Review: HiBy R5 – Assiduous

User Experience

The HiBy R5 uses Android’s 8.1 OS, which is relatively new and up to date in terms of DAPs. As long as it works fine, I don’t need the latest versions to be honest. And that is exactly the case with the R5.

It works flawlessly and I didn’t face any bugs except one; which is with Google Play. When I was trying to sign in with my Google account, the device started to get in an endless load screen. Little did I know that I needed to clear the Google Play application’s cache before signing in. I don’t know if any other user will ever face this problem, but in my case that bug was not ideal.

Other than the issue above, my experience with the player is very smooth. The SD425 processor is working under your fingers and it does more than enough for this DAP. In fact, this is the very processor that was used with the R6 series so it’s nice to have it with the R5 too. I congratulate HiBy for this decision to include it with a lower priced model.

The streaming apps work like charm, including the master recordings from Tidal with bit-perfect playback. The device is quite fast, including the booting time. I also found the battery life to be very very good. For this type of a small device, the 3500 mAh battery is a generous choice indeed. You can easily feel the maturement in design, software and user experience of the R5.

HiBy R5

Another point I particularly would like to point out is the 4″ screen. The screen choice is IPS which is wonderful to find in a portable player. I absolutely dig the IPS panels since they boast great color reproduction and great blacks. That is indeed the case with the R5 and to me this is one of the best screens you can find in a DAP. Speaking of it, I didn’t quite like the pre-applied screen protector as it is somewhat “sticky”. I suggest you to change it with a smoother one.

HiBy Music App

For playing songs in your archive, there’s the HiBy Music application. There aren’t any real flaws I faced in this app as it works perfectly. One thing I liked is the screen that contains your recently played songs. That way I can always return to the songs I play frequently. It’s also a very feature-packed application.

A really nice feature is the WiFi music importing menu. When your PC or smartphone is connected to the same WiFi network, you can actually transfer your music files over the air once you copy the given URL onto your browser. I’m not quite sure if this actually is feasible to you, since a wired transfer is quite faster. Yet it’s a very nice addition regardless.

The app works in full-screen mode without navigation buttons. This feels like a “pure mode” that some other DAPs offer. Reaching out to your folders, artists and even genres is very easy from the main screen. The HiBy Link option is also available again from the app. It also supports searching and that is quite important for many people.

HiBy R5

I loved the simplistic approach in the app with a nice layout and menu placements. A theme option could be nice to customize but it’s still very good and simple to the eye. To cut the story short, the HiBy Music app has everything you can possibly need in a portable player.

MSEB

There’s a MSEB menu inside the HiBy Music application which stands for  “MageSound 8-Ball”. This menu works for altering the sound next to the basic 10-band equalizer. Through that screen you can adjust almost every aspect of sound you can imagine. I’ve seen this type of rich adjustments with the R6 as well, and the most beautiful part is that they actually work.

What you can do is adjusting the overall temperature of sound from cold to warm, bass extension from light to deep, bass texture, note thickness, vocals, sibilance, air and so on… This is really incredible to play with. With this feature, you can make every type of headphone work with this DAP.

But pure sound lovers like me probably won’t use the features and simply leave it all closed. In my case, I only use the EQ to some extent with my IEMs, and I think those DSP settings are not fully natural sounding but it’s great to have this much detail in terms of sound effects. So I congratulate the effort. The people who fancy these kinds of DSP features most likely will fall in love with the device.

There’s also a plugin menu and there you can find even more options, such as “Sound Field” & “Balance” which are for sound stage and L/R balance. Even though I don’t like playing around with DSP settings, this has to be mentioned as being another important aspect of HiBy R5.

Hiby R5

DTA (Direct Transfer Audio)

DTA has eventually become a very important feature in today’s Android DAP market. In short: it’s as way of bypassing the Android sound system. The stream goes through the DAC directly, without any sample rate conversion from Android itself. Even volume adjustment is performed directly by the DAC instead of the digital recalculation. So the files above 44.1kHz will not affected with the Android Sample Rate Conversion.

The resulting sample rate is shown at the status bar on top, next to the battery icon. So basically Android OS does not interfere with the sound. This also works with TIDAL and Spotify, so it’s not exclusive to the HiBy Music application. Whatever you listen to, it’s directly from the DAC. We see this solution with many Android DAPs nowadays. I personally don’t think it means a lot for the overall sound, but when we look at the outlet, it’s easy to see that people demand this from the manufacturers.

Package Content

You have a silicone case which to me is mediocre, a USB-C charging cable and a microSD pin to open up the card reader. There are a few screen protectors as well, which is nice to have.

Otherwise there’s no other accessory to mention. I suggest you get a much nicer case than the supplied one, since it doesn’t fit the DAP tightly. I personally never used the case.

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