Maybe the headphone jack isn’t dead. Last year I demo’ed a sleek and petite portable hi-fi audio player by a Shenzhen startup named Hiby, and that unit ended up so well received–it raised more than $300,000 on Indiegogo–that the company has released a follow-up, and it’s even smaller.
Named the R3, this new one improves a problem I had with the last device (that would be the R6): pricing. The last one sold for north of $450; this new R3 will retail for $229, and on Kickstarter right now it can actually be had for $189. The crowdfunding campaign has already met its goals 20-times over, by the way, proving once again that audiophiles don’t care about technology trends–they still want a dedicated device that can play hi-fi lossless tunes.
The R3 keeps similar design cues from the R6, meaning it’s crafted out of a slick aluminum frame with a matte finish that improves grip and doesn’t attract fingerprints easily. The tiny thing is smaller than my wallet, and weighs a quarter of a pound.
What makes the R3 different from the R6–other than the smaller size–is that it can stream or store music offline from Tidal, you know, Jay Z’s hi-fi streaming service. Also, unlike the R6, which ran Android, R3 runs on its own proprietary OS (Hiby OS). From my brief time testing the unit, the OS ran smooth, but users can’t run traditional Android apps anymore–not that you’d want to on the R3′s 3.2-inch touchscreen. Much like the R6, the R3 has a 2.5mm balanced headphone jack on top of the standard 3.5mm headphone jack. The former is for audiophiles only.
The R3 also has a high-end ESS DAC (digital-to-analog converter) inside and can music files up to 64-bit and 3k4kHz. However, the device doesn’t come with any internal storage, so you have to use MicroSD card; the R3 can support up to 2TB.
So how does this thing sound? I’m no audiophile, and I didn’t get to try the unit with a high-end set of headphones, but to my ears audio came out noticeably fuller than the tunes that come out of smartphones (except the LG V30, of course, which also has an ESS DAC)
The core Hiby team, consisting of audio engineers from Hong Kong, China and Australia, spent years developing its own OS and audio processing chips at the company R&D lab in Shenzhen, and the R3–running its own software–is its first real full creation. With Apple discontinuing iPod sales last year, audiophiles have to turn to niche brands such as Hiby for their DAP (digital audio player) needs.
