USB Audio Player PRO

Review by eFreeware

Most phones treat audio as an afterthought. If you own a USB digital-to-analog converter, much of what it can do may go unused. That gap is the reason USB Audio Player PRO exists.

This is a paid player, listed at $8.99, with no ads and a set of optional in-app purchases on top. It has built a following over the years: more than 100,000 installs and a 4.0 average from 14,815 ratings, with the last update in September 2026.

The driver that does the heavy lifting

The central feature is the app's own USB audio driver. Rather than passing audio through Android's mixer, the app hands it to the connected DAC directly, which is what allows it to play at whatever resolution and sample rate the hardware supports. The developer puts the ceiling at 32-bit/768kHz. Whether you hear a difference depends on your DAC, your headphones and the files themselves.

For phones with HiRes audio chips inside, there is a second driver that targets the internal hardware instead of a USB device. The developer lists LG's V series, Samsung, OnePlus and Sony among the phones it works with, along with dedicated audio players. On the LG V30, V35, V40, V50, G7 and G8, MQA decoding and rendering is included at no extra cost; elsewhere, the MQA Core decoder is a separate purchase of around €4.49.

File support is broad, and deliberately goes past what Android handles on its own. The app plays wav, flac, mp3, m4a and ogg, along with wavpack, ape, aiff, cue sheets and SACD ISO. DSD is covered through DoP, native DSD or conversion to PCM. There is gapless playback, bit-perfect output, replay gain, optional upsampling and sample rate conversion, so a file whose rate your DAC cannot handle is moved to a rate it can.

Everything around the playback engine

The app reaches outward in several directions. It can pull music from a UPnP or DLNA server, and it can act as a UPnP renderer and content server itself. Network playback covers Samba in versions 1 and 2, FTP, WebDAV, and OpenSubsonic or Navidrome servers. TIDAL, Qobuz and Shoutcast can be streamed from inside the app, and Last.fm scrobbling is supported for keeping a listening history.

On the local side, there is true folder browsing for people who organize music themselves rather than trusting a library scan. Synchronized lyrics show up when a .lrc file sits alongside the track or the lyrics are embedded in it. A 10-band equalizer is included, and volume can be handled in software or through the hardware when the device allows it. Android Auto support is included.

The app also works with Bluetooth DACs on Android 8 and later, where it can change properties like the codec — LDAC, aptX, SSC and others — and adjust the sample rate to match the source. The developer is careful to call this dependent on the specific phone and Bluetooth device, and says it can fail.

The Feature Pack and the paid extras

The optional Feature Pack is the most interesting of the in-app purchases. It routes audio from other apps through the app's own USB driver on Android 10 and above, at a fixed sample rate you choose, so a streaming service can play through the same high-quality path as your local files. Deezer, Apple Music and Poweramp are named as examples, and Spotify may need to be played through a browser such as Opera with its web player. This is a demanding feature that may fail on some hardware or apps, and its latency is too high for movies.

The same purchase adds a UPnP control client for sending audio to a renderer on another device, Dropbox streaming, and the ability to add tracks to the library from a UPnP server, Dropbox or FTP. Two more add-ons come from ToneBoosters: an advanced parametric EQ at around €2.99 and the MorphIt headphone simulator at around €3.99, which models more than 600 headphone models. The base price buys the player; these extras are separate decisions.

What the app asks of you

A USB DAC or a phone with HiRes audio hardware helps. The drivers are the reason to pay for this app. The developer is explicit that this is not a system-wide driver: playback happens inside the app, just as with any other player, so other apps do not automatically benefit from the USB path unless you buy the Feature Pack.

The second consideration is cost. The app is $8.99, and the extras add up if you want all of them — the MQA decoder, the parametric EQ, MorphIt and the Feature Pack are each priced separately. The app contains no ads, but the total for a fully loaded setup is meaningfully more than the sticker price.

There is also a permissions note worth reading before you install. Recording access is not required for playback; it only enables system audio capture and auto-start with a USB DAC. A tested-device list and connection instructions are available on the developer's site, a sensible first stop if you are unsure whether your DAC is covered.

Getting the most from it

The practical path is to start with local files and the USB driver, since that is the combination the app was built around. Folder browsing makes this straightforward if your music is organized. From there, adding a network source like Samba or a Navidrome server turns the app into something closer to a home-library front end.

The Feature Pack is best treated as a second step rather than a first one. Routing other apps through the USB driver is the kind of feature that rewards patience: the developer warns it may not work everywhere. If you mainly want your own files played properly, the base app is aimed at that.

The ToneBoosters add-ons are a different sort of decision. MorphIt is for people who want to simulate other headphones or correct the ones they own, and the parametric EQ is for those who want finer control than the built-in 10-band equalizer provides. Both are aimed at listeners who already know what they want to change.

The recent update is a reminder that the app is still being worked on. It fixed Shoutcast after a server change broke it, added a software volume curve option, enabled MQA decoding for OpenSubsonic tracks when deep scan is on, and brought lyrics and track favoriting to OpenSubsonic.

A player for listeners with the right hardware

USB Audio Player PRO is a specialist tool, and it is priced like one. The 4.0 average across nearly 15,000 ratings stands out.

The base purchase makes sense for anyone with the hardware to justify it; the Feature Pack and the ToneBoosters add-ons make sense for those who want to route other apps through the same path or fine-tune their headphones. Buy the player for the driver, and treat everything else as optional.

What's new in version 7.1.2.8

* Shoutcast stopped working due to a server configuration change. Solved. * Added a 'Software volume curve' option to the Volume settings. * MQA tracks from OpenSubsonic are now decoded when the 'Deep Scan' MQA option is enabled. * Added lyrics support and track favouriting for OpenSubsonic.