Onkyo Shipping $449 and $799 Hi-Res Digital Audio Players

Onkyo announced availability of the DP-X1A ($799) and DP-S1 ($449) digital audio players. Audiophile-grade components of the DP-X1A include a conductive polymer capacitor that absorbs noise on high clock rates and a discrete thin-film resistor said to improve stability for balanced and unbalanced outputs. The Android-based player is compatible with Google Play and includes a dual ESS Sabre digital-to-analog converter (DAC) and amplifier supporting hi-res audio formats up to Direct Stream Digital (DSD) 11.2 MHz, 384 kHz/24-bit FLAC/WAV audio files. It's ready to stream with Wi-Fi Direct and hi-res Bluetooth via aptX/SBC, said Onkyo. Internal 64 GB storage is expandable to 512 GB via two microSD slots. The compact DP-S1, made from a single block of aluminum for better rigidity and signal quality, uses a proprietary operating system that Onkyo says can “dual clock” 44.1 kHz/48 kHz for native support of DSD 5.6 MHz/32-bit FLAC/WAV files. Additional features are dual ESS SABRE DACs and headphone amps, a 3.5mm unbalanced headphone jack and a 2.5 mm four-pole balanced jack. The player can upsample up to 192 kHz to improve compressed and streaming audio quality, said the company. The DP-S1’s 16GB of internal storage can be expanded to 512 GB via two microSD card slots.