iBasso Audio DX120 Review – Powerful, Pure, Passion

Graphical User Interface

The player controls are intuitive and easy to use, with buttons well placed and logically intuitive.

The screen is a 3.2inch 480*800 IPS screen with capacitive touch and is very responsive and resolution decent.

Utilising a Linux based Mango OS dedicated purely for supporting the audio play back and unburdened by bloatware found on phones and other networked portable DAPs, the boot up time is fast and responsiveness is snappy.

Swapping between audio formats without any perceivable lag. Supporting native DSD64/128. Battery life varied between 13-16 hours with is great from the 2 hour charge.

The DX120 User interface is very simple and extremely fast.

Swipe the screen to right for My music

Swipe the screen to left for Settings

The centre screen is the main Music Playback screen

The menu icon is used to display the quick settings menu,which includes all of the frequently used/common options.

Below are a selection of most of the other screens representing the many available options in the user interface.

Supporting 5 pre-configured sound modes, Reference, Traditional, Original, Classical and Natural – each changing the signature subtlety, our preference was the traditional option.

As shown earlier there is a full equaliser which has much more impact on signature style with the available options – Classical, Pop, Dance, Rock, Bass and your own custom choice.

In conjunction with the Sound Modes and equaliser options there are also 5 digital filters:
Sharp roll off, Slow roll off, Short delay sharp roll off, Short delay slow roll off, Super slow roll of

Each of which seem to effect attack and delay speeds even more, for a more tailored  personal listening experience. For my musical preferences I opted for the ‘Slow roll off’ giving a more smooth overall style.

The core signature style of the DX120 follows similar suit as you would expect from iBasso Audio, overall clean, impactful and powerful.

Full sounding with excellent depth of signature, slightly cold and dry but in a good way, reflecting a solid tuning style.

Scaling well with decent controlled precision of detail rendering. Treble is a little crisp occasionally but well extended, nothing overly harsh, just clean and natural with some brightness of character.

Staging is of a fair size, wide and comforting, helping with immersion especially on live well mastered recordings.

Micro-detail elements are well selected, sparkling to add to the the listeners experience. Bass especially in the sub region is solid and full bodied, punching strong with tight edges and quick recovery.

Layering is controlled, everything identifiable clean, portraying decent separation and transparency.

We are very impressed by the overall sound signature,especially the amount of power and low level of noise distortion.

This is easily becoming our go-to DAP of choice.