Chinese HiBy Music has opened pre-orders for its now flagship device, the HiBy RS8 digital audio player. The novelty looks weighty, and this impression is not deceptive: the player weighs just under 600 g in solid titanium with a five-inch Full HD front display.
Not only the case is to blame for such a solid mass: for example, there is a 12,000 mAh battery on board, which, alas, will last for a maximum of 12 hours of playback in the most economical mode – with Turbo off on an unbalanced jack. If you still turn on the “turbo” and use a balanced Pentaconn, a full battery charge will last for 6 hours.
The player requires a lot of energy: it has an advanced Darwin DAC based on R2R on board. Such a DAC is not often found in mobile devices. Another serious consumer is a headphone amplifier operating in class A. We also add femtosecond precision crystal oscillators here – separately for frequencies of 45.158 MHz and 49.152 MHz.
An advanced Qualcomm Snapdragon 665 processor is paired with 8GB of RAM. 256 GB are provided for file storage. They can be expanded up to 2 TB using the memory card slot.
For wireless connection, the DAC provides dual-band Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 5. 0. Control – OS Android 12, remote control – using the HiByCast application. At the same time, HiBy RS8 supports NOS (Non-OverSampling) playback mode, which bypasses oversampling and anti-aliasing, giving the signal “as is”. These can be resolutions up to DSD512 and PCM 32bit/768kHz. In addition, 16x MQA deployment is supported.
In addition to the already mentioned headphone outputs – unbalanced 3.5 mm and balanced 4.4 mm – there is also a line output. This will allow you to use the HiBy RS8 as a preamplifier with active acoustics or as a stereo power amplifier.
The novelty, not to mention the titanium case, received a high-end package: ELNA SILMIC II silk-fiber capacitors, large-capacity tantalum capacitors, 10 Panasonic thin-film POSCAPs, etc. The specially designed battery case is made of pure copper for heat dissipation. 20W fast charging will help you charge it faster.
Deliveries of the HiBy RS8 will begin on November 15th. Future buyers of the player are encouraged to post relevant photos on the forum, and as a free reward for this act, the HiBy CR08 portable player docking station, which itself costs 11 times less than the RS8, is promised.
In the US, the Hiby RS8 digital audio player costs $3,300.