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Questyle Audio QP1R Digital Audio Player

Questyle Audio QP1R Digital Audio Player

Questyle Audio, led by audio engineer Wang Fengshuo (Jason Wang in Anglicised form), is an innovative manufacturer of high-performance DSD‑capable DACs, preamps, power amps, a 5GHz wireless hi-fi system, and very high quality, portable high-res DAPs (Digital Audio Players). Unlike some of its competitors in these categories, however, Questyle is less about the blind pursuit of features and functions for their own sake and more about the pursuit of very serious sound quality. For this review, we chose Questyle’s recently released flagship QP1R portable digital audio player (£660, or $899), which packs a formidable amount of audio technology into an elegant package about the size of a typical smartphone.

The QP1R, offering self-evident quality of build, sports a tasteful, CNC-machined aluminium enclosure that is treated to an elegant bead-blasted matte finish and given either a Space Grey or Gold anodised finish. The front and back panels of the player are covered in durable and attractive Gorilla glass, with the front panel provides a 43 x 39mm full-colour display screen plus what Questyle terms a “twin steering wheel” control system that combines some aspects of the familiar Apple iPod control wheel system with a series of touch-sensitive panel surfaces that provide additional control options.

, Questyle Audio QP1R Digital Audio Player

The top edge of the player provides a protected volume control knob (said to be patterned after the crown of a high-end wristwatch), plus two recessed jacks: a headphone output jack and a combined line out/optical jack. The right edge of the player presents a simple, pushbutton On/Off switch. Finally, the bottom edge of the player provides two recessed MicroSD memory card slots, plus a mobile universal Micro USB jack that is used for uploading music files and for charging the QP1R’s 3300-mAh lithium-polymer battery. The player comes standard with 32GB of memory and can accommodate up to two 200GB MicroSD cards for even more music storage capacity, and a Micro SD is also used for installing periodic firmware updates. All in all, the player exudes an elegant, purposeful vibe and conveys a substantial and pleasingly high-quality feel (but be forewarned: if you let your friends play with the QP1R, they may not want to give it back).

Readers familiar with Questyle’s full-size audio components will be pleased (and perhaps surprised) to find that many of the technologies employed in those bigger units have found their way into the compact QP1R. Specifically, the DAC section of the QP1R borrows certain elements such as the 3X clock design from the firm’s flagship CAS192D DAC. The QP1R uses Cirrus Logic’s top-shelf CS4398 DAC device to support native decoding of DSD64 and DSD128 files, as well as native decoding for PCM files at rates up to 24-bit/192kHz. Virtually every digital audio file format imaginable is supported, making the QP1R one very versatile portable digital audio player.

 

The amplifier section of the QP1R uses Questyle’s patented, signature CMA (current mode amplifier) circuit topology as pioneered in the firm’s CMA800R-series headphone amplifier. Further, the amp uses a pure Class A circuit comprised entirely of discrete components. The benefits of a current mode amplifier, says Questyle, involve the fact that the circuit’s slew rate, “grows linearly with input signals, without any limit,” meaning that the circuit can safely apply very high-speed negative feedback (feedback hundreds of time faster than in a traditional voltage amplifier) while yielding transient intermodulation distortion (TIMD) “so ultra low that it can hardly be tested.” As a result, the amplifier offers wide bandwidth, extremely low distortion, and nearly complete freedom from annoying TIMD artefacts, or sonic stridency or edginess.

With digital audio players, a product’s user interface can often spell the difference between a winner and a dud, and I’m happy to say the QP1R has an attractive and intuitive interface that most listeners master in a matter of minutes. The primary user controls are simple: there is a ring-shaped metal control wheel at the centre of which is a matching metal pushbutton. As in an Apple iPod, the pushbutton has multiple functions, including “turn on the display screen”, “select the album or track shown”, or “start/stop playback”, depending on the context at hand. Questyle’s ‘steering wheel’ is likewise a context-sensitive control that lets users rapidly scroll through menu, song, album, artist, genre, playlist, or track selection options.

Surrounding the wheel/pushbutton controls are four touch-sensitive ‘switch zones’ in the unit’s Gorilla Glass faceplate. The clearly labelled switches support four frequently used functions: go-to-the-home-menu, go-back-one-menu-level, track forward, and track backward. More so than many DAPs I have tried, the QP1R proved exceptionally easy to learn and use—even for newcomers (many of whom said they felt the player’s interface reminded them of the controls for an Apple iPod).

