QA660 DSD/Wav/APE/Flac SD card digital HiFi player

[aliuab]

Just got a set of QA660 digital music player + QA100 digital amp from http://www.qlshifi.com/en/index.htm

QA660 is a major upgrade for the previous generation QA550, with only digital output as a transport, and add support to DSD, APE, Flac and MP3 in comparison with the old generation QA550. Normally a matched DAC needed to get analog output. However QLS-HiFi provides QA100 digital amp as another solution. I have QA660+QA100 as a whole system for $860. Burnt in for couple of days, and I am happy with the system so far.

My speakers is Energy RC-70, got a great deal for $700 from Future Shop last week. :)

[jkeny]

Looking at this myself. How much of an upgrade to the QA550, is it & in what particular areas does it sound better?

[tannoydmt]

When I looked at the site I can't see any support mentioned for DSD, also the site info states that flac is limited to 44 and 48khz sampling frequencies, if all this is correct thats a major letdown for me, or has a recent firmware upgrade improved on these parameters?

[aliuab]

When I looked at the site I can't see any support mentioned for DSD, also the site info states that flac is limited to 44 and 48khz sampling frequencies, if all this is correct thats a major letdown for me, or has a recent firmware upgrade improved on these parameters?

Go their forum, the latest firmware v1.5 just released to support DSD: http://forums.qlshifi.com/index.php

I do not know if any improvements on flac support or not. My system has problems to play 96KHz flac, there is no issue when I convert the flac to wav. Do you have a lot of music over 48KHz? I do not have a lot so it's not a big deal to me, plus I can covert the flac to wav to avoid the problem.

[aliuab]

Looking at this myself. How much of an upgrade to the QA550, is it & in what particular areas does it sound better?

I do not have any experience with QA550, so it's very hard for me to tell the difference. But I did some homework before going the current system. QA660 has a lot of great implementations that normally used on the true Hi-End level digital CDP or DAC but QA550 does not have, such as the clock circuit, power supply circuit and 4-layers PCB, etc. And QA660 has more music file format (APE, Flac, DSD, MP3) support that you should already noticed. Otherwise I can not tell.

[tannoydmt]

Thanks for the update re DSD playback, you are quite right the new firmware does state that it supports DSD, it would be interesting if anyone has actually tried this and whether any problems were found as just because a manufacturer says it supports various codecs it may not be perfect . Unfortunately there's no mention re better flac support, most odd when you consider the DSD addition. A lot of the HDTracks that you can download are 88.2/96/192khz sampling frequencies and I don't want to convert these to wav and I don't see why you need to when flac is the most common high quality lossless codec used. Still this player does look interesting.Thanks

[aliuab]

QA100 does not support DSD so I do not have the chance to test DSD support good or not. I will stay with system for a while until there is more money in my pocket :)

[daytona600]

very happy with my worldwide proven and trusted SD player from astell kern
does all formats with full 24/192khz support
+ dac/headphone/pre amp fitted as well

[aliuab]

Astell Kern looks very stylish.

[aliuab]

Burnt the system for couple of days, the whole system is very good for rock, pop, and jazz, the bass delivered by the system is just right. RC-70 is suggested to burn for 100 hours at least before serious listening, the high frequency side seems need more time to work out.