Wife's imusicplayer is mostly dead so she was looking for another DAP of some sort without using her phone. Don't ask.
I was also looking at a DAP for the stereo in the study without relying on the computer or pad plus have a DAP to take camping to play through various headphones. I have a nice DAP in the main stereo but didn't want anything that cumbersome or expensive.
After much investigations I settled on a Hiby R3 Pro Sabre which would nominally do all that was needed for wife's exercising listening etc. Small and easy to use etc etc.
The R3... arrived today and armed with a fresh download of music on the micro SD (see quick question thread for more details) I am absolutely stunned at how good this thing is. Simple quasi android operating system makes loading music and playing a simple process and it sounds GOOD.
I did some testing and my ear says this order from best to very average:
Direct feed from the DAP, BT from the DAP, aux in from pad, aux in from computer, BT from Pad or phone, BT from computer.
Clearly the computer BT is just about devices and not music and down on bandwidth. The DAC in the DAP is superior by a huge margin to anything else but you would hope for that to be the case.
There is an update to its bigger brother the R5 which includes a class A response and alternative DAC profiles. So like a sad puppy or addict I ordered one, or preordered it because they are not available here yet. I will test the R3 and R5 back to back and see if I can pick anything at all. Reviews (I have read so many reviews) say the class A sounds almost perfect but sucks a lot of power, easy to sort that out with a cable at the desk.
Anyway has been a good learning if not fucking expensive experience... And it gives me a chance to create some sexy aux in cabling...