High-resolution

​Boutique audio gear from New York's McIntosh Labs is generally big, blocky and booming. Even its headphone amp tips the scales at over 25 pounds. But now this monstrous personal listening enhancer is about to get a smartphone-sized sibling designed for on-the-move music lovers.​

​The world’s first USB Type-C headphones, the JBL Reflect Aware C, are now available for order. First announced in back in April, the high-res earphones are sport-focused, and feature adaptive noise cancelling tech.

Zorloo has followed last year's inexpensive but very capable Z:ero digital earphones with what's described as a complete musical system. The Aero in-ears ignore the source device's own audio system and route the signal to the earphones over a digital audio connection.

Last year, British high-end audio house Naim launched the gorgeous Mu-so wireless music system. Now the same engineers responsible for its design have developed the Mu-so Qb, an equally good-looking compact wireless system that's reported capable of throwing out 300 W from its five speaker drivers.

Onkyo's new DP-X1 features two DACs and two amps with balanced headphone output for greater power and control. The device supports hi-res digital music playback in WAV and FLAC formats, has native DSD, and is one of the first to support the MQA standard.

Sony has expanded its Hi-Res portfolio with the HX500 turntable, which boasts a built-in 24-bit analog-to-digital converter that allows audiophiles to transfer their beloved vinyl collections to high quality digital formats.

The new EL-8 Titanium headphones from Audeze come shipped with an audio cable that sports a built-in headphone amp and high resolution DAC in the cable. But instead of being plugged into the audio jack or an iPhone, this one ends in a Lightning connector.

At first glance, the Explorer X1 has the look of a hip flask. But rather than offer a wee nip to help take the edge off a chilly autumn stroll, the X1 is aimed at satisfying a very different thirst. Echobox is a high resolution media player housed in a curvy wooden jacket for modern audiophiles.

The successfully-crowdfunded ZuperDAC from Zorloo, for example, is about the size of a USB thumb drive and supports audio file resolutions right up to 24-bit/192 kHz. We've spent the last few weeks diving into our hi-res FLAC and WAV vault for some lossless easy listening.​

Fiio's new X7 high resolution digital audio player features a multitouch screen, quad-core processor and runs Android KitKat. That may seem a little ordinary by today's smart device standards, but for Fiio users this DAP represents a gigantic leap into the 21st century.

The Colorfly C10 personal music player shares some high end technology with its more expensive C4 sibling, but the audio resolution is bumped up to 32-bits/192 kHz, with support for native DSD128 decoding.​

Back in May, British headphone maker RHA announced a new pair of in-ear headphones that debuted something called DualCoil dynamic driver technology. The T20s promised a true-to-life reproduction and support for high resolution audio. We got to plug in for some hi-res, and lo-res, listening.