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Shanling now also relies on MQA – New Firmware for Shanling M5s Portable Player

Shanling, the specialist for personal audio devices, has now announced that it has decided to rely on MQA. The company’s portable Hi-res audio players will gradually be equipped to play content encoded in MQA.


The MQA format is not only relevant for music streaming in hi-res audio, such as via the TIDAL service and its TIDAL Masters offer, but also for many a download offer. As a result, manufacturers in the field of portable hi-res audio players are also endeavouring to equip their solutions with the appropriate support, such as the Chinese company Shanling.

Shanling has now announced that it will gradually implement MQA technology in a wide range of solutions. The first of these is the portable Hi-res audio player Shanling M5s Portable Player, a Hi-res audio player based on Google Android.

With the help of a firmware update, which is available now, the Shanling M5s Portable Player is able to fully decode content in MQA to bring out the full quality of the encoded Hi-res audio content. The corresponding firmware is firmware version 4.0, as Shanling announces.

The Shanling M5s Portable Player is designed as a very compact solution, measuring no more than 117 mm in height, 59 mm in width, and 16 mm in depth, bringing it to 178 g.

The developers have chosen two AKM AK4493EQ D/A converters with six selectable filters, whereby data can be processed in Linear PCM with up to 32 bits and 768 kHz, DSD with up to DSD256, and now also MQA. The portable Hi-res audio player features an output stage designed with Texas Instruments TI OPA1612 Dual Channel Operational Amplifier as well as two ADI AD8397 Dual Operational Amplifiers, and both unbalanced and balanced outputs are available for connecting headphones.

A 3.2 inch touch screen display from LG is available for convenient operation and the Shanling MTouch 2.0 Operating System is used.

The Shanling M5s has an integrated WiFi module according to IEEE 802.11n and is therefore able to function as a dlna-certified UPnP streaming client. It also supports Apple AirPlay and enables OTA firmware upgrades (Over the air Updates).

The Bluetooth 4.2 module of the portable player supports aptX for the integration of appropriate headphones, but also AAC and LDAC, the latter two even bidirectionally for sending and receiving.

Data is of course stored on microSD cards and the connection to the outside world can be made via USB C cable. This also charges the integrated 3,400 mAh rechargeable battery, which should provide up to 17 hours of play time with unbalanced headphones and up to ten hours with balanced headphones.

The Shanling M5s Portable Player is available in Black, Titanium and Red.

Getting to the point

The Shanling M5s Portable Player is the first mobile Hi-res audio player from Shanling that can decode content in MQA. This requires firmware version 4.0, which is available now. Shanling also plans to equip further portable Hi-res audio players for the playback of content encoded in MQA, as announced by the Chinese specialist for personal audio devices.

Manufacturer:Shanling
Distribution:NT Global Distribution GmbH
Price:€ 389,-
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Michael Holzinger

Michael Holzinger, founder and editor-in-chief of HiFi BLOG and sempre-audio.at, has been working for years as a journalist in the fields of IT, photography, telecommunications and consumer electronics.

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