Hiby New R6

A New R6, for a bright new future for HiBy Music. This Head-Fi favourite for easy Google Play usability gets the 2021 refresh with new Android 9.0 software and, critically, audio hardware upgrades.

Two of ESS Technology's flagship ES9038Q2M mobile decoders supply a baseline of portable fidelity upon which the rest of the New R6 is built upon. Dual power supplies are separated to individually feed this palm powerhouse's digital and analog sections with the cleanest, most stable DC.

The latter is critically a stage that outputs the same 750 milliwatts that distinguished its R6 Pro predecessor, pushing all matter of Focal, Rosson Audio Design, Sennheiser and ZMF Headphones. An I/V stage built with the OPA1612 from Texas Instruments optimises small signal from the DACs, pushing distortion specs down at the beginning of New R6's analog circuit to help it maintain overall composure under load.

Big can aficionados are well served with New R6's MQA decoding capability of 16 times on all Google Play apps, including online and offline streaming. Headfonics praise its "design, size, overall performance" as "more complete than any other DAP at this price point in terms of OS experience".

Headfonia echo it's a no-brainer in its segment, presenting it a 'Recommended Buy' award, something Currawong concluded after analysis in context of New R6's rivals. Also check out HiBy's R8, R5 Saber and R3 Pro Saber from HiBy here, or view our other music players here.