Eversolo PLAY: the bargain of the century

[godofwealth]

This being WBF, I post this with trepidation: folks here think that if you don’t spend six figures on a DAC or media server, you’re weird. Well, what would you say about the latest Eversolo wonder gadget that costs $799 and gives you all this:

1. State of the Art streamer and DAC that resolves all codecs and uses the Velvet AKM DACs.

2. Includes a 60 watt amplifier that was able to nicely drive my Quad 2905 electrostatics. I’m listening to it now with my Klipsch La Scala. Of course that’s chump change for this gadget. The La Scala only needs half a watt to go really loud.

3. Has a full-featured phono stage. I’m listening to it via my Technics SP-10 Mk2 using the Stanton 881Mk2 MM cartridge that was used to master the Sheffield Labs direct to disk recordings and many other studio releases.

4. Has room correction builtin that (get this) uses the microphone on your smartphone. Wow!

5. Supports Qobuz, Tidal, and is fully Roon Ready. Bluetooth? Yup. Will it make cappuccino? Nope.

6. Weighs about the same as a hardcover book and is small enough to fit into any backpack.

7. Has a CD drive built in that works great on the discs I tried so far. It can rip to a USB hard drive.

Welcome to the 21st century. Say bye bye to 150 pound DACs and media servers. Use the money saved to buy Nvidia stock. Heh heh.

What’s that? You want to know how it sounds? Well, at this price, save the moolah you spend on your next USB cable and buy half a dozen, one for each room in your house. Find out for yourself.

 

[godofwealth]

Grooving with some Fleetwood Mac with the PLAY. This thing can swing. Nice smooth sound with a lot of dynamics. The Scalas like the PLAY. Very cool. A 250 pound horn loudspeaker being driven by a 10 pound all- in-one wonder device.

 

[godofwealth]

Swinging to the bluesy Madeleine Peyroux now. The MM stage on the PLAY would not be out of place on a $5K preamp. Blimey, this wonder gadget is going to upset a lot of apple carts in high end audio.

 

[godofwealth]

The PLAY with my Technics SP10 Mk2.

 

[Kingrex]

Nice. A great living room stereo. I am using a Fosi that streams Qobuz and Spotify from my phone. The issue I have is a speaker for it. I also have tried Vanatoo. That is a speaker with built in amp and streamer as well as one RCA in. The Vanatoo is fantastic for what it is. About $450 and you have the speaker, amp and streaker. And you can add a sub for about $700 more.

I like these little office, living room systems.

 

[godofwealth]

I discovered an interesting feature of the PLAY. It can output the vinyl onto digital coax. It samples the analog at 192khz 24-bit, so you can use a better outboard DAC. Just the phono section is worth the $799 IMHO. Add the CD drive and the streaming and room correction, it’s an amazing bargain. Don’t expect true high end quality. But to use on a small office system or a bedroom, it’s perfect.

 

[Antonio66]

I'm not surprised you are enjoying your PLAY, I purchased an Eversolo A6 to use in a system when I go abroad for a few months of the year, I needed a streamer with wifi, the included dac was a bonus. I much preferred the app to my Lumin U2 mini, and purchased an A8 and this is now used with out my Soekris dac in a 2nd uk system.

 

[Elberoth]

Looks like a good candidate to replace NAIM UnityQ in my living room system.

 

[godofwealth]

I’m trying out the phono section today with a moving coil cartridge, the venerable Denon A110 reissue of the 103. First up is Jethro Tull that I used to hear in my dorm room as an undergrad 45-50 years ago. I was a bit precocious, entered undergrad as an EE major when I was 15!

 

[godofwealth]

Now here’s an album I heard a lot as an undergrad in the 1970’s. Still sounds better than every digital remastering I have heard of the Fab Four. Sounds gorgeous on the tiny Eversolo PLAY with the Denon moving coil.

 

[godofwealth]

More 70’s rock from my undergrad days. I love this album. Brings back happy memories from many decades ago. The PLAY really gets the grooviness of this album. Nice foot-tapping rhythm.

