CES 2016

The XDP-100R is already available in some overseas markets (most notably in Japan, where enthusiasm for hi-res audio is very healthy) but now the player is available for us nephews and nieces of Uncle Sam.

The XDP-100R is a high-resolution portable digital audio player. It runs on the Android Lollipop platform; think of it as an Android phone without the phone. Thus you can use the player and its 4.7-inch (1280 x 720) touchscreen for streaming, gaming, videos and so on. Of course, its focus is high-quality music playback. The player supports playback up to 192-kHz/24-bit and essentially all audio formats can be accommodated including DSD (DSF/DSDIFF), FLAC, ALAC, WAV, AIFF, Ogg Vorbis, MP3, AAC.

Pioneer (and Onkyo) are strongly in the MQA lossless audio camp thus the player is also MQA compliant; an upgrade to MQA will be distributed to players later this spring. The player has a relatively paltry 32GB of memory on board, but its dual micro-SD slots can each accommodate up to 200GB each, yielding a theoretical total of 432GB. However, as you might know, at high memory capacities, incompatibilities sometimes occur; thus depending on whose memory you plug in, you may or may not get the full expected capacity.

Some other cool stuff: Displays, WiFi, and other nonessential processing can be turned off; this helps save battery life, and also eliminates potential interference in the audio signal path. Speaking of which, the battery can deliver up to 16 hours of continuous hi-res audio playback; book your flight to Australia now. A “Play Thru” feature lets you send audio files to other devices via WiFi. AptX Bluetooth is also available.

The player uses a Sabre ES9018K2M DAC and Sabre 9601K amplifier; the DAC/amp board is separate from the Android board to help isolate noise. Likewise the power supply is distanced from the audio circuitry. The GUI is quite nice; clearly a lot of time and budget went into its design. EQ is provided by FIR filters and up to 1,000 EQ presets can be created and stored. The player (clearly sharing DNA with Onkyo’s DP-X1 player) can use the OnkyoMusic app to purchase music.

The player measures approximately 5 x 3 x 0.5 inches and weighs about 0.43 pounds. The player comes in black or white; MSRP is $700 and the player is available now. I am looking forward to listening to this little beauty.