Disclaimer: A big thank you to SCV London for loaning me the Hifi M8!
I'm a big fan of CEntrance design and quality, both style and audio wise. Their DACport was a brilliantly neat little machine that was rather ahead of it's time and it's still a very competitive unit today, even as the digital audio race continuously picks up momentum. The Hifi M8 is the first portable machine that CEntrance has brought out since, but this is no replacement. This is a much larger (and heavier) machine, but heavens does it have some nice new features, let's list them:
- Fully portable (battery powered)
- 192khz sample rate
- Digital audio output
- Apple iDevice support (Optical on the LX model)
- Impedance control
- Gain control
- Bass control
- Treble control
- Balanced output
I would say that I left the best until last, but not all of us own balanced headphones and to be honest these are all pretty substantial features. Of course you pay for some of this flexibility in weight and size, but then again there are a lot of similarly sized machines that don't have many of these things. OK, enough with how impressive the Hifi-M8 looks on paper. Let's get on with describing how this puppy sounds?..
SOUND
Tone controls aside the Hifi-M8 is a very capable and impressive performer. This is a nicely balanced frequency response that doesn't feel like it needs to be pushed, even though it can be more than anything else that I've heard. It copes with most headphones really well, providing lots of well controlled, clean power. The DAC provides great clarity / detail resolution and separation. Throw in a more demanding headphone like a Hifiman or the Alpha Dog (plugged in above) and the '2-stage' gain switch is a very appreciated addition. With the latter headphone sounding really nicely neutral / flat here it made a fantastic combination.
I used to own the DACport, back before I started writing these reviews and as much as I liked the clarity / detail I wasn't quite so keen on the frequency response (FR). It sounded a little bright on most headphones for me because it didn't provide enough bass body for some music and concentrated on mid-range detail. I get no such issue with the Hifi-M8 without touching the bass controls, but in a way (albeit a small one) it would have been nice if the Hifi-M8's FR was more like the DACport's by default. It could then be fixed with the tone controls if you were that way inclined and could offer the best of both worlds. The same is true of the treble control. I rather wish there was an option to tone it down more, but the default also sounds 'about right' so all you can do is amp it up, which I generally don't do. That said these are tremendously nice features to have. Something like the Fiio E17 offers the ability to push the bass and treble both ways, but that's an EQ adjustment and it doesn't work nearly as well as the tone boosts on the Hifi-M8. So do I kind of feel bad for mentioning this? Yes, it is something that is nagging me so I should bring it up, but generally most people will love the control that's on offer here.
To further emphasise this point I used the first bass boost setting on the already warm Denon D7000. That's something that I would never normally do because any EQ boost to the lows here make music sound horrible, but with the Hifi-M8 it sounded really good. It reminded me a little of the way that planar magnetic headphones can have strong bass, but without any of the bad side effects. I found this very impressive indeed, especially for movies and games, but not exclusively, a lot of music also sounded great! Of course where the controls really came into their own is boosting the low frequencies of headphone that normally have a very flat response. Headphone like the AKG K/Q701, the Beyerdynamic DT880, the Sennheiser HD600 and the Alpha Dog all worked brilliantly here.
Perhaps more impressive than the bass and treble controls are the impedance and gain. These both have 3 settings and cover everything you are likely to use, from sensitive in-ears to demanding planar magnetics and that's a huge boast! I didn't expect to notice much of a change in the impedance settings, but it's actually much more noticeable than say the settings on some DACs. The gain does exactly what it sets out to do and although I don't use in-ears it seems like it is well balanced for every occasion and I noticed no adverse effects from using it. I actually used the gain at times to subtly alter the FR of some headphones. using 18 Ohm sets on high gain and planar magnetics on low gain is mostly possible due to the great range of the volume dial.
BUILD QUALITY
The Hifi-M8 is a sturdy metal box with and a nice textured finish. Being battery powered it has a decent weight (331g). Maybe annoying to be in a pocky, if it would fit), but not crazy enough to worry about adding to a laptop bag. The chassis measures 33x82x130mm, which makes it big enough to sit an iPhone 5 on top of it without it overhanging the edges, heck even my Galaxy Note 2 only overhangs the back by about 25mm (1"). When it's laying flat the raised sides do a good job of keeping a phone from sliding off and this just about works with the newer big-screen smart phones so I'd say the size is just about perfectly sized for being compatible with phones.
FEATURES
It's hard to find fault with the Hifi-M8's list of features, I'll refer you back to the intro if you want to read them again rather than list them up again here. All this flexibility comes with a small price to pay however. Even though they are arguably unavoidable with what's on offer here there are a couple of points that you may not like, which could be avoided in a different unit:
- Windows requires a driver to recognise the DAC (no legacy support)
- Will not run from a 5v USB power (only battery or mains options)
- Does not support Android & Apple on the same machine
I won't include the faster battery drain during balanced output use here. It is true, but there's not really anything CEntrance could have done here and you can avoid this by simply not using it. Having the best of both worlds isn't really a bad thing. If any of these points really bother you then you have many other options that don't suffer from them, but I can pretty much guarantee it won't have the flexibility of the Hifi-M8.
FINAL WORDS
Oddly enough the Hifi-M8 seems hamstrung by it's flexibility in some ways. Let me start by saying who the the Hifi-M8 is not aimed at. If you're looking for the ultimately portability, something to use with a laptop away from power, or even if you simply have one pair of headphones that you really like then I'd say it's just not right for you. The strengths of the Hifi-M8 are in it's flexibility, but you need to plan on using them to make it a great purchase.
The Hifi-M8 best suits people who have at least two pairs of headphones, preferably that span a range of styles (a mix of in-ear and over-ears would be ideal). Perhaps most of all I would hope that you plan to use your phone (if it's supported) as a source for the Hifi-M8's DAC at least some of the time. As a slick portable/transportable device for the headphone enthusiast it makes a solid purchase that's both compelling and lust-worthy.
EQUIPMENT USED
Desktop PC, Sony Vaio Flip 13a, Lenovo Thinkpad Yoga, iPhone4, Denon AH-D7000, Alpha Dog / Mad Dog (Fostex T50rp mod), Hifiman HE-500, Denon AH-D600
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