Hi Shammi,
There is nothing aggressive in the DAC that particularly stands out which is good in a way. The only exceptional thing which I noticed is that there is no listening fatigue- one can go on and on.
What I cannot help but notice is the experience with vocals- when I was listening to Buddy Holly- True Love Ways the small nuances in the vocals stand out- I won't say extra details or anything but even a slight change in the singer's breath or a sigh get noticed. Likewise in James Taylor's Fire & Rain, besides the vocals, the percussion instruments sounded very layered. In my initial listening sessions of the same song, I had not noticed so many different layers with percussions. Its not that the details were not present earlier but now they are getting noticed without any kind of aggression in any specific frequency range.
Also I no longer need to have a tube pre amp/ buffer in the chain since the DAC itself takes away any kind of harshness in the presentation. Rest the preamp is great, there are NOS and OS modes and Apple music is now loss less (thro' camera connection kit). Also besides the display of the resolution, the Fiio logo on top of the DAC also lights up as per the resolution- so if you are slightly away from the DAC and cant read the data the light shows the resolution being played. The lights can be controlled for brightness etc.
The pre- amp also has different modes for headphone- pre amp and fixed (full volume) which is nice and the device runs very cool like most DACs. There is also a dedicated power supply that comes with the DAC which is also good given the price.
All in all its a good entry into R2R particularly if you are a fan of vocals and want to enjoy long listening sessions.
