HIGH-RESOLUTION AUDIO PLAYER

Pioneer XDP-3OR £349

Although smartphones are wonderful for connected convenience, when it comes to audio quality they’re adequate at best. Great headphones and a portable DAC (digital audio converter) can do wonders, but a dedicated player like the Pioneer XDP3OR (right) are the best option for portable high-resolution music.

Thanks to the twin Sabre DACS, which can play file formats up to 192khz/32bit, the step up in quality from a smartphone is remarkable. A 24-bit FLAC (lossless) highresolution version of Bruckner’s Ninth – with Ricardo Muti conducting the Chicago Symphony Orchestra – remains an intensely powerful recording, with the full might of the orchestra given the space it deserves… even on a busy bus journey. A standard MP3 of the same recording felt weedy in comparison.

The Pioneer is nicely designed, palm sized and impressively finished, but the paltry resolution of the 2.4inch touch screen is poor compared to a smartphone. Running on Android, the interface is simple to navigate and intuitive enough; it comes with 15-hours of battery life and while the 16GB internal memory won’t last long, the two Microsd card slots can boost it by another 400GB.

If you’ve yet to invest in decent headphones, you should spend your budget on those first, but if you have a large digital library that’s trapped at home, the Pioneer is a convenient and good-value introduction to hi-res listening on the go. pioneer.eu