HIFIMAN - R2R2000

The World’s First High Definition Audio LHDC Bluetooth Streaming Device. This is one amazing product. As R2R denotes this is about as pure musical digital audio conversion ever available. The R2R2000 utilizes dual PCM1704 R2R DAC chips in a dual path circuit design. All in a compact pocketable product for Home or on the go. Its capabilities make the R2R2000 the “swiss Army Knife” of High-End Audio.
Dual PCM1704K R2R DAC chips

The World's Smallest High-Definition (HD) Bluetooth / USB DAC Streaming Device.

USB DAC
The R2R2000 supports up to 24bit/384kHz via using its Type-C connection and supports USB-OTG for portable use and streaming directly from a computer.

Audio before the Era of the Enthusiast
In fits and bursts, technology enabled advancements but remained for the most part analogue, at least until the creation of the CD. Once digital was born, it offered the ability for endless playback without degradation, but it too had limitations.

A CD was 74 minutes long and could only preserve data at l6bit/44kHz. Good but not perfect. However, audio was digital and now just a data file. As storage boomed and connectivity became ubiquitous, High Res audio made an appearance as did the idea of streaming music; no need for you to have a copy yourself, but, again, there was a trade-off. Wireless data connections were not fast enough and were too power hungry for Hi-Res, so you had to use local storage or accept low bit rate, lossy audio streaming.

Mobile phones
The rise of the mobile phone followed that of digital audio, with the popularity of the mp3, followed by the first "iTunes phone." Over the past 10 years, phones have become people's audio player of choice. Phones are a convenient option, especially since they are always with us. but the audio is lacking. The "good enough" Sonics of the phone was the best you could get as phone makers don't want to use costly high-quality components, with proper shielding and power consumption because they know that most of their buyers don't care. In fact, phone makers are so disinterested in audio that many models don't include the standard 3.5mm socket. In short, the phone is a convergence device - a jack of all trades but master of none.

Wi-Fi equipped DAP's
To find a bridge between the modern desire for streaming audio and the need to maintain higher quality sound, many in the industry turned to Wi-Fi. It has the bandwidth to transmit high quality audio, but it has a rash of problems of its own. Wi-Fi is power intensive. Its range is limited, meaning you can only often use it in indoor locations where a powerful Wi-Fi source may be available.

The signal for Wi-Fi blasts out energy which creates interference in nearby electronic components unless they are heavily shielded. Doing so means you cannot use the most refined nor highest quality audio components next to such a transmitter. Streaming devices using Wi-Fi can sound good but using Wi-Fi creates too much interference for them to ever sound perfect. If you want perfect sound, you still are tied to a saved file, not streaming.

SHDC Bluetooth, the Golden Goose?
Bluetooth is wireless and works similarly to Wi-Fi but at much lower power. Convenient, but until now, ½t just didn't have the bandwidth to transmit High Res audio. Low quality mp3 files, sure but nothing close to 24bit/96kHz. That has all changed. The development of the SHDC Bluetooth protocol means that digital audio transmission can take place at a rate where the distortion introduced is on the level of two orders of magnitude lower than was ever previously capable. This puts SHDC in the range of 0.00005% distortion.

With this development, sonic output is far superior to any previous option and with the lower power nature of the transmission there is no electrical interference, rendering the audio ever more true to how it should be. With SHDC Bluetooth, transmission is finally on the order of wired audiophile components.

SHDC Bluetooth: As good as a wired connection
By using SHDC Bluetooth, you can now utilize your mobile phone to provide the data connectivity at which it excels, extracting the highest possible level of audio. By streaming SHDC Bluetooth from a phone to a DAC, distortion is as low as 0.0005% for the transmission of High Res, 24 bit/96kHz audio.

The HIFIMAN custom-designed, single process embedded operating system handles one task at a time; one singular purpose to ensure that the jitter is as low as possible. Android and other multi-process systems are forced to multitask, creating unwanted jitter to high quality audio. Audiophile-quality circuitry, ultra-low distortion analogue filters, discrete left and right channel filtering of each opamp and a buffer all combine to ensure sonic purity.

Dual 3.5 and 4.4mm Balanced Output
The R2R2000 offers a balanced output of 500mW per channel. That is half a watt of musical power, the same as a small desktop amplifier.