Review on 🎵 S.M.S.L DP5 HiFi Network Music Player: MQA HIGH Resolution Lossless ES9038Pro DAC DSD256 | USB/I2S/AES/Coaxial/Optical Output | High SNR by Jay Sterns

I bought this device because I like it simple. I needed a hi-res player for my FLAC files in a console style case that I could use with my home stereo. I didn't need a portable player. My requirements were minimal. I don't need music streaming at home. This is a nice device, the build quality is very good and solid, the main control knob is solid. I do feel that the other buttons are a bit small and a little hard to see in a dark room, but I use a remote that's easier to navigate. I store my music on a 2TB Samsung SSD external USB drive and it works fine once you scan the music to update your database. This is a great sounding device. Flac files sound just like CDs. The only real issue I've found is that this device has a nice display and will show artwork for your tracks, but if the artwork is larger than 1000x1000 pixels it won't show. I learned this the hard way, having already ripped a few hundred of my CDs to FLAC. Luckily, with the copy tool I used, I was able to resize and update their metadata. I'm glad I found out about this sooner as I still have a few thousand CDs to rip. The display is rectangular and razor sharp. Because the cover art is enlarged to fit the screen, only about 75% of the top of the cover art is shown and the bottom 25% is cropped. Information about the current title is displayed in the lower third of the cover. It's not a deal breaker for me, but I'd rather see the full illustration in a smaller square and have the title info displayed to the left or right of it, or at least be able to. Your tracks are easy to find by Album, Artist, Genre and Favorites. But it would be nice to have a random setting when playing tracks from an external USB drive. One disappointment is that it doesn't seem to be able to read .m3u playlist files. Instead, you have to save your playlist in the device, which is cumbersome and takes some time. I can try the iPhone app but I can't use the other features. I don not need you. The best stereo I've ever bought. Overall a great device for my basic needs. The instructions should be more detailed. I have to say it's good that I don't have to flip through all the CDs I have anymore. a little. I have about 2500 FLAC CD albums. Using the remote to search for a specific album or track is one task, and when you have that many tracks then a few more tasks. So I decided to try the HiBy iOS app and access the device from my iPhone or iPad. Setting up this application to work with Bluetooth is quite difficult. One of the main problems with this is that most of the time after closing the app, you will lose your connection and have to reconnect manually. I sit about 8 feet from the device and most of the time it doesn't automatically connect or sync to the device unless the app stays open. The app has some handy search features to help you find your ringtones and albums quickly, but with a caveat. For example, it finds 15 albums by the same artist when searching, but only shows 10 of them. It's weird, dammit. I checked if there is a display setting for this and I didn't find it. In fact, most of the advanced settings in the application are disabled or cannot be changed. I've also noticed that sometimes at the end of a track, instead of moving on to the next song, he jumps to a track on a completely independent album. In short, the app looks good and could theoretically make it easier to watch my music, but it sucks and is buggy. By the way, every time you save new tracks to an external drive, you need to use your device's music update feature so that it includes those new tracks in order to play them. The problem is that with about 2000 albums, the update takes about 30 minutes. Not only can you update new tracks. If you don't have time for a music update and want to start playing new tracks right away, you can get around this by going to File Explorer on your device and browsing through all the folders until you find the new tracks. and play them from there. Depending on where your album is in alphabetical order, this could be a problem. The device sounds great, but tends to fade into tracks instead of playing them at the moment the song is selected and should start. So he can cut a note or a drumbeat at the beginning of a melody. Honestly, I have nothing to compare this device to. Most other devices that seem to offer similar features were way out of my price range. So would I buy this device again? Probably not, and my free return window has already expired.