersome, it did work. The issue here is that the sound quality suffered and who wants a lap full of devices? With the quality degradation it would be far simpler to just play the audio from your phone and skip the R3 altogether as you don't get the HiRes DAC benefits. The bluetooth features seem to work as promised though but I don't listen via bluetooth speakers very often so I didn't extensively test this feature set. About the only thing I could see the WiFi being useful for is the OTA firmware upgrades. To my further disappointment my unit had been opened and someone's fingerprints all over it. The screen protectors, HiRes stickers, and charging cable were missing from my box as well. To continue the disappointment, the touch screen has issues and most of the touches and taps don't register which drives me crazy. No doubt the reason the previous person returned this unit. I also tried the USB DAC mode and it did not work on my desktop and caused some weird issues but this features works on my HP Spectre x360 just fine. The last thing I had an issue with is the with the output power. It is rated at 56mW single ended which caused clipping with both my 1More Triples and KZ AS06 IEMs when turned up to energetic levels. This results in a "crashy" congested sound. I thought 56Mw would be enough since my FiiO X1 is rated at 70mW and has plenty of headroom. The thing I was most impressed with was the Magic Eight Ball Sound enhancements. This is a type of equalizer with names that make sense to audio engineers like sibilance, vocals, extended bass, etc. With the messed up touch screen it was hard to dial in precise values but it is possible to finely tune the sound signature. I was able to tame my pair of KZ ZS5's and get rid of most of the annoyances. This is a game changer. This feature is present in a few other brands as well like Cayin, and Shanling if I'm not mistaken.

I think this player is a amazing, it is compact and full of features. It fits in the palm of your hand, so it is light weight and very portable. I got the red R3 with a brown case. The touchscreen is very responsive and very clear and bright. I absolutely love the way music sounds through my Bowers & Wilkins P7 headphones. I am not an audiophile, but I appreciate music and the way it sounds. It also has wifi and I have Tidal and together they work very well. The blue tooth also works great, I have a pair of Sony wireless headphones that sound great. This is my travelling player when I go on vacation and bike riding.

This is a wonderful DAP! Most of the complaints that folks have listed have been addressed in the numerous firmware updates. At this writing, the latest official one is 3.1. If your info about yours is a lower number, download the latest from Hiby. If the info has a slash /, it’s the Chinese version. If it has the upright |, it’s the International version. Choose accordingly.Some folks have complained there’s no manual. Like a lot of companies with an online presence, it’s available from Hiby’s site, all 26 pages of it.A great set of earphones with a good BALANCED 2.5mm cable will convince you of this player’s merits, but only if your audio files are excellent lossless ones.This player is much better than it’s price.