The 3 best digital audio players worth buying for a high-res audio experience

Having music available for when you’re on the move isn’t so much a luxury as it is a necessity. Can you imagine having to endure that bus ride / train journey / flight (or all three) without a pocketful of music to keep you entertained and sane? Doesn’t bear thinking about, does it?

But if you take sound quality seriously – and really, who doesn’t? – then you’ll know that relying on your smartphone to do the business is a suboptimal solution. It’s already got plenty to deal with, and more often than not all the stuff that’s crucial to sound quality (the digital-to-analogue conversion circuitry, the wireless connectivity, the implementation of codec compatibility, you name it) is a bit of an afterthought.

Although the best wired headphones are making more frequent appearances – call it a comeback, if you will – because they sound better on a pound-for-pound basis than the wireless equivalent, a headphone socket on a smartphone is a rarity these days.

Now, if you want to maximise your audio enjoyment while you’re out and about, a dedicated digital audio player – or 'DAP' for short – is what you need. They’re built to do one job and to do it properly, and more often than not they’re able to do what no smartphone can when it comes to properly high-resolution audio quality.

T3's Top 3

DAPs can power wired or wireless speakers. And they just sound better. I’ve been working as an audio technology tester, reviewer and journalist for, oh, bloody ages now – and I’m here to tell you the sound of a good digital audio player compares to the sound of a smartphone in the same way the taste of three courses at a decent restaurant compares to the taste of a service-station sarnie.

So above (and, indeed, described even more thoroughly below) are 3 DAPs that represent the state of the art at their respective price-points, and that will ensure you never use your smartphone for anything except calls, text messages and TikTok videos ever again.

FiiO v Astell & Kern: Pricing

The success of the digital audio players market is thanks in no small part to Astell & Kern and to FiiO – and between these three products we’re covering pretty much the entirety of the market, from ‘very affordable’ to ‘how much did you say?’

At just £179 ($199 / AU$399), the JM21 comfortably undercuts what we used to fondly call the ‘entry level’, where the likes of Activo and Sony hang out. But where materials, build quality and basic integrity are concerned, FiiO has cut no obvious corners – this machine feels quite robust and built to last.

‘Built to last’ is to understate the quality of the SP3000T’s construction somewhat. Astell & Kern has seemingly ensured this £3199 ($2999 / AU$5299) device will withstand quite large detonations – it feels more than anything like an extremely well-appointed brick. Naturally, its specification and performance is a big part of why it’s so expensive – but the fact that it feels so substantial in your hand shouldn’t be overlooked.

At £649 ($719 / AU$1,199), the M23 represents the sort of investment that should be carefully considered, of course – but FiiO has gone to lengths to ensure you feel like you’re getting your money’s worth. The touchscreen is big, bright and responsive, the little slice of carbon fibre used as a volume control looks upmarket, and the overall feel is one of reassuring solidity.

FiiO v Astell & Kern: What's Unique?

FiiO JM21

The most obviously remarkable thing about the FiiO JM21 is that it costs so little and yet is specified like some alternative products costing twice as much.

A pair of very capable Cirrus Logic DACs with compatibility to 32bit/384kHz and DSD256, Bluetooth 5.0 with LDAC and aptX HD codec ability, balanced and unbalanced headphone outputs.

None of that suggests the JM21 has been built down to a price. It’s a two-way Bluetooth device too, a receiver as well as a transmitter. But at just 121 x 68 x 13mm (HxWxD) and weighing 156g, you’ll hardly know it’s in your pocket.

Astell & Kern SP3000T

As befits a product with such a hefty price tag, the Atell & Kern SP3000T is special in every respect. I’ve talked about the lavish and unburstable nature of the way it’s built, of course, but the internal specification is every bit as exhaustive. Its ability with DSD512 and 32bit/768kHz content is impressive, as is its Bluetooth spec and its ability with wired and wireless headphones of all kinds.

