I cannot believe the sound emanating out of this little Diamond Glass device. I am paired to my iPhone listening with my Shure SE-215’s in ACC wireless for the first time. The 3.5mm port is configured for a balanced feed cable which I am using. I am listenIng to Philip Glass’s spell binding lite opera Akhnaten. I don’t know how to describe what I am hearing except to say I will never plug a set of ear phones into this iPhone ever again.
The BTR5 itself is a sold device with Diamond Glass front and back with all of the controls down the right side. On top are located a 3.5mm plug optimized for a balanced cable set, and a 2.5mm for a balanced cable. It has a small OLED Status display. It easily pairs, Siri functions as expected (stop laughing ) ) It’s built in microphone is reported to me to sound very good in phone calls. The BTR5 does Qualcomm aptX, aptX HD, and Sony’s LDAC in addition to ACC wireless. Battery life is about 9 hours. One strange thing about it. The Diamond Glass front and back are so smooth and friction free that if you set it down on anything smooth it will start to slide around on its own like it has an air cushion going so be very careful were you set it down. It comes with a pocket clip to snap it into, good thing. It uses a “C” USB cable for charging and firmware updates
There is a App to control the BTR5. it has a less than useful to me music player. But it also has complete controls for the BRT5. There are things there I have never seen before. You can enter the impedance and sensitivity of your earphones, default Bluetooth codex, how the buttons work, power and display settings. An equalizer, volume controls X 3, a low pass filter suite, Distortion compensation, 2nd and 3rd harmonic compensation, a DAC clock divider. If I understand one of the settings you can plug the BTR5 directly into a USB source and use it as a hard wired DAC. There is even a DLNA setting.
Do you have any experience with the EarStudio M100 Mk 2? I currently have it. I’ve actually have it paired with a Monolith THX portable. I’d really like to have a device for Bluetooth that has a digital out so I can use the DAC in the Monolith instead of doing analog out of the ES and into the monolith. Do you know if this has an ability to digital out?
Nice. Exactly what I’m looking for. The ear studio is very nice but I was trying to find just an LDAC receiver that would connect digital to the monolith as I prefer its dac to the sabre dac in the earstudio. Thanks for the screen shots.
I just setup BTR5 FiiO Music File Tranfer on my iPhone. This is sweet. It enables OSF, DFF, WAV, FLAC, APE, AIFF, AAC, M4A, CUE, WMA, M3U, M4U8. The only music codex I use that it doesn’t covered is OGG Vorbis. It also uses the lyric format: LRC. This system works by opening a locale file transfer location within your LAN, 192.168 etc. with the “Welcome to FiiO File Transfer” Page open it is easy to drag on drop files in to it.
I tried hooking it up directly to my Yamaha and it did not recognize it. My PC recognized the device but it screwed up my sound settings I have not tracked down what the PC did with it in the USB bus. Right now I cannot say for sure if the BTR5 will do what you want. In my case Apple is involved so you know what that means. But check out what FiiO has they have numerous other DAC/Amp devices all are very good. https://www.fiio.com/home
That’s a niche application. Never seen such receiver in a small form factor. If you find one, let us know. We may eventually need to look after such tools.
I wonder if it’s something like this what you’re looking for? Then, with this cable – shorter, of course – you should be able to get digital into your Monolith THX portable.
Exactly what I’m looking for with one caveat, no LDAC BT codec. I’m thinking it’s a matter of time due to the new chip set supporting LDAC becoming more accessible. More and more small BT devices with LDAC are being released such as the Fiio’s and the Earstudio. The ES just lacks enough oomph to power my Fostex. There are very few LDAC enabled bluetooth receivers let alone ones with a digital out to bypas the receivers internal DAC. Frankly, I don’t know if one even exists. I suppose it’s just a matter of time before a portable receiver with LDAC with a digital out comes on the market. But thank you very much for doing some research for me much appreciated.
Another tidbit. I had a extra Etymōtic Zippered earphone case ( ER38-65 Zipper Pouch) I found that it is a perfect fit for the FiiO BTR5. There is even room to store your Earphones if their cable set isn’t to inflexible. This Zippered pouch is available from Etymōtic Research for $4.20 cents. https://www.etymotic.com/consumer/accessories/er4-new/er38-65.html
Has anyone succeeded in updating the firmware on a BTR5 . I tried on one of mine and bricked it fortunately Amazon replaced it but I am not trying it again with my first BTR5, which really needs to be updated. I am no noob doing this sort thing. But updating from a Google translated Chinese language FiiO update page does not inspire confidence.
I did update my BTR5 several times without any problem. I got my BTR5 with firmware v1.6. Had some issues with Bluetooth range and tried a firmware downgrade which did not help with the problems. Upgraded it again to v1.6. And now finally to v2.0. I had no problems to understand the “How to upgrade” which can be found on the Fiio page in my link. Follow it step by step and all should be well.
) ) It’s built in microphone is reported to me to sound very good in phone calls. The BTR5 does Qualcomm aptX, aptX HD, and Sony’s LDAC in addition to ACC wireless. Battery life is about 9 hours. One strange thing about it. The Diamond Glass front and back are so smooth and friction free that if you set it down on anything smooth it will start to slide around on its own like it has an air cushion going so be very careful were you set it down. It comes with a pocket clip to snap it into, good thing. It uses a “C” USB cable for charging and firmware updates