, Questyle Audio QP1R Digital Audio Player

Two of the most interesting menu options are software selectable master gain settings (offering Low, Medium, and High-gain options) and user definable EQ settings (the QP1R provides a ten-band graphic equalizer and allows users to store two separate banks of EQ pre-sets). Overall, the QP1R interface is a joy to use, even though the player’s high-resolution display screen often presents miniaturised text too small for aging eyes. Thankfully, my own eyeglass prescription is a recent one, so I had no problems with the Questyle’s screen, though I noticed some friends and colleagues squinting at the unit in attempts to read the fine print.

Now we come to the important part: the sound. Here is what I discovered. Where some DAPs, most notably the Astell & Kern AK380 reviewed in issue 127, focus on an almost hyper-precise sound of pristine clarity and purity, others tend more toward a warm, inviting, hearty, and organic sound. The QP1R falls in that latter camp, but with two important twists. First, unlike other warmth-orientated players, the QP1R in no way sounds softly focussed or lacking in resolution or detail. On the contrary, its focus is tack-sharp and its ability to resolve fine textural and transient details is fully competitive with the best in its genre.

Second, and again unlike many other organic-sounding digital components, the QP1R does not soften, underplay, or round off either transient sounds or dynamic contrasts in the music. Instead, the Questyle renders transient sounds with sharply defined (although never exaggerated) leading edges, while also giving dynamic contrasts, including crescendos and decrescendos large and small, their full due.

 

To appreciate what I mean, listen to ‘Walking On The Moon’ from The Yuri Honing Trio’s Star Tracks [Jazz in Motion], noting in particular the dynamic contrasts heard near the beginning of the track. The song opens with what will prove to be a series of brief, sharp, and widely spaced percussion figures in between which we have a very soft and gently repetitive acoustic bass motif that will gradually build in intensity over time. But as the song begins, the contrast between the bass and the drums is so stark and so powerful that, when I first heard the song through my Westone CIEMs as powered by the QP1R, I experienced an abrupt, involuntary ‘startle’ reaction when the fierce ‘pop’ of the drums burst forth from the monitors’ earpieces. That’s right; the QP1R literally made me jump, which tells you precisely what sort of dynamic acuity and impact the Questyle has on offer.

All that is ‘missing’ in the Questyle—and I for one am profoundly glad that it is missing—is the subtly cold, clinical, ‘antiseptic’ quality that some hyper-analytical players manage to impose upon the music. In contrast, the Questyle offers a sort of best-of-two-worlds sound: a sound that is at once fascinating, exciting, and endlessly rich in detail, yet at the same time inviting, comfortable, and, yes, relaxing. Another way of stating this is that some players bowl you over with spectacular detail and definition for a few tracks, but soon leave you ready to turn things off and to go do something else; the Questyle, on the other hand, is a player that pulls you from track to track, and recording to recording, for hours on end.

, Questyle Audio QP1R Digital Audio Player

A great example of this detailed yet eminently listenable quality in action would be the title track from Alison Krauss and Union Station’s album Paper Airplane [Rounder]. Ms Krauss’ voice is often cited as a near perfect example of the famously ‘high and lonesome sound’ so beloved of Bluegrass music aficionados. However, the sad truth is that through many DAPs, DACs, and amps, Krauss’ voice often winds up sounding not only ‘high and lonesome’, but also ‘bright, dry, and shrill’, which obviously is not a good thing. Happily, the QP1R captures the high, pure, sweet, and yet plaintive tonality of Krauss’ voice, preserving the breathy textures that are characteristic of her sound, but avoiding the many sonic pitfalls that, with other amp/DACs, often arise.

Two points worth noting are that, owing to its software selectable master gain settings, the QP1R is more than quiet enough for use with high-sensitivity CIEMs, yet it also has enough dynamic ‘oomph’ to yield usable and satisfying volume levels with comparatively power-hungry planar magnetic headphones. Frankly, you wouldn’t necessarily think the QP1R would work all that well with full-size headphones, because—on paper—its power output specifications are not all that impressive (maximum output is quoted as 1.9V with power output of just 40mW at 32 Ohms). Nevertheless, the QP1R amp section sounds terrific at each of its gain settings, offering freedom from noise with finesse and punch aplenty with my very sensitive Westone ES60 custom-fit in-ear monitors, while also serving up a potent and highly nuanced sound with my big HiFiMAN HE 1000 planar magnetic headphones. The only caveat I would mention is that, when push comes to shove, the QP1R may not have sufficient power to probe the upper output limits of some of today’s more demanding full-size headphones.

