QLS QA361 Review

The design of QA361 is about reducing the gap between desktop and portable gear, and this is where the different amp section output design serve its purpose. The “All to DSD” feature is something that trickled from their desktop DAC, the QA890.

Clark, the main chief designer behind the QA360, wanted to make sure the successor of 360LE is something that offers what the LE offers and more. He sees no point in adding new DAP to his product line with a minor performance increases.

For those who don’t know, QA360LE is the limited issue of the QA360 with hand picked parts that had is said to bring the best performance and measurnment. So to say he wanted to beat that, this is where I knew I had to get this new work of his. Sadly I don’t have the QA360 with me, so I can’t make a direct comparasion. Perhaps that is something I can do for the future.

Clark believes 3.5mm jack is still very relevant in the age that every DAP is pushing for balanced output. But why? What are they trying to achieve? Better separation, power delivery, and reducing crosstalk. Sure, they all sound nice but at the cost of not having a top quality single ended out, I sure always had an issue with it. This is why I respect any DAP that wants to make sure they are both as good as each other, at the very least. Before trying to add an option that perhaps most people don’t need, or want to migrate towards due to extra cost that comes with needing to get the required cable, make sure the legacy features are as good as they can be before adding something new for the end-user to try.

Perhaps the most important argument for wanting a high quality single ended output is that many headphones and IEMs are tune using single-ended output. If an IEM comes with a single-ended cable, chances are this is how the designer expected their product to be listened.  To ignore that experience is to possibly never know what the designer of that product was trying to achieve. 
I find that in general balance out expands soundstage, brings detail out more, and pushes vocals and treble details more forward. Sometimes it benefits you others times perhaps not.

Regarding different amplification mode, they make a subtle difference for IEMs, almost inaudible, however, pair them with a headphone like HD600 or Edition 11, its function becomes noticeable. .

So basically with the AMP feature, try the different setting until you find what sounds best for you, but when in doubt use the double high, it gives you an extended high and meaty bass, at the cost of midrange transparency, in case of SW-01. No such things were noticeable with HD600 which just loved the double high feature. I basically thing you can’t go wrong for any high impedance headphone. For IEM just set it to Large Current.

And how does it sound?

To keep things simple, I compared QA361 with my current reference DAP which is the Lotoo Paw Gold (LPG).

Upon arrival, I couldn’t help but plug it into the first thing I had near, which was my Cardas EM5813.

The Cardas is power hungry and like a good current amplification rather than voltage. What I head was a transparent, clean sound with somewhat centre focused soundstage with stock firmware (FW). I felt the treble extension did not improve, but thanks to the superior transparency and cleaner background of 361, those qualities translated into the final output of music from the EM5813.

Before I move forward, it is important to mention Quloos offers three FW for the 361, and to focus on sound quality I only tested the WAV only FW I will post my stock FW impression on the head-fi thread in future times.

The most noticeable thing when I switch from 361 to any other DAP and back is how much cleaner the 361 background is. One of my all time favourite DAP is Calyx M. It is very dynamic, grander sound that is thanks to its class A section (rumoured) can make anything sing. But going from Clayx M back to 361 is how clean 361 is and how much leaner it is. So you gain something and you loss some body in return. I personally think this quieter background is more versitle for my IEM usages.

Burin:

I let the unit run for 200 hours out of habit and tested out the WAV only FW. What you need to know about the WAV only FW is they are two version, the 1.0.4 and 1.0.5. They WAV only FW is designed based on the aim to improve transparency and smoothing the sound by allocating the extra programming codes, algorithm, memory required for the encoding ofnon-WAV codec into writing a more sophisticated code to improve stability of WAV playback.

QA361 vs LPG: In general LPG has the more vertical spread in its soundstage.

Using pure WAV 1.0.4: 1.0.4 sounds more balance compared to both 1.0.5 and stock FW but compared to LPG, the 1.0.4 horizontal spread is large but not as large as LPG.

Compared to stock FW and 1.0.5, the horizontal spread isn’t as large and you need to switch to 1.0.5 if you need such kind of soundstage.

Using the Pure WAV 1.0.5 FW: QA361 has a horizontal spread larger than the 1.0.4 and stock FW. Compared to LPG, LPG has a more laid back sound compared to 361, and in all FW the 361 sounded noticeably more forward. Details stand out more, string instrument attacks have more of an authority. Is that a good thing? Sure if you mostly listen to solo performance. Once again it is a tuning dependent on the headphone/IEM it has plugged into it.

QA361 put on a close fight against LPG, and in certain places, such as background noise, 361 won with a clear margin. LPG doesn’t require a pure WAV only FW to maintain its unique soundstage and this is my only issue with 361. Because of this LPG has remained my reference for now, but the hissing is problematic and despite its larger soundstage I think I’m almost ready to make 361 my new reference DAP.

LPG fails is the background noise department.  And it hisses rather badly in all DXD WAV files I had. QA361 does such playback with ease, and it does so in a very smooth analog manner. It sounds as well as LPG when it is playing DSD files. LPG is my favourite DSD playback DAP and I can say with ease 361 is slowly becoming my favourite PCM only playback DAP.

If I did not own the LPG, I could have happily lived with the QA361 as my reference DAP with no issues. In fact with the right pairing, FW, I prefer the 361 more than LPG.

As a reviewer, I have to look at my readers point of view and to be realistic, in this day and age a “WAV only FW approach” just feels out of date. I couldn’t care less, encoding to WAV each time don’t bother me, but perhaps it might bother other people. It doesn’t take long to convert files, and Micro SD are getting cheaper and larger, so storage is no longer an issue. And to he honest if you are one of those who are thinking of the QA361, you know what you are getting yourself into and I’m sure you too wouldn’t see this as a downside.

With LPG, all things must be in close to perfect harmony, else something will not sound right. Such restriction naturally restricts the listener to your typical audiophile recording, which is nice, but I want more freedom and rather have my mood dictate the music I listen than the apparatus I’m using.

QA361 did this much better than LPG. 361 sounding musical, or at least as musical as a reference, well-engineered DAP designed based on measurement can sound.

QA361 has a brighter tonality on the string-based instrument, which makes it sound more pleasing on violin, cello, harp solo performance, however, when playing a large symphony piece, such emphasis in LPG isn’t audible.