- With the new ONIX Overture XM5 Portable Hi-Fi Player, Shanling presents the first DAP of the ONIX brand.
The ONIX brand was once an English HiFi company based in fashionable Brighton. Now it is a Taiwanese company with very close links to Shanling, a Chinese HiFi manufacturer. Together they resurrected the ONIX brand a few years ago, focussing on solutions that convey an air of exclusivity but are still available at fair prices. The design comes from ONIX, while Shanling is responsible for production and worldwide distribution.
This also applies to the new ONIX Overture XM5 Portable Hi-Fi Player, which is now being launched on the market and is the first so-called DAP, i.e. Digital Audio Player, in short, a portable Hi-res audio player.
A portable HiFi player
The full name of the product, ONIX Overture XM5 Portable Hi-Fi Player, makes it clear that this DAP aims to fulfil high quality standards. The manufacturer also states that the development of the new DAP was based on the ONIX Miracle High-end Streamer Stack, a solution consisting of three products, namely the Onix XM10 Streamer/Portable Player, the Onix XP10 DAC & Headphone Amplifier and the Onix XPS10 Linear Power Supply, which Shanling presented last summer as a particularly high-quality desktop audio solution.
Elegant appearance
The housing of the DAP is made of aluminium using CNC machining, with an anodised black finish. The gold-plated rotary encoder and the gold-coloured edges of the headphone connections form a particularly attractive contrast.
With dimensions of 115 x 70 x 19 mm, the ONIX Overture XM5 Portable Hi-Fi Player measures just 275 mm, making it a lightweight in its class.
Pure Music System based on Ingenic X2000 Platform
The Ingenic X2000 Platform from Ingenic Semiconductor Co. Ltd. provides the basis for sufficient performance, while also covering a range of other functions. The operating system is also based on Google Android in the tried and tested manner, with an interface developed in-house at Shanling being used as the central user interface.
For easy operation, the ONIX Overture XM5 Portable Hi-Fi Player is not only equipped with a 3-inch OLED touchscreen display, it also has a row of buttons directly below the display and a rotary encoder on the underside to control the volume.
The connections for the headphones are also available here, namely a 3,5 mm single-ended output and a 4,4 mm Pentaconn balanced output.
Of course, there is also a MicroSD card slot, which can hold storage media up to 2 TByte, and a USB-C port is also available.
Network integration takes place via WiFi, whereby the new ONIX Overture XM5 Portable Hi-Fi Player can then access content via UPnP as a dlna-certified streaming client as well as via Apple AirPlay. Direct access to TIDAL is also guaranteed, according to the manufacturer.
A Bluetooth transceiver module from Qualcomm Inc. in accordance with Bluetooth 5.2 can be used to integrate corresponding headphones, but can also be used to transfer data from a smartphone as a source. The SBC, AAC, aptX, aptX HD and LDAC codecs are supported.
This solution can also be controlled via Bluetooth using a smartphone, for which the manufacturer offers SyncLink via the Eddict Player app for Apple iOS and Google Android.
It should be mentioned that the ONIX Overture XM5 Portable Hi-Fi Player can be used as a D/A converter via USB, using an XMOS XU316 chip from the specialist XMOS Technology.
Signal processing with up to 32 bit and 768 kHz as well as DSD512
One of the reasons why Shanling and ONIX refer to the new ONIX Overture XM5 as a portable HiFi player is its signal processing of data in Linear PCM format with up to 32 bits and 768 kHz as well as DSD up to DSD512.
A DAC from the specialist ESS Technology Inc. is responsible for this, namely the ESS ES9039PRO DAC.
Another reason is what the manufacturer considers to be a particularly high-quality output stage, which relies on two TI TPA6120A2 amplifiers from Texas Instruments.
As already mentioned, both an unbalanced 3,5 mm stereo mini jack and a balanced 4,4 mm Pentaconn are available for connecting headphones. It should also be noted in this context that you can choose between high gain and low gain for both connections, depending on the headphones used.
For the unbalanced output, the manufacturer specifies an output of 310 mW at 32 ohms or 40 mW at 300 ohms as a guide value at high gain. The balanced output should provide up to 1.069 mW into 32 ohms at high gain and 158 mW into 300 ohms.
Powerful battery
Of course, a powerful battery is also required for this kind of performance, so the company relies on a 7,000 mAh battery, which is charged via the aforementioned USB-C port and should offer a playing time of up to 14 hours with unbalanced headphones connected and up to twelve hours with balanced headphones connected.
Prices and availability
The ONIX Overture XM5 Portable Hi-Fi Player is available immediately, according to the manufacturer. The manufacturer quotes a recommended retail price of US$ 739,- for the new DAP.
Getting to the point
The new ONIX Overture XM5 is the first DAP from the ONIX brand to be designed in collaboration with Chinese specialist Shanling and is intended to be a portable HiFi player. In fact, it boasts features that can undoubtedly form the basis for an impeccable performance, and this solution is also characterised by a particularly elegant design, making it a worthy new solution for the premium ONIX brand.
| PRODUCT | ONIX Overture XM5 Portable Hi-Fi Player |
|---|---|
| Price | US$ 739,- |
| BRAND | ONIX |
|---|---|
| Manufacturer | Onix |
| Distribution | NT Global Distribution GmbH |
| More about this manufacturer at HIFI BLOG |