 

[godofwealth]

Listening to a nice Ben Webster album on the PLAY with a different MC cartridge, the AT OC9 XML. Very nice and a bit more output than the Denon 103 I used before. The PLAY MC preamp is noiseless. No hum or hiss of any kind. On my 105 dB efficient La Scala, that’s an amazing accomplishment for an inexpensive all-in-one device. Some very elegant engineering has gone into this tiny device by Eversolo.

 

[godofwealth]

What Hi Fi did a review of the PLAY and felt it sounded boring. I can see why they thought that. It has a kind of smooth sound that some may feel not exciting enough. I suspect it is highly system dependent. But it’s not a high end component, so think of it as a compact mini all-in-one that does a lot of things properly without screwing up any of them.

This feature-laden, smartly designed compact streaming amp is a joy to use, but is let down by disappointing sound quality

Great features and design, shame about the sound

www.whathifi.com

 

[godofwealth]

Another more positive review from Stereonet. I think they nailed the sound. It’s smooth, warm, and not analytical in the least. That’s the Velvet AKM sound that’s characteristic of other Eversolo pieces. If you’re looking for brash, bright, punchy, in your face, that’s not the PLAY. It’s a much more suave and a bit buttoned down sound.

https://stereonet.com/reviews/eversolo-play-streaming-amplifier-first-look

 

[godofwealth]

I have been playing with the built-in room correction system on the PLAY. It's remarkably simple and uses the microphone on your smartphone. After using the really elaborate ones on Tact and Lyngdorf, this implementation is the best I have seen. It's really designed to get quick results, perhaps not as accurate as the others. You start the room correction process on the Eversolo app, and then it shows. you with simple graphics how to do each step. In a few minutes, ta da, you're done. I tried this with a new arrangement where I use a pair of bookshelf Spendor S3/5 loudspeakers and the huge REL G1 Mk2 Gibraltar subs crossed over at 80 Hz. Here is the room correction curve that is generated by PLAY and displayed on my iPhone. You can see it corrected a big bass dip from 50 Hz to 80 Hz, and then did some broadband corrections as well. I am attaching the picture of the little Spendor S3/5 perched on top of my massive Klipsch La Scalas and the REL sub as well.

Yup, don't take any of this seriously, since I'm having boatloads of fun with this little all-in-one wonder. How does it sound? Well, Herb Reichert wrote a glowing review of this little bookshelf speaker, which you can read. It's one of the most musically truthful speakers that money can buy, even today, and the little PLAY brings it to life again with a nice bottom end supplied by the monstrous REL Gibraltar sub. Hard to imagine better value for money. If you want state of the art sound on a small budget, it's hard to see how you can beat this system. The REL is expensive, but you can use a cheaper REL sub than the Gibraltar.

Spending Time With the Spendor S 3/5 By Herbert Reichert

Enjoy the Music.com Review Magazine

www.enjoythemusic.com

 

[godofwealth]

Swinging to ABBA on a Japanese S-HMCD double album. A bit restrained for pop, but it’s quite refreshing to hear ABBA without the grating treble emphasis that plagued their albums.

 

[Rexp]

Grooving with some Fleetwood Mac with the PLAY. This thing can swing. Nice smooth sound with a lot of dynamics. The Scalas like the PLAY. Very cool. A 250 pound horn loudspeaker being driven by a 10 pound all- in-one wonder device.

View attachment 157063

LP?

 

[Hear Here]

4. Has room correction builtin that (get this) uses the microphone on your smartphone. Wow!

That must be a complete waste of time and likely to degrade the speaker's response. The mic in your phone will have hugely non-linear measurements - likely far worse than the response at the listening position you are trying to flatten!

 

[godofwealth]

LP?

Yes.

 

[Hear Here]

7. Has a CD drive built in that works great on the discs I tried so far. It can rip to a USB hard drive.

Does the unit offer the choice of CD Play and CD Rip? A very rare feature if it does. I bought a NAD M50.2 largely as I could use it to play or to rip a CD to its twin 2TB hard drives.