To the average punter, probably the question about the MR1 will be, why upgrade a smartphone if one's favoured walkabout can is already perfectly powered? To find out, I used a Meze 99 Neo as a standard mobile beater, Final's Sonorous X as a high-efficiency cost-no-issue version. My stand-in for a popular smartphone was a 2017 Samsung Galaxy A5. In no time flat, the answer was that seemingly perfect drive lives on a very different page from just going loud enough. Over the Samsung, the Romanian headphone went plenty loud but also did so sounding fuzzy, opaque, gemütlich, warm, a bit bloated and quite indistinct. It was utterly inoffensive but looked at the music through thick out-of-focus glasses; or hit tune town in rubbery galoshes.

Whether the fault lay with Samsung's headfi opamp or DAC or how it split the bill between them was immaterial. Material was that over the MR1, the same tunes regained all their familiar distinctiveness and fine detail, dusted off the cobwebs, locked in perfect focus for contrast sharpness and rolled out the third dimension of spatial depth. With it, there came a properly layered perspective. By contrast, the Samsung was foggy, monochromatic and water-colour bleeding around the edges. This delta of difference was profound. Not only would an average pedestrian stopped on the street have heard it; she/he'd have been able to describe it clearly and liably been flabbergasted by just how much better the Soundaware was. Being the more linear far more resolved precision tool, with the Sonorous X the delta's severity shrank. It was still clearly present but with the Final, already the Samsung managed to extract more raw data for a more illuminated more insightful presentation. That it was coarser, flatter, less refined and of a narrower colour palette than the MR1 was obvious. That the smartphone's sound had significantly bettered was just as obvious. The upshot was simple. At this degree of fiscal disparaty—between a €250 Samsung phone and a purpose-designed €1'586 DAP—out the window were fairness and equivocation. The Soundaware slaughtered the smartphone. Whether a sound-optimized LG phone might get a lot closer I don't know. I don't drive a 'phones for phones' bumper sticker. This segues into the next MR1 question. If it makes those headphones whose Ω and sensitivity are well within the grasp of ordinary smartphones sound this much better, just how far does its own grasp extend?

Going native: scarf by Foxford Woollen Mills, Ireland's oldest weaving mill (County Mayo 40 minutes from 6moons HQ)

Pushing right to the front of that hardcore line were HifiMan's Susvara. They stood in for other heavies like the HE-6 stablemates or AKG's infamous K-1000 of years gone by. In fully balanced drive with hi-gain+boost, I had plenty of extra throttle on the gas. With our stationary kit from the previous page as reference, not only did the MR1 get these inefficient planars sufficiently loud, it did so at undeniably premium quality. It really should drive most anything properly. Though I'd not advocate taking Susvara beyond the confines of your own backyard, the point is that the MR1 accommodates your most serious big cans inside the house. Meanwhile its portable nature means that you can go roam the wide outdoors with your Campfire Audio IEM or whatever your favourite in-ears might be. Such extreme cross pollination just isn't the case for smartphones. Clock one core fact for the MR1's raison d'être.

Generational contrast: M1 Pro vs. MR1. To suss out whatever audible advances Soundaware might have crafted between models, I returned to Final's flagship X. It's our highest resolution ultra-sensitive dynamic reference. Before calling out sonics, I admit to more fancying the older unit's purely physical buttons without touch-screen intervention; and its full metallic jacket without the MR1's crazily smudge-prone glass. Just as I frown on mirror-gloss black speakers, I don't get this genre's fascination with skin-oil deposits. It's why Soundaware include a cleaning cloth. On sound, the Esther M1 Pro was voiced slightly warmer, fruitier and saturated. Think mild 2nd-order tube plug-in. It meant feeling a tad more relaxed or leisurely; and not being quite as keen on ambient recovery. However, on as friendly a load as the Sonorous, this small difference wouldn't warrant a change. It's once we look at the MR1's stiffer power reserves which up the number of compadre headphone options, its balanced drive and the expanded functionality including SAW-Link that a different audience enters the picture. The MR1 says hello to apps beyond traditional DAP with their emphasis on 'portable'. Now such a player double/triple-teams at getting fully integrated and embedded into a home hifi. Its hardware minimalism and the multi-tasking which is inherent in such a proposition should mostly aim outside traditional audiophile circles. Before we explore just how serious that might get and whilst still on my desktop, let's loop the P1 into the discussion. With a direct analog SAW-Link connection, it would output 2 x RCA to the active Eversound speakers which bracket my computer monitor. Comparators would be the same files on my HP workstation streamed digitally into the speakers via USB.

Moving into the big rig was next to go SAW-Link balanced into our usual Wyred4Sound STP-SE2 preamp. How grown up would the MR1 act around far costlier hardware? Would it make for a viable folder-tree based file server? Or would it be badly outclassed because its small battery couldn't match the far bigger power supplies in our Aqua Hifi converter?