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Review: HiBy R6 Pro II

Software, UX and performance

If you’ve used any of HiBy’s recent Android DAPs, going as far back as R8, the software experience is going to be essentially the same. The last three of these – RS8, R6 III, and now R6 Pro II – all feature a customised version of open Android 12, shorn of unnecessary features and bloatware (most of it anyway), and customised to a specific theme for each DAP.

As such, on first loading HiBy OS (which is what HiBy calls its customised Android OS), you’re greeted with a striking purple wave wallpaper and matching purple icons, even though you may, like me, have the black version of the new Pro. For all intents and purposes, software features on the new Pro are identical to those on the recently-released R6 III, which I reviewed here.

Without reinventing the wheel, I’ll cover some of the more important features that make R6 Pro II, and its HiBy siblings, standout performers from a software perspective. 

MSEB and system-wide plugins

One of the most useful software features on HiBy DAPs is MSEB, a pseudo-EQ that lets you make fine adjustments to different aspects of sound using natural-language descriptors instead of frequency bars. It’s much easier to tweak ‘Overall Temperature’, ‘Bass Extension’, or ‘Note Thickness’ than it is to try work out which combination of frequency bands and levels to adjust for the effect you’re after. 

Recent updates to MSEB allow you to save your custom tunings, so you can have multiple settings for different IEMs for example. You can also download some funky ‘tuning styles’, like the extravagantly-named Hot Monster Out-put (sic) and Ultra HiFi, and you can change the granularity of adjustments from ‘excessive’ (100 steps) to ‘fine tuning’ (20 steps). 

Alongside MSEB, which you’ll find in the Audio Settings menu, there’s also an option to download plugins for additional DSP effects. At the time of writing, four plugins were available: Convolution, Fixed Sample Rate, Sound Field and Balance. The most interesting of these, Convolution, involves using sample audio files to adjust the playback parameters of your drivers. I’m not too clued up on the process of creating these files, or exactly how they work, but it’s possible to tweak and refine almost any sonic parameter using this plugin. 

The most impressive part of these two very different DSP options is that they work system-wide, which means the effects will apply to any audio from any app, including native music players, streaming apps, and even multimedia apps like YouTube and Vimeo. There are some exceptions – effects can’t be applied to MQA or DSD files, for example – but that’s more a limitation of those file formats than the software itself. 

I find MSEB in particular very useful to make fine adjustments to minor issues I have with some IEMs. For example, lowering the HF Sibilance slider by 20/100 all but eliminates the upper midrange peak I occasionally hear using HiBy’s Zeta IEMs. Saving that setting, I can quickly eliminate the issue without having to fiddle with sliders every time I use that IEM with particularly ‘hot’ albums.

Third-party music, multimedia and file management

For years I’ve been saying that the best feature of an open Android DAP is the ability to use advanced third-party apps to perform various tasks non-Android DAPs simply cannot do. A great example of this is using USB Audio Player Pro (UAPP) as the music playback and management front-end in place of the native HiBy Music app. Not that there’s anything wrong with HiBy Music, just that I much prefer the UAPP UI and advanced features like its built-in Toneboosters PEQ. 

Another app I love using with my Android DAPs is Plex. Since I already use Plex as my media management software at home, the ability to access my entire music library in full Hi-Res and native DSD quality over the wireless LAN is a massive plus and one of the biggest reasons I switched to using Android DAPs in the first place. 

While I’ve mostly been using Plex for music access, with R6 Pro II I’m finding myself watching the occasional TV show and movie too. The bigger, wide-format screen is absolutely perfect for multimedia, and now I can get the full benefit of high-quality sound reproduction on my balanced wired IEMs without having to tether them via a dongle or DAP to my phone. 

Lastly, I’ve been using Solid Explorer file manager ever since I got my first Android DAP. It replaces the basic pre-installed file managers with a far more robust and powerful set of features, allowing me to copy files to and from the DAP to any device on the wireless LAN. As such, I do all my music file management remotely and wirelessly now, using Solid Explorer, while never having to tether the DAP to a computer, or remove the SD card. 

HiBy Cast

Worth a mention, even though I don’t use it that often, is HiBy’s new full system remote control app, HiBy Cast. Unlike HiBy Link, which has been available for some time and which lets you use your phone or tablet as a remote control for HiBy Music, HiBy Cast is a screen-casting app that gives you full control over all the DAP’s functionality, including volume, screen orientation, and complete app functionality. 

All you need is a phone or tablet connected to the same WiFi network as the DAP, and a simple QR ‘handshake’ will get the devices talking to each other. Even if you don’t have access to a WiFi network, HiBy Cast works using your phone’s WiFi hotspot, so you can control the DAP in your pouch, pocket or backpack while you’re out and about as well. 

Custom UX

While the default appearance and preloaded apps are good enough to get you by, open Android means you can change almost anything about the look and feel of the DAP to your heart’s content. The first thing I do with any new DAP is load Nova Launcher, a sophisticated and polished application that gives me complete control over the appearance and functionality of the UI. Using Nova, I set my own custom wallpapers, change the look and feel of app icons, hide apps I don’t want to see, and even add tap-to-sleep functionality that’s otherwise not available as a default option. 

It’s fair to say, then, that the user experience on R6 Pro II is exceptional…once I’ve tailored it to my liking, that is. Now that I’ve saved my Nova theme and settings, I can easily reload them onto each new DAP without having to go through the different screens and configuration options. This also lets me get my Android phone and DAPs looking and feeling very consistent, which makes for a seamless user experience when switching from one to the other. 

Overall performance

With all these tweaks and third-party apps you’d think there’d be a price to pay in performance. Thankfully, the SnapDragon 665 SoC on all the new HiBy DAPs is fast enough to deliver a smooth and mostly stutter-free experience. AnTuTu Benchmark scores on the R6 Pro II suggest it’s almost as fast as the HiBy RS8 flagship, which is to say it’s one of the fastest Android DAPs on the market today. 

We still have a ways to go before DAP performance comes close to that of today’s midrange Android smartphones – that incidentally cost a lot less than a midrange DAP – but for what we do with a DAP, current hardware and software performance is more than adequate. I’d still like to see manufacturers starting to push performance boundaries further, but given how far we’ve come in a few short years, I’m not really complaining. 

Continue to sound impressions…

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ABOUT AUTHOR

Guy Lerner

Guy Lerner

An avid photographer and writer 'in real life', Guy's passion for music and technology created the perfect storm for his love of portable audio. When he's not playing with the latest and greatest head-fi gear, he prefers to spend time away from the hobby with his two (almost) grown kids and wife in the breathtaking city of Cape Town, and traveling around his native South Africa.

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2 Responses

  1. Fabulous review! With so much detail and thought.

    Any view on how these compare to the shanling m6 ultra? And would pairing the R6P2 with an amp like the Topping NX7, be able to drive full sized headphones like say Sennheiser HD650s?

    1. Thank you. I have not used the Shanling so can’t say, but yes, connecting the R6 Pro II via line-out to an external amp will easily power full-size headphones.

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