Volumio Introduces Motivo Flagship Streamer, Transport and Headphone Amp

Volumio, the Italian company that created the popular free music player, continues to invest in hardware and now announced the launch of a new flagship streamer and music player with a focus on user interface. Crafted to redefine the music experience, the Motivo streamer stands out with its 8" IPS multitouch display, being an integrated streamer\headphone amplifier based on the established ESS Sabre 9038 DAC and offering multiple I2S, USB, and S/PDIF digital outputs.

Following an earlier announcement in 2022, Technics confirmed that its new generation multi-digital audio player that supports a wide range of music sources will become available in January 2023. The Technics SL-G700M2 is the successor to the SL-G700 network/Super Audio CD player, now updated with all the latest new digital features, improved PCM and DSD playback, and featuring the latest DA converters from ESS Technology. The new audio player gains full MQA decoding ability, AirPlay 2, adds a USB input, adding to the versatility of the design.

ROHM Semiconductor announced that it has developed the new BD34352EKV digital-to-analog converter IC (DAC) and corresponding evaluation board (BD34352EKV-EVK-001), supporting playback of high-resolution audio sources in high-fidelity audio equipment. Complementing its latest MUS-IC BD34301EKV flagship DAC, the new product was designed to maximally extract and convert high resolution digital audio data to analog audio signals in new product designs.

Ready, Cassette, Go! The new old thang, in all its nostalgic, iconic glory, will never go away! Now, it has evolved into a fully functional portable digital music player thanks to company Mixxim which is introducing MIXXTAPE at CES 2020. In 2017, in a mere 30 days, MIXXTAPE was 1215% funded on Kickstarter, and later was recognized as one of only ten finalists at the 2019 CES Last Gadget Standing competition. Now, the portable digital player is available and will be launched at CES 2020.

The famous audio equipment brand from Cambridge, Massachusetts, Acoustic Research (now part of Voxx International) released a new portable high-resolution audio (HRA) digital player. The new M20 Hi-Res DAP is slimmer and lighter than the brand’s previous flagship model, the AR-M2, and is even more affordable, with 32GB of internal storage and expansion using Micro SDXC cards (up to 256GB). Essentially, the new M20 focuses on the quality of its audio circuits and DAC, offering a “less is more” approach.

In November 2015, audioXpress published a unique group testing on smartphone audio playback, focused on audio circuit quality and the performance of the playback DAC, as intended for wired headphone listening. The products under review included the iconic iPod classic, the iPhone 5s, the iPhone 6, Vivo Xplay 3S, Vivo X5 Max, HTC One M8, Samsung Galaxy S5, and Sony Xperia Z2.