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Intro The first time I saw the DISC Nano, I laughed. Not a polite laugh. A proper "who approved this" laugh. A CD player where half the disc just hangs out in the open, spinning, like it forgot to get dressed? Then I held one. And honestly? I stopped laughing somewhere around the second album. Fosi Audio is not new to the CD game anymore. Earlier this year the brand did its first CD player, the Merak, which I reviewed and liked, but that one is really a desktop box that needs

I have a rule about Class D. At the budget end, up through the "I just want good sound without selling a kidney" tier, I love it. You get power, stability and a level of clarity that Class A/B amps at the same price simply cannot touch. Class D at that level isn't a compromise. It's often the smarter engineering decision. But something happens once the price climbs. Once you're no longer choosing based on what you can afford but on what you actually want to live with, I find

When I saw "ES9081" printed on the D100's spec sheet, my first instinct was to assume SMSL had quietly slipped a flagship chip into a $140 box and hoped nobody would check. That's usually how this goes with budget Chinese DACs. Big number, bigger claims, and a comment section full of people who never read a datasheet in their life arguing about which number wins. So I checked. And here's the part that actually makes this review interesting. The ES9081 is genuinely one of ESS

And why the whole K8 family matters' So when Kaiboer sent me the DAC-K5 a while back, I went in expecting exactly that. I was wrong. And I don't say that lightly. The K5 turned out to be a genuinely good streaming DAC, close enough to the Eversolo DMP-A6 Gen 2 in sound that I had to double-check the price tag. That review earned Kaiboer a permanent spot on my radar. What I didn't expect was how fast they'd move from "promising newcomer" to "company with an actual lineup." Bec

SMSL calls the H200 the "final chapter" of its 200 Series. I've seen a version of that phrase attached to at least four different SMSL launches over the years, and every single time, a new "final chapter" showed up about a year later wearing an MK2 badge. So forgive me if I raised an eyebrow before I'd even opened the box. Here's what's actually inside it, marketing copy aside. The H200 is a $399 fully balanced headphone amplifier and preamplifier. No DAC, no Bluetooth, no st

For more great review, and to understand some context of this review see my review of Musical Fidelity M5si: https://www.hifidaydreaming.com/post/even-9-years-old-musical-fidelity-m5si-is-still-unbeatable-in-it-s-price-range-vs-arcam-radia-a25 It got me on first sight. Instantly. No hesitation, no reviewer's caution, none of the professional distance I am supposed to maintain. I saw the A10 Apex and I wanted it, and I am not going to pretend otherwise just to sound rigorous.

I'll be honest with you. When I saw "4.6 watts per channel" and "$49.99" in the same sentence, my first reaction wasn't excitement. It was suspicion. That's not a review number, that's a fantasy number. You see specs like that from companies that "measure" power at 1kHz into a dead short with the THD limit turned off, and then quietly bury the real figure in a footnote nobody reads. So I plugged the GIGAS 1 in expecting to write a takedown. A gentle one, because it costs less

There is a box on my desk from a company that has existed longer than most of the hi-fi brands you follow on Instagram, and until a few months ago I could not have picked its logo out of a lineup. That is not a knock on Kaiboer. That is a knock on how the Western hi-fi press decides what counts as a "real" brand. Shenzhen Kaiboer Technology was founded in 2007. The name is a Chinese rendering of the English word "cable," which tells you exactly where they started: HDMI leads,

I have a reflexive twitch whenever a company hides two glowing tubes behind an acrylic panel and tells me my digital music is about to get its soul back. You know the pitch. Warmth. Analog richness. That little "tube hug" for your ears. Nine times out of ten it is a solid-state amp wearing two tubes like costume jewelry, contributing nothing but a soft orange glow across your desk. So when the xDuoo MT-02 showed up at $149, I sat down fully prepared to write something snarky.

