Customization and personalization is always a deal-breaker when it comes to mass produced products which is why several industries are striving to cater to these specific type of exclusivity oriented businesses.
This particular approach might not have been the foremost vision of Zishan when they crafted their line of audiophile yet economical set of music players, digital audio converters and amplifiers. Zishan has gathered a lot of loyal fan base all over the world with products such as the Zishan Z1, Z2 and Z3. What we have now to realview though is Zishan’s current cream of the crop music player, the Zishan DSD Pro which features the AKM’s AK4497EQ DAC chip which is their current flagship premium D/A converter and can even be found on the flamboyant $3,299 Cayin N8 music player. The Zishan DSD Pro also features the “world’s fastest micro controller STM32F7+ CPLD+Dual Audio Crystal Oscillator” and is spec’d out with a 3.5mm headphone output and 2.5mm balanced out combo along with a Lineout/Coaxial out port. The Zishan DSD Pro has no built-in memory and relies on a single microSD card slot that supports up to 256 GB and 2 TB in theory. A reset button is also present and uses a micro-USB charging port. The Zishan DSD Pro supports a wide variety of codecs from DSF and DFF up to DSD256 as well as FLAC, APE, WAV up to 64 Bit/384kHz while not leaving behind MP3, AAC and WMA formats. Gapless playback is absent on the Zishan DSD Pro as well as track rewind.
The Zishan DSD Pro is currently priced at $133 and can sometimes dip down as much as $105 depending on seasonal sales and promotions. You can grab yourself a pair off DD Audio’s Aliexpress site. The Zishan DSD Pro is intriguing enough not only due to its loyal modder fanbase but also with its shared DAC chip with the Cayin N8 music player. Is this shared trait a boon or bane? Let’s check it out.
Specifications and Packaging
Zishan DSD Pro Spec sheet:
- Display: 2.2inch QVGA
- Op Amp: AD797
- Frequency Response(Multitone), dB : (±0.03-.27dB)
- Noise Level, dB: -96.0
- Battery: 3000mAh
- Charging Time: <5H
- Estimated Battery life: 8H
- Weight: ≥200g
- Size: 80 x 58 x 24mm
The Zishan DSD Pro packaging is as simple as it gets, it comes in a brown cardboard box protected by a bubble wrap with a micro USB charging cable. There is no accessory set to be found on this which is odd, I’d expect at least a warranty card and a screen protector, and it might be that mine is a review unit so it lacks those.
Build quality, User Interface and Handling
The Zishan DSD Pro features an industrial masculine look, it’s an all metal box with only 4 star screws holding it together, 2 on the upper cover and 2 on the lower cover. Everything is fitted nicely with no noticeable rattling sound when shaken. All buttons rest on the front underneath the display with nothing on the left and right portions. Only 5 buttons are present to deal with all the navigating that you would be doing with the Zishan DSD Pro and they feel a little loose at times yet positioned in a standard cross pattern which is easy to navigate given how this just uses our muscle memory gestures for navigating music players. The Connection outputs are situated both on the upper and lower portion. The upper portion features the 3.5mm headphone output and 2.5mm balanced out along with the SD card slot and the reset switch, I love that they placed the usual headphone outputs on top and the lineout/coaxial out on the bottom which usually works well with other portable DAC/AMPs.
The User Interface of the Zishan DSD Pro is easy to understand and navigate, boot time is SSD-like fast as well as shutdown. A long press on the central button will turn on the Zishan DSD Pro and will immediately play the last track it was playing before shutdown or if brand spanking new, to the home screen which shows the 6 categories (Play Now, Explorer, EQ, DAC, System and About). There is minimal learning curve for its UI with only the DAC category having some details necessary to be discussed. I personally tried all the Digital filters offered by the AK4497EQ chip which should have shown 6 filters yet mine only showed 5 as shown below (it lacks the supposed 3rd sound type, “Harmonic” which is named “Low Dispersion Short Delay” and is supposed to create a short echo and still reproduce the original sound.)
Low Dispersion Short Delay digital filter.
Cycling through the numerous music files using the forward/backward/next/previous buttons is smooth and presented no lags whatsoever, just make sure that you are a fixed type of a guy since it would need a good deal of clicks, 3 to 4 exactly just to adjust volume and using the previous key would require a 1.5 second press on the left button. The “Play Now” interface is cool though as it allows you to show not only the track title, bitrate, file format, elapsed and total track time but also a choice of a Spectrograph, FFT and Album graphcis which can be set on the DAC category and activated by a press on the central button. The presence of an Equalizer is a nice touch with a choice of adjustments from 6 Hz up to 16 kHz with a ±24 dB range and if you haven’t known yet, I’m not an EQ type of guy so I didn’t really delved into this aspect of the Zishan DSD Pro.
I have used the Zishan DSD Pro for a full month as a personal music player and when not in use, I just plug one of the lined up IEM’s I have for realview. The usability aspect of the Zishan DSD Pro disappointed my expectations, the edgy silhouette coupled with its bulky statue resulted in an awkward bump in my jeans when in use and placing it on my bag was almost taboo unless you had nothing there that won’t get scratched like a mobile phone display or a tablet. One hand use was great as it can be spun with one hand and have all necessary controls managed and pressed. Yet after all this, the Zishan DSD Pro just failed to be my choice of a portable music player.
