I was also looking at the ES100, but the only option I found so far is $200 (€180) which is a bit much. My situation is this. I have an e10k which I now use both at home and at work (well right now I work from home but you get what I mean). I usually lie in bed for about an hour before sleeping and I want to listen to music then and my phone doesn’t have a 3.5mm port and I fall asleep with music on so I would wake up with a dead phone battery if I use a usb c to 3.5mm. My idea is to use the e10k at home at my desktop and use the Bluetooth/USB DAC on the go and in bed.
So I want to have something I can hook up at night via Bluetooth but which I can also bring to work and use with a cable when the battery is dead. I’m not necessarily looking for an upgrade soundwise, and I’m not willing to spend more than €100 on this.
Would they sound worse wired than wireless? And do you think they would sound worse than an e10k? I only listen to Spotify so I don’t particularly care about support for hi-res stuff.
I saw that the BTR3 also has access to the equalizer app, so that could be a nice thing.
That vendor also sends from america so that would mean that I would have to pay customs duty, adding about 20%.
@Soren_Peregrine Also the €100 I plan to save on this device will be immediately spend on a Moondrop Starfield, hence why I don’t want to spend more than €100 on this
I can get the UP4 for €100 (€30 more than UP2, €40 more than btr3) but it would take at least 2 weeks. I don’t have any use for a balanced output at this moment though.
So honestly I think the best usage for these kinds of small devices is bluetooth. You are already going for something small so it won’t have the same quality as something that is bigger that has more clean power. So if you need bluetooth then these are definitely good. But for wired I would get something else.
I think the best options here are the UP4 and the BTR5. The UP4 will have a more warm sound, maybe add some bass, the BTR5 would be more analytical and transparent. The thing about the UP4 compared to the BTR5 wired though is that the UP4 only supports up to 16bit/48khz format. The BTR5 up to 32bit/384khz format. For bluetooth however, the UP4 probably has the upper hand in quality.
In short, I would say the UP4 wins for bluetooth in most cases, but the BTR5 for wired.
More than 16bit/48khz is not necessary for me I guess, since I only listen through Spotify anyway. I have no problem with buying something now and then upgrading it later down the line. I’ll look at the UP4 again, but I’m not sure I want to wait 2-3 weeks TBH. And bringing it in from US or Asia will simply add too much.
Unfortunately customs also apply when getting a package from a person rather than a company (plus shipping time will be looong I imagine). Thanks for the offer though
May I ask why you are selling it? I see you own a pair of Starfields which happen to be on it’s way to me this week, are those and the up2 a good match?
They’re a really good match, nothing but good things to say about both of them. The thing is, I originally got the UP2 because my phone’s dac chipset is not good. But now I’m selling my phone cause it started getting finicky so I figured I might as well get a phone with a good chipset and call it a day. So now I’m just plugging the starfields into the LG V20 so I have no use for the UP2 besides perhaps car/gym use. Both of which aren’t readily available at the moment because of the crisis lol
I got impatient and ordered the UP2 already. For now there was no reason and I decided to not invest in anything anymore for a while. I don’t mind upgrading it later on when I need balanced or when I need something with more power. I just really couldn’t listen to my current Bluetooth setup anymore. The background hiss and lack of dynamics is fine when I’m on my bike with only one earpiece in but it’s undo-able when I lie in bed. Plus the guy was kinda vague about when the UP4 would be back in stock again.
Unless you have hard to drive cans that would require the extra power of the balance output I would say 67mw unbalanced should be more then enough, in my opinion. I don’t think there’s a significant jump in audio quality either, the UP4 uses two of the same audio chip instead of one. I haven’t looked up direct comparisons but I don’t think it would be very noticeable. Either way, even if it is, I would say the UP2 is good value and is slept on.
@Soren_Peregrine
A bit too early to really rate the UP2; but my first thoughts are: Wait… I don’t need an IEMatch when I hook up my FA1s? if I connect them to the E10K or RC-BT they will hiss, not with the UP2. Also the device feels nice, it’s a bit shorter than I’d expected, but it has just the right weight to it. Haven’t been able to connect it to my PC yet, but there’s a firmware upgrade that has PC support in the list of fixes so can’t complain about that until I did the upgrade. Then I can also try the companion app, though I find it kinda sketch that it’s an APK file included with the firmware download in stead of an app I can download through the play store…
Sounds like you are liking it so far. That’s great!
Many apps for companies that are not very well known such as this one do not upload their apps to the play store. Don’t worry if it is an APK file, I have had to use those for many things and they are totally okay.
Well I did the firmware update. The app is quite nice, can’t say I hear the difference between the filters but I’m not sure I would. The 5-band eq is kinda nice though, for if you just want to add a little bass. Unfortunately I haven’t been able to get this to work stably on Linux. However, I’m hopeful there’ll be a fix at some point, though Shanling has mentioned in the thread on head-fi that they don’t have a Linux PC so I’m not hopeful there’ll be a fix soon .
Update: I have been able to get the UP2 working on Linux (Ubuntu 18.04) with a fairly simple fix I found on head-fi. Basically I needed to change the default sampling rate from 44.1 to 48 khz in the pulse daemon config and everything’s working excellent now.
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