Lotoo PAW5000 96kHz / 24bit DSD Player

Lotoo is a renowned technological giant from China that makes premiere audio devices like digital recorders. They decided to throw their hat into the ring for the increasingly competitive DAP market and gave the world the Lotoo Paw Gold, an exemplary player whose only liability was an exorbitant price tag. (After all, some of the buttons feature actual gold.)Lotoo’s second DAP is more affordable, with no gold in sight, but in no way a downgrade. The Lotoo Paw 5000 is a stellar performer that features the backbone of its expensive predecessor, along with sensibilities unique to this entry. Almost every audio format imaginable is supported, from DSD to FLAC to WAVE to APE to AAC to MP3 and WMA. The maximum sample rates are PCM 96kHz and DSD 2.8MHz. If you’re looking for massive power to drive power hungry headphones, look elsewhere as what you get here is 16 ohm per channel. The processor is very good, a Blackfin 514 DSP no less.All that really matters is how the Lotoo Paw 5000 sounds and it’s really wonderful. The output sounds crisp, clean and very musical. While many would prefer to listen without equalization, there are plenty of preexisting, as well as programmable, modes to enhance audio for each respective taste. The player comes with a strap that enables you to wear the Lotoo Paw 5000 on your arm. There’s also a “Sports” mode in the audio settings that can change the tempo of your music to befit workout routines. Unlike the Lotoo Paw Gold, this sonic brother is optimized for portability and physically active users.The UI is simplistic, merely a listing of folders containing your music library that you’re able to easily access via a sturdy plastic wheel. It scrolls very quickly. The Lotoo Paw 5000 doesn’t display album art whilst playing, although it does show covers in a separate setting. Just like the higher priced model you get a detailed status chart during operation featuring play state, file types as well as sample and bit rate information. The maximum memory is 128GB via a micro SD card. The player offers no internal memory of its own.The Lotoo Paw 5000 is a distinctive and enchanting audio player. It’s a wonderful conversation piece, except for the fact that you won’t want to talk whilst wearing headphones and enjoying your music.

As proud owner of the largest collection of Grados in private captivity (26 pairs), I inquired of Grado as to what portable amp they found best. They indicated that the Lotoo PAW Gold and PAW 5000 were better than the traditional DAP/AMP/Headphone combination, so I got this PAW 5000.WOW! I could IMMEDIATELY hear an improvement on my Grado RS1e and then the HF-2 and several other Grados over the iPhone 5, iPod Touch 6, FiiO X3, and FiiO X5ii that I had been using. As the documentation was sparse, the operation of two keys labeled ATE/PQME and DAMP were not explained. A bit of research indicated that ATE/PQME provides a five-band parametric equalizer with several presets (including two adapting it for the AKG K701 and the Beyerdynamic 990) and six user-specified settings. A bit more investigation found a setting from Lotoo that further improves sound, and another from a head-fi user that makes some more gentle improvements.This is the first time that I have ever heard a significant improvement through the use of an equalizer. I am a convert.Even without the EQ, this is the best DAP that I have heard.I have enjoyed this so much that I am now vigorously trying to obtain its big (and MUCH more expensive) brother, the Lotoo PAW Gold. It is very hard to find right now.PROS:The sound is significantly better than other players in this price range. I immediately perceived an increase in soundstage and greater spatial separation of instruments.The equalizer actually works... perhaps they use a higher-order parametric filter bank (flatter peak, faster fall-off) than the typical Gaussian-shaped second order type.The player has sufficient power to power even inefficient headphones well... 500 mW/channel into 32 ohms.The player is light (110 grams) and small (roughly 3-1/2" x 2" x 5/8").It has a USB3 port, which means that it can download music faster into its up-to- 2TB (when available) micro memory card.The Lotoo PAW 5000 charges through this USB port, which can also use a standard USB2 cable into part of its opening.CONS:The PAW 5000 only plays sample rates up to 96 Ksamples/sec. It will accept files at higher rates and play them, but it plays them at 96 Ksamples/sec.Putting album artwork in is a bit dodgy... cover art must be a .jpeg file of less than 150 kB and must be in the same directory as the songs. Higher level artists directories (if you use a structure of a folder for an artist with subfolders for each album) will not show any artwork unless you put a picture in it along with the album folders (perhaps of the artist's face?)The player is a bit hard to turn off. It extinguishes its display to conserve battery life (though you can either leave it on or increase the time via system settings), and you must turn the display back on by pressing the gold button on the front before you can then stop play. If you quickly need to turn it off, it is simpler to just unplug the headphone, which also stops play.OVERALLI love this player. Recommended by Grado for its headphones, it has caused me to seek to shell out over 10x as much for the Gold version (even more highly recommended, and found by some to be preferred to such better-known top-end players as the AK240 and -380). It plays significantly better than my best other player, the FiiO X5ii. It has converted me to a user of parametric equalization, to the point that I am developing some software tools to display and optimize parametric equalizer settings and compare them to headphone frequency plots. I highly recommend this player.