But the way it’s been specified in the amplification stage really lets you know what you’re dealing with here. Military-spec Raytheon JAN6418 miniature vacuum tubes, carefully matched in pairs and suspended in a silicone PCB arrangement do the business, and you get to select between ‘Tube Amp’ (for ‘natural warmth’), ‘OP Amp’ (for ‘expansive soundstage and crystal-clear resolution’) or ‘Hybrid Amp’ (for ‘the richness of analogue blended with high-resolution clarity’ – a bit of both, in other words).

FiiO M23

It’s to FiiO’s immense credit that having specified the JM21 at such an asking price, it’s made the M23 so distinct that the increase in cost seems entirely justified.

Consider the THX AAA 78+ amplifier architecture for starters, and then pay attention to the twin AKM DACs – they operate in tandem, keeping the digital and analogue stages entirely separate).

The 5500mAh battery is good for 10 hours of continuous playback, a microSD card slot that will accept anything up to 2TB, a Qualcomm Snapdragon 660 processor makes the Android-based interface so slick and responsive. These are all part of the reason the FiiO M23 is our ‘best all-rounder’ DAP pick.

FiiO v Astell & Kern: Which sounds best?

FiiO JM21

As long as you don’t insist on listening at very high volumes, the FiiO JM21 is a composed, spacious and quite revealing listen.

It has a quite neutral tonal balance, sufficient dynamic headroom to have a good stab at describing bit shifts in attack, and can create a very plausible soundstage.

If you insist on big volume levels, though, you’ll find dynamic response becomes rather flat and the soundstage loses a fair bit of its three-dimensionality too. But you should listen to your doctor/your parents/your most sensible friend, anyway, and keep volume to a sensible level.

Astell & Kern SP3000T

I’m going to go ahead and assume that the owner of an Astell & Kerns SP3000T is not scrimping when it comes to headphones – and with something appropriate attached, ideally via the balanced output, this digital audio player is capable of sonic fireworks.

It presents music as a unified entity, as a performance, and it is able to unearth an extraordinary amount of detail as it does so. Rhythmic expression is outstanding, the soundstage is frankly enormous, and the prodigious nature of its dynamic response is just as apparent in the small harmonic variations in a voice as it is in the massive shifts in intensity a symphony orchestra can create.

FiiO M23

There’s a directness and a positivity to the way the FiiO M23 presents music, a sort of energy that makes every listen an event.

It gets all the technical things right, of course – detail retrieval, transient response, tonal balance, frequency integration, soundstaging, you name it – but what’s most arresting and, ultimately, most enjoyable about the way it makes music sound is the vigour and momentum it can summon.

Without ever threatening to lose the run of itself, the M23 puts the notion of ‘entertainment’ right at the heart of its sound. It's perfectly balanced in just about every way.

FiiO v Astell & Kern: Which is the winner?

When you’re talking about three ostensibly similar products that range in price so considerably, the notion of ‘best’ is a tricky one.

In ultimate terms, the Astell & Kern SP3000T sounds best (how could it not?) and is the most satisfying to own – something would have gone badly wrong if it wasn’t, given the price.

But the reason these are the 3 DAPs I chose to discuss in the first place, is that they’re all best – not in a ‘school sports day everyone wins a prize’ sort of way, but simply because at their asking price they represent the very best digital audio player investment you can make.

Honorable Mentions

Until the FiiO JM21 rocked up, I’d have said the Activo P1 was the best offering at the entry level – but suddenly its price doesn’t look all that ‘entry level’, does it? It’s still a great-sounding device, though, and it still features vaguely troubling industrial design.

If you just want to chuck money at the idea of a digital audio player, though, you’ll find quite quickly that Astell & Kern is involved in an arms race with itself. Every new product the company launches is wildly expensive and touted as the ‘ultimate’ sound solution – and the latest of these is the mighty SP4000 I encountered at the Munich High End Show earlier this year. It will set you back thousands, of course, so is that ‘ultimate’ enough for you?

Mind you, there are Astell & Kern products that are priced to appeal to people who have to work for a living. The SR35 is the most obvious rival to FiiO’s outstanding M23. Compact (by A&K standards, anyway) and well-equipped, it’s a great-sounding device that really only needs better battery life to properly put the frighteners on the class leaders.