QLS QA-550 SD Card Player

[jonners]

I've just bought one of these: http://www.qlshifi.com/en/wzcapi/qa550.htm

It needs an external dac, so you could say it's not really a 'player'. I payed around £65 for it all told (no duty or vat to pay :)), and it arrived from China in just over a week.

I bought it because I like the idea of a player with no moving parts, no discs to get scratched, etc... but also because of its diy tweakability, not least in the form of I2S outputs available on the circuit board.

I got it up and running in a matter of minutes. An 8GB SD card (the maximum it will take) will store around 12 uncompressed CDs in WAV format. Amazon seems to be as cheap as anywhere for the cards at around £10 each.

My initial impressions of the sound, using SPDIF connection, are very favourable. It's at least as good as my "Shigaclone" transport, which itself has led to some people selling on their four-figure transports. I think it may even have the edge on musicality and feel-good listenability. :smoking: It comes with a basic 'wall wart' power supply, and a better psu certainly helps.
I will report again when I get round to looking inside and tinkering.

[The Vinyl Adventure]

if it did flac playback and could take the new sdxc(?) cards it would be very interesting but for £65, thats pretty cool! i havent seen anything like it before anyway!

[Chippy_boy]

I notice it supports "up to 200 musics", which is very appealing ;-)

[jonners]

I think that's Chinese for '200 tracks' or maybe '200 songs' :)

I now have the player connected via I2S to a TDA1543 DAC and it's very enjoyable - quite spacious, dynamic and musical.

[leo]

You still using this Jonners? you tried anything else with it etc, I'm quite interested in these, just a shame its limited to 16/44.1

[roob]

Modded units available here or send yours in to be modded.
http://www.chevronaudio.co.uk/html/untitled24.htm
No point in being able to do above 16/44.1 , most music is recorded at this apart from specialist coffee table/elevator stuff

[leo]

Modded units available here or send yours in to be modded.
http://www.chevronaudio.co.uk/html/untitled24.htm
No point in being able to do above 16/44.1 , most music is recorded at this apart from specialist coffee table/elevator stuff

Thanks for the link roob although I'd prefer to mod one myself tbh:) I already have a good idea what I want to try with it

Agree regarding current choice of music in the hi res formats , shame really though because 176.2 sounds brilliant through the Sabre, better than 96 or 192 imo

[roob]

Care to spill the beans Leo.

[leo]

Care to spill the beans Leo.

If I get one of course, I prefer to try things out myself first before recommending them.

The first things will be the obvious stuff, supplies, XO (may change to a Tent or Trichord) + separate supply isolating it from the others, the RCA would be changed in favour of a 75R BNC (most of my stuff is BNC) + maybe a 1:1 pulse traffo, I'd also tap into the I2S lines as an alternative feed for the dacs which allow I2S input, (may add a buffer, dunno yet)
Lots of fiddling and fun:)

[jonners]

You still using this Jonners? you tried anything else with it etc, I'm quite interested in these, just a shame its limited to 16/44.1

Yes Leo I'm still using it and enjoying it. I haven't tried it with anything else yet and I've done no more mods, other than using a better power supply than the wall wart that came with it.
I understand that putting a clock in at the dac that also controls the player would be a good thing, but I'm not sure how to go about it. :scratch:
Loads of fun and cheap at the price, though of course you do have to factor in the cost of sd cards. (Around £18 for 16GB on Amazon is the cheapest I've found}

[leo]

Thanks John, still using it and not feeling the need to mod it is a good sign.
I can't usually help myself with fiddling:lol: If I get one I'll start something in the diy section detailing whatever I try