{Review] HiSound Rocco RMAA scores - loaded and unloade

[shigzeo]

The Rocoo could have been a great player. The sound is clean and lively, and better in many ways than the AMP3 Pro 2, but... it hisses way too much, and the volume control is about as lenient as a Hitler Youth instructor.

Well, oh well, it works pretty well with headphones (big ones) over 100Ω, otherwise, there is some small audible artifacts such as hiss and bass roll off. But, a much nicer coherent sound across the board than the AMP3 Pro 2. That said, it is the worst player I've had to deal with: controlling this sucker is like blindfolding that Hitler Youth instructor in the middle of a book burning.

Worse than the AMP3 Pro 2 - hard to do
Worse than stock Sansa Fuze - imaginable
Worse than the Cowon D2 - imaginable
Worse than the Meizu M6 - I guess so
Worse than the Sony Walkman - of course
Worse than the iPod - of course

The EQ jumps up when you ask it to reduce and visa versa, the headphone outputs are reversed so that left becomes right and right becomes left... how quaint!

If HiSound don't fix these mistakes: hiss, popping, grinding sounds between songs, EQ, channel swap, horrid navigation and firmware, and volume, this will be another machine which unfortunately isn't worthwhile. It should be - God how long have we waited for a nice and real 'audiophile' portable player? This isn't it, even at its sub 100$ price - no way.

Note: 'NL' denotes no load (the straight signal - headphone output should be as close to this as possible for best possible sound).