Aune X5S 24Bit/192K HiFi DSD Asynchronous Ditital Player black

Music quality of DSD downloads absolutely 5 STARS. Top notch, Master Tape quality all the way.Manual neglects to note SD cards MUST be formatted in FAT32.Tech Support fast and helpful.Tiny Remote is a little weak but programming the simple controls onto a full size Universal Remote will solve that.

This product may throw the non-technical for a loop but is a solid, well designed player that sounds superb.Couple out of the box issues. It ships with a remote control (not listed by Amazon). When you power up the unit you need to fully turn it on with the remote power button. The slim remote did not include a small "coin" battery. Okay, back from the battery run (2032 size), power up the cool looking unit and the display greets you with Chinese characters on all menus. You can use the included manual PDF file loaded on an SD card and with deciphering skills figure out letter and number placement of menu items to navigate to the "language" item and select English.The box Aune packs the X5S in is high quality and looks like you just received designer audio goodness. That is because you have. It's a great sounding product, uber-clean driving your Amp or audio path at expected. This worked well for my SET tube-amp setup. I have tried several portable flac players with headphone/line outs. None had the clarity or detail. Sound chips used on PC's phones, tablets, and notebook boards are basically around $5.00 cost. With a proper processing the X5S brings back actual CD quality a $5.00 chip will never touch.The player ships with software version 1.03 and 1.04 is available on Aune's site. the download link takes you to a Chinese page.Use Google Chrome to translate the download page and grab the .rar file. Extract the rar, and copy the extracted "upgrade.dat" file to an SD card. Select "Upgrade" from the X5S menu and it finds the file and upgrades the firmware with a progress line. The PDF manual however is version 1.00 so menu items are different on 1.03 and 1.04.If you want a desktop player, want killer sound, and want to actually hear music, this is the unit. It's good quality and has a rich look to it. The only disappointment for me was the short range the remote works - about 5 feet away. Also you can brush up on your Chinese for no extra charge. Recommend to friends - yes.