The first order of HM-901s business was to top off the battery. Without progress indicator, one waits for the charger brick's red LED to turn green. Next I leashed up to my iMac via 24-pin-to-USB cable for a data dump onto a blank 32GB memory card slipped into the player. The player failed to show up on my desktop. In hindsight, it was probably hidden. With my second player-to-iMac connection, it showed up. In its Settings menu, I ejected the card virtually before doing so physically, then plugged the card directly into the iMac. After transferring a number of complete albums for about 200 tracks total and inserting the card back into the player, it entered automatic scan mode to write TOC and track markers to memory. Afterwards, HifiMan's artist, album and song folders were still empty. To find tunes meant opening the SD Card folder with the click wheel.


Now I saw endless tracks 1, 2 and so forth all sorted by track number then alphabet like 1.azeri.aif, 1.bonded.aif, 1.demeter.aif. 2.blondie.aif etc. There was no album art despite it showing when I opened the player's desktop icon. Presumably the large jpgs I install for my iMac's Retina display couldn't be scaled down. Harder was the absence of proper album folders and no album titles or artist names. I couldn't listen to any album front to back nor find anything by artist or album. To see and play something, I had to scan through my mixed-up track listing in the solitary SD Card folder. To weather my initial funk, I sent an email to Fang, then selected random play. That game clearly was on. Tapping the 3.5mm balanced output and setting the deck to high gain, its volume ring to between 6 and 7 out of a max 8, I even had enough juice for the HE1000. Catching some balcony rays plus tunes to exploit the moment, even with the highest of 5 brightness settings, the low-contrast display was barely decipherable. Sonically though, even the tiniest small print was perfectly legible.
My loaner came with the balanced amplifier card preinstalled whose underside is shown here.

Which segues into the long shadow cast by iTunes.


For all its less happy latter-day changes, its library management and GUI are the expectation standard of anyone who began their portable audio journey with an iPod. Whilst HifiMan's 150+ crew makes them a Jupiter-size planet amongst the minor dwarves and blitzing meteors of hifi's cottage industry, by corporate Apple/Samsung standards, they're but a speck of cosmic dust. Beating Cupertino's we-luv-256mbps sound is easy. Beating them on GUI isn't as even Astell&Kern with their Samsung DNA learnt when launching. Music servers from Aurender to Lumin to ReQuest run into the same challenges. Some do better than others. Sooloos and Roon are king. Would Apple or Samsung hide power off at the very end of the Settings menu to be a pain to get at? HifiMan's side-mounted slider requires a 2-sec. up/hold to shuttle between on/standby but doesn't enable a full battery-saving off. Would Apple or Samsung chose so tiny a font for time elapsed/remaining that older eyes can no longer read it? In use, the 901's mechanical click wheel wasn't as slick as even an ancient iPod but perfectly adequate. Moving 'back' and 'home' to mechanical buttons sped up navigation. On industrial design and fit'n'finish, the 901s had come a way from the initial drab 'Soviet chic' of early HifiMänner. Four tiny screws—two on the front, two on the bottom—remain a non-corporate concession you'd not get with a Galaxy or iPhone. It's Andre the corporate giant versus Rocky the sound-oriented underdog.
Without the dock, one could use a 3.5mm stereo to 2 x RCA leash, plug that into the headfi output and bypass the player's attenuator by opening it fully.
The fully enclosed and recessed volume wheel is far superior to those exposed knobs of first-gen A&Ks that got hung up on pocket liners. What budget crunchers will belabour is the lack of built-in memory.


With a Lexar or Sandisk 256GB card getting between €150-170 at time of publication, a 512GB version still hit a colossal €500. With a €1'500 hi-rez portable where 24/96-type files gobble up memory faster than 16/44.1, a single SD card slot without internal memory seems just a tad argh. Yeah goes to how easily internal amplifier cards are swapped.


The balanced card delivers noticeably higher output voltage, grip and color saturation over the 3.5mm balanced not standard output. This needs no special cable connectors. On argh again, there's no combo 3.5mm/Toslink provision. The only way to absorb external digital sources is via the included break-out cable. That combines stereo RCA outs with a coax S/PDIF in. The latter is activated by menu. As shown above, this cable is far too short to work on a desktop where the player will hang off the table edge just to make the connection (or be out of sight behind your main integrated/amp). That's where the optional dock comes in. So do another 500 quid. If my Potomac two-step—one step forward, one back—suggests a mixed bag, quite so. On raw functionality, I found the HE-901s curiously spotty.


On porta chops of size and 250g weight, it's bigger than a legacy iPod and easily twice as thick. Yet it still just slips into an average shirt breast pocket as a full deck of cards would. Perfectly workable without any poker face. In use, load determines current draw. If taxed with something strangely big for mobile tunes because its stout drive overrides cosmetic or practical concerns, the aluminium housing warms up noticeably but far from enough to cause a rash. On Aëdle's VK1, the player coasted.