This is sort of part 2 of my review of Eversolo DMP A8 Master Gen2. Please look at that review to have a full picture of what i am talking about: https://www.hifidaydreaming.com/post/i-waited-long-time-for-streamer-like-this-and-it-finally-arrived-eversolo-dmp-a8-master-gen2-re Five machines. One family. I'm going to tell you exactly what you get and exactly what you lose as you move up and down this range, so you stop guessing which Eversolo is actually yours. And than we ar

*A lot more images and videos of this product in video review! So, my first Eversolo review. It's not that I didn't have any chance to listen to the DMP-A6 Gen 2 and DMP-A8 Gen 1. It's that I listened to them much too late, so everyone already did reviews, and I honestly thought that my review would be one too many. But then Eversolo announced the DMP-A8 Gen 2 Master Edition, with a fully functioning CD player. Me, a huge enthusiast for CD players, with the combined power and

Long-time readers of this site know I have a weakness. It is British, it weighs as much as a small dog, and it says Musical Fidelity on the faceplate. I called the M3si big, bold and best in class. I called the M5si the most affordable end game amp on the market, nine years after its release, which is not something a sane reviewer should be able to say about any electronics. So when Musical Fidelity announced the M6xi, the long-awaited successor to the M6si, I felt two things

So I recently got the SMSL PL150, and with that I had in my possession the entire new line of SMSL CD players. While I could do a regular review of the PL150, with my previous reviews of the PL100 Pro and PL200 I think there is not much I could have added here. So something came to my mind as I listened to all of their CD players. Four CD players. One company. And somewhere between 150 and 670 dollars, there is a line where spending more stops making sense. Today, we find tha

There's a drawer in my studio I don't open anymore. It's where budget chi-fi goes to die. Dozens of little resin shells, each one purchased in a moment of weakness, each one promising to "punch above its price," each one now tangled in a mass grave of cables I'll never untangle because life is short and I have speakers to review. So when the CCA Xyrra landed on my desk, my expectations were somewhere between "landfill" and "landfill with a nice faceplate." And honestly? I owe

If I had a euro for every comment asking me whether it's time to upgrade from a PM6007, I could almost afford the amp that just replaced it. Almost. Marantz has officially retired the PM6007 integrated amplifier and the CD6007 CD player, two machines that spent nearly six years as the default answer to "what should I buy for my first proper system?" In their place: the Model 70 and CD 70, landing on 15 August in black or silver-gold. The end of an era, and the end of a look T

There is something about speakers that are built with the heart of music at their center. Something about speakers that breathe and radiate pure joy and fun. Something that was not built to win measurement reports or for clean analytical sessions, but rather speakers that truly understand rhythm and passion, and tell your body to move your legs to the tempo of the music. That is the Canton Vento 31. I was shocked by how much fun and joy it brought out of me, and by the sheer

I'll be honest with you. When a Snowsky box lands on my desk, I brace myself for something shaped like a cassette tape. That's what this sub-brand has been so far: FiiO's playground for retro nostalgia and pocket-money prices, aimed at people who think a Walkman aesthetic is a personality. So when the Oak Nano showed up, a 449 dollar flagship IEM machined from pure titanium, my first reaction wasn't excitement. It was suspicion. A flagship with a complicated birth certificate

I can tell you right now, there are four reasons to get this amp: great vintage-style real wood panel looks, the FiiO app's PEQ, big power output, and good sonic quality. That makes it one of the most complete packages in this cheap Class D market. Let's go into a little more detail. Build Quality/Specs Jade Audio is FiiO's newer sub-brand, and the Level 1 is its first stab at a desktop power amplifier. It lands at $139.99, built around the Texas Instruments TPA3255 chip that

Primo V3 debuts with a redefined approach to streaming DAC performance- Third generation of Volumio’s Primo offers improved performance, premium components and more- Florence, Italy. 8 July 2026 - Volumio, the leading audio software platform for music streaming and playback, today announced the launch of the third generation of Primo, the company’s beloved first streaming DAC. Primo V3 is a streaming DAC completely reinvented around Volumio’s latest engineering solutions to s

This isn't a full review, but rather a continuation of my Onkyo A-50 review. I recommend you watch that review first, and the link will be in the description of this video. Onkyo A-50 review: https://www.hifidaydreaming.com/post/absoulte-best-buy-amp-currently-on-market-onkyo-a-50-review Onkyo M80 Overview I love going to music stores and demoing audio gear. While I was ready to acquire the Onkyo A-50, the store's staff actually set up the M80 for me to listen to. At first si