The latest upgrade for the Shanling M1s brings exciting new features, including Tidal integration. Enjoy seamless access to your favorite music streaming service on this portable audio player. Using demanding full-sized headphones gave different results and the listed times went under what Shanling posted of course. So Shanling is being modest with their listed time since you could probably pass their listed specs mark by moderating the volume and using very efficient IEMs. I would consider the dynamic range and signal-to-noise ratios to be above average as well. The M1s is a punchy-sounding device that can crank out a rather high amount of volume without sounding compressed but it also retains the quality at lower volume levels. Especially since I inevitably listen to a lot of sub-par recordings, this is a mixed-bag—the M1s can sound over-analytical without careful matching of file and headphone. Optimally paired, however—say a 24bit/192Hz take of “A Love Supreme” through the aforesaid HD-600—the M1s sounds very transparent and lifelike, with considerable energy and top-to-bottom coherence.

When it comes to sound, first of all, let me comment on this little player’s power. I tried a bunch of full-sized headphones and IEMs with this player, and it could drive all of them (both dynamic and planar) with good speed and dynamics, especially from the balanced output.

Screen

We listened to more songs than those named in this playlist, but those are excellent for identifying a sonic signature. I recommend trying most of the songs from this playlist, especially if you’re searching for new music! The playlists are different for Spotify, Tidal and Youtube, and based on the songs I enjoy and are available on each!

The micro SD card slot can accept a card of up to 2TB of capacity. In my case, a 1TB can carry most of my FLAC file collection.That includes headphones like the Hifiman Edition XS, the Sennheiser HD660 S2, and the Meze 109PRO. That said, it did its best with IEMs and Dynamic headphones, and some of my favorite pairings were the HD660 S2 headphone and the LETSHOUER S12 IEM. The 2.8” touchscreen has reasonably good resolution and color, especially for the price. It’s also very receptive to touches, including the left, right, up, and down swipes needed to move between screens. The screen also flips 180 deg. so you can change its orientation in relation to the buttons. Now, I’m not sure if they fixed the exclusivity with Android because the app only works with Android on the M0 Pro.

Moving over to “fue mejor” by Kali Uchis, I was impressed by the dynamics of this player; it played with a lot of speed and bass depth through the Audeze earphones and kept my head nodding through the whole song. I have never heard of a player with so much musicality and life at this price. Shanling M1S Review: Conclusion Shanling maintains that other apps aren’t viable because of the MS1’s screen size (and some maintain Android-based systems are sonically inferior), but a more inclusive OS would have been ideal. Perhaps because of the midrange emphasis, I hear the soundstage as fairly narrow and low-ceilinged, although performers remain well-separated and imaging is accurate if somewhat two-dimensional. The M1s immediately scores in two respects. First, it has a ton of driving power, especially through the 4.4mm output–it can drive the 300 ohm Senn HD600 effortlessly and really gets a grip on the wobbly bass of my 60 ohm Koss KSC74. It can, however, be a bit much for very sensitive IEMs, even in low gain setting—something like the KZ ZS10P or TRN-VX show more high-end glare and metallic timbre than with lower-powered sources.

Bluetooth Performance

Have you upgraded your player yet? How do you feel about the Shanling M1s Tidal upgrade on the M1s? Let us know in the comments! The new Shanling M1s MTouch Player is now said to combine the best of the previous models, making it the ideal representative of the Shanling MTouch Player Series. All the features of the Shanling M5 The I/O is rather complex on this DAP but not hard to make it all work. Onboard there are dual two and two sets of connections, two are the 3.5mm and the 4.4mm Pentaconn connector and the other two are a USB-C port plus a slot for a micro SD card.