Stability, Connectivity and “Modability”
The Zishan DSD Pro doesn’t possess great UI stability as there are occasional hiccups here and there especially during actual track playback regardless of file format used, from MP3’s to DSD’s, yet when this hiccups aren’t happening, the Zishan DSD Pro is smooth and responsive. The current release of the .4i firmware which you can download HERE, has at least aided in minimizing this hiccup as well as the notorious heat dissipation aspect of the Zishan DSD Pro. The head dissipation aspect of the Zishan DSD Pro is one of its biggest drawbacks as storing it on my jeans while in use resulted in a warm, almost hot metal body for the Zishan DSD Pro, the .4i firmware didn’t stop this heat dissipation issue yet it delayed the eventual increase of temperature.
There’s always this one feature that propels certain products from mediocrity to a full blown must-have consumer item. The feature that propelled the Zishan DSD Pro into a lot of fan bases was its inherent trait of being easy to modify, from the body’s ease of access star screws to the presence of the flagship DAC chip that allows for pairing with a wide variety of LPF’s and OP AMP’s to modifying the stock batteries, the combinations are almost staggering (You can check out THIS 160 and running thread for the Zishan DSD Pro modability potential) which if I would delve my time into this aspect of the Zishan DSD Pro, it would literally be the bottleneck of my realview queue, heck even checking out its digital filters was a fun and time consuming engagement. With the Zishan DSD Pro, tinkerers and modders out there just found another gem to be polished. Check out some of the Zishan DSD Pro’s body mods which I found worth checking out.
Sporting the 3.5mm and 2.5mm balanced outputs just further pushed the Zishan DSD Pro’s appeal allowing for both the balanced and single ended termination systems to be utilized. Its DAC function as well as lineout/coaxial out was also great and had no issues when paired with my different AMPs while I couldn’t care less that a built-in storage memory is absent as it relies on the usual sd card slot for its storage capacities and have confirmed myself that it supports 256 GB cards formatted as FAT32 or NTFS.
Sound Quality and Battery Life
The Zishan DSD Pro features a 3000mAh battery but without quick charge capability, and having loaded a 128 GB card on the Zishan DSD Pro with a mixture of MP3, FLAC and DSD, the playtime reached around 8-10 hours at 15-18/31 volume with full toggle brightness and BL Time of 30s. The Zishan DSD Pro can last me a full week with 2-3 hours intermittent listening before it calls on a charge however there is a big elephant in the room for this bulky but powerful DAP, it’s the timeframe that it gets warm to hold. Like only 2-3 DSD tracks and the Zishan DSD Pro is uncomfortably warm to the hand, I do get this with other DAPs too but not at just 2-3 DSD tracks, the FLAC heat output is more forgiving with it starting to heat uncomfortably around 8-9 tracks. I can’t put this in my denims or hold it and finish an album, I tried, and the heat was just uncomfortable. All these temperature and heat issue however was addressed when the newly released .4i FW was flashed, both the resulted heat from DSD and FLAC usage on the Zishan DSD Pro was lowered. DSD tracks now would start heating up at more than 10 songs while FLAC would see me through a full 16-track album and some 4 tracks. The peak warmth is still the same but at least the length of comfortable usage was increased.
We are finally here, the ultimate category, sound quality. I rotated IEMs such as the BGVP DM6, Whizzer Kylin and the Magaosi K5 V2 as well as earbuds such as the Shozy BK Stardust and BGVP DX3s and while all exhibited good synergy, with the DM6 and Whizzer Kylin and the BGVP DX3s being the least engaging, I opted to use the Periodic Audio Beryllium for the duration of the realview at 16/31 volume toggle, Slow Roll-off digital filter, High Quality Sound Mode and 76kHz Cut-off Freq DSD Filter. The Zishan DSD Pro’s tonality is balanced with a subtle lean on the warm sound signature (not the warm temperature it outputs after a 35-minute use). The AK4497EQ on the Zishan DSD Pro was implemented near the expectations it was made for, by AKM standards at least. It may not have exhibited an entirely neutral and flat signature but the fact that it was able to let all the frequencies blend coherently is good. The low end of the Zishan DSD Pro exhibited a soft sounding impact lacking of power and authority at best, it diffuses and decays slow as well creating a lingering bass and sub bass. The midrange sound was presented cleanly and flatly which allowed for the respective IEM/Earbud to do its job. The highs were also rendered with clarity and has a well-defined treble presence and presentation. The Zishan DSD Pro won’t be fatiguing to the ears unless one is sensitive to the lingering low-end decay that the Zishan DSD Pro exhibits making it lean towards the warm sound. I had it paired via lineout to the xDuoo xd-05 and the iFi Audio xDSD and man was the output clean and mean. The xDSD and xd-05 sound signatures highlighted themselves and fixed the lingering low-end decay issue of the Zishan DSD Pro, the iFi Audio xDSD was the better pairing once the 3D+ and XBass+ comes into play. The Zishan DSD Pro’s clean output synergized well with the Periodic Audio’s Beryllium dynamic driver which didn’t showcase an off-timbre tonal ability as compared to when using the DM6 and K5 V2’s. This player could be my next realview DAP but owing to its poor driver versatility ability, it would be staying on my shelf and would only be pulled out once in a while when some dynamic driver IEM/Earbuds hits my queue.
Conclusion
I’m always a fan of being able to control every aspect of your gadget especially with products that requires a build-up hierarchy system like PC’s and music players but also lazy enough not to delve deep and get caught up with one product leaving other notable products worthy of being checked out.
The Zishan DSD Pro showcases this high level of control towards the final outcome of its looks, sound and build quality with its great modability potential and with that aspect, can I dare say it has flaws? We could mod it to have any damn flaw it has be removed unless it’s the lack of features like 4.4 pentaconn connection, LDAC or even aptx BT support to being an Android streaming capable device which isn’t really what the Zishan DSD Pro was made for. It was made solely as a music player with great sound and a price that would allow individuals to have the extra cash for mods and a bottle of beer to boot.
