FYI Just to let you know that John Darko ( https://www.youtube.com/@DarkoAudio ) stated yesterday that he's going to make a review of the A6 soon, as he received may requests to do so from his viewers. He will possibly cover both the streamer and the DAC aspects of the device.
Two weeks ago he said he would do it; yesterday he said: "when you'll see this video I'll be already 2 or 3 days into the testing of the A6" (more or less)
... aaand, spoiler alert, from his most recent "My SIX favourite DACs" YouTube video, it seems that the 600 euros battery powered FPGA programmable DAC CHORD Mojo 2 is a somehow better sounding device ("more detail, more dynamic punch").
The CHORD DACs are another planet, they are neither DAC chips, nor R2-R, but use software to render the D-to-A conversion, programmed in a FPGA (Field Programmable Logic Array) I think the Z8 (and possibly the A6) have better performing DACs according to ASR, at least better than the DAVE (which is the top of the line... go figure)
John Darko video review of the DMP-A6 just up on You Tube. Generally quite positive but deals mainly with the sound using the internal DAC rather than as a digital transport.
Yeah, pity he focused so much on internal DAC comparisons but didn’t compare the different filter options on the A6, which really do alter the characteristics he ascribed to the A6 sound. He also spent a lot of time on the A6’s native and whitelisted apps (versus the Play Store on the Fiio), but failed to mention side-loading as even being an option, which was a pity. I can’t argue with his conclusion though, that you’re really best choosing between the Fiio, Node X and A6 based on feature set and your individual need, rather than the quality of their internal DACs. It’ll be interesting to see how the written companion review chooses to deal with things.
The interesting thing is that i talks about AirPlay 2, not AirPlay... Did I miss something? Did the A6 already receive a firmware update to have AirPlay 2?
Using Apple Music via AirPlay , the A6 shows that the track is AAC, this is a known characteristic of the AirPlay 2 (to save bandwidth for multi-device playback). But it could also be because my phone is using AirPlay 2 and the A6 is only receiving it as it is. But I've also seen people saying they have successfully added the A6 into Apple's multi-device playback ecosystem, this is a feature of the AirPlay 2 only. So the question is, do you need all devices to be on AirPlay 2 to use this multi-device feature? If yes, then wouldn't this mean the A6 supports AirPlay 2? If not, is it really important to have the A6 supporting AirPlay 2?