In most settings, with most headphones, and with most types of music, however, the QP1R offers entirely ample output. As a test, I tried playing ‘Jazz Variants’ from the O-Zone Percussion Group’s La Bamba [Klavier] with the Questyle driving my reference HiFiMAN HE 1000 headphones. Now ‘Jazz Variants’, as many of you know, is a supremely colourful and at times explosively dynamic and demanding percussion extravaganza. But even on this torture test, the QP1R drove the HiFiMAN HE 1000 headphones with unflagging authority and vigour, albeit with its volume control turned up nearly all the way to the stops.

 

Are there any drawbacks prospective QP1R might wish to know about? I can think of only a few. First, listeners seeking higher memory capacity, greater decoding flexibility (e.g., 32-bit/384kHz decoding), broader connectivity options, or a more extensive set of add-on accessories might be happier with something like Astell & Kern’s very expensive AK380 player (although it is worth bearing in mind that the AK380 sells for more than three times the price of the QP1R). Second, Questyle needs to extend the maximum number of tracks the QP1R’s internal database can manage in order to keep pace with the very high capacity memory cards now coming to market (this is said to change in the next firmware update). Finally, the QP1R’s 4-to-8-hour battery recharge time is longer than some might wish. Apart from these very minor issues, however, the QP1R is an absolute gem.

, Questyle Audio QP1R Digital Audio Player

Over the time it has been with me, Questyle’s QP1R has gone from being an interesting and compelling review subject to becoming one of my favourite go-to reference tools for evaluating virtually any type of earphone, CIEM, or headphone. The player’s fit, finish, and build quality are simply exquisite, which comes as no surprise given that the QP1R is built by Foxconn—the same firm that builds Apple’s products and the Sony PS4. In turn, the Questyle’s sound quality is remarkable, which leads me to think the firm is on to a very good thing with its signature current mode amplifiers. Finally, the QP1R may be the only legitimate top-tier DAP contender that is offered at a near mid-fi price, which means this terrific player must be considered an outright bargain for the quality on offer.

Technical Specifications

Type: High-res portable digital audio player/DAC

Inputs: Built-in 32GB music library. Two MicroSD memory card slots (supports cards up to 200GB)

Outputs: Stereo analogue line out and optical S/PDIF output (via combo 3.5mm output jack/optical output jack), single-ended headphone outputs (via 3.5mm mini-jack)

Firmware: Updates via Questyle-supplied downloads

DAC: Cirrus Logic CS4398

Supported Formats: WAV, FLAC, ALAC, APE, AIFF, ADPCM, LPCM, MP3, WMA, WMA Lossless, OGG, AAC, DFF, and DSF

Sample Rates: PCM: 44.1–192kHz, 16/24-bits, DSD: DSD64, DSD128

User Interface: 43 × 39mm colour screen, twin ‘steering wheel’ control system

Frequency Response: 20 Hz–20KHz, ± 0.1dB

Output Levels: High gain: Up to 1.9V rms: 40mW @ 32 Ohms, 12 mW @ 300 Ohms

Middle-level gain: Up to 1.0V rms: 31mW @ 32 Ohms, 3.1mW @ 300 Ohms

Low gain: Up to 0.53V rms @ 32 Ohms. Up to 0.51V rms @ 16 Ohms, 8.8 mW @ 32 Ohms, 16.3 mW @ 16 Ohms

THD + N: 0.0006%

Battery: 3,300mAh, Li-Polymer battery

Playing time: 8–10 hours

Recharge time via USB @450mA: 8 hours

Recharge time via 2A charger: 4 hours

Dimensions (H × W × D): Not specified

Weight: Not specified

Price: £660 (UK) or $899 (US)

Manufacturer Information: Questyle Audio 

Tel: +86-755-82835670

International distributor: Questyle North America Inc.

Tel: +1-702-741-9978

URL: www.questyleaudio.com

UK Distributor: SCV Distribution

Tel: +44(0)3301 222 500

URL: www.scvdistribution.co.uk

Tags: FEATURED

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