CES 2017

High-Res Audio is alive and well, thank you very much. New hardware is arriving, as well as new high-res streaming services. Case in point, regarding the former, Pioneer showed the XDP-300R, its newest portable audio player. It joins the previous XDP-100R player but does not replace it.

The XDP-300R features a 4.7-inch capacitive touchscreen, Android 5.1 OS, dual ESS 24-bit/384-kHz D/A converters (the XDP-100R uses 1 D/A), and fully balanced pre-amp circuitry. Significantly, it can handle MQA files, as well as 24/192 FLAC, ALAC, WAV and AIFF. It also decodes DSD files up to 11.2 MHz.

Other things you will want to know: Digital output through Micro USB/OTG support allows for both high quality output via the balanced headphone jack and peripheral connections. It has a 3.5mm stereo mini output with line output mode, and 2.5mm balanced headphone output. Everything is neatly contain in a machined aluminum body. The player has 32GB of onboard storage but about 7 GB of this is soaked up by the operating system. Fortunately, storage can be beefed up to over 500GB thanks to two microSD card slots – all of that, of course, is an extra cost to you.

The player comes preloaded with the OnkyoMusic app, so you can download high-res audio files onto the player. In addition, Tidal, Spotify, and Deezer are all preloaded as well. The player also supports Google Play. Other tech: 802.11a/b/g/n/ac, and AptX support. Size: 128.9mm x 75.9mm x 12.7mm. Weight: 200 grams. Unlike the XDP-100R, there is no speaker.

The XDP-300R retails for $750 and is available now.