The thing to remember about hi-fi is that more is often less. Theres a clear formula of cost time X, so every feature not only costs more money, but also likely

The thing to remember about hi-fi is that more is often less. Theres a clear formula of cost time X, so every feature not only costs more money, but also likely degrades the sound quality. (Yes, it does, even software uses CPU that introduces noise) A Hi-fi DAP (Digital Audio Player) should do one thing, and one thing well: play music to the best of it's ability. Admittedly, most of this is wasted because headphones are usually the weakest link. The general philosophy in audio is this: Music is only as good as the weakest link in the chain. That chain looks something like this: artist plays music, the music enters the venue it's being played in, then the combination of playing and the room are picked up by a microphone. The signal is amplified in the microphone, and sent to be recorded on a medium like digital or tape. Then the signal is replayed through a mixing board and the mixing engineer makes changes. The music is then put on a final medium, let's say digital for this day and age. Ok, now there is a bit perfect recording. You just play it, right? Wrong. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nyquist%E2%80%93Shannon_sampling_theorem https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nyquist%E2%80%93Shannon_samp... "establishes a sufficient condition for a sample rate that permits a discrete sequence of samples to capture all the information from a continuous-time signal of finite bandwidth." All the information is ENCODED, but DECODING is another story. I won't get into that here. Haters will say the ear can't hear anyway. Purists will say every deviation from "perfect" stacks, and the end result may be very audible. So, the signal is converted to a waveform which then needs to be outputted as a series of electrical pulses resembling a staircase. Not all electronics are designed to do this well. More computation power can extract a more close representation of the "all the information" part of the Shannon-Nyquist sampling theorem. It's not just determining the steps to output, but outputting that electrical signal perfectly. Many things can interfere with this small electrical signal. Wifi in a DAP? Yep. Gonna interfere, turn it off when listening. Electrical noise from other internal components leaking back into the power supply and tainting the signal? You betcha. Every piece of hardware in a DAP is less than perfect and degrades the music. The screen, the processor, the ram, the wifi, etc. After the signal is generated, it is now "Analog". Converting bits to an analogue signal is not an easy thing. After that the analog signal needs to be amplified in a linear way to no piece of the musical experience is exaggerated or lower key. Then there is the limitations of headphones. DAPs are amazing technologies that act as stepping stones to the Hi-Fi world by disabusing people of the notion that bitperfect is good enough. It's not, music is only as good as the weakest link. Fiio is the introduction, an entry level drug to the world of hi-fi. Be careful. Hearing is believing