Regarding o2 +...

Click to view our Accessibility Statement or contact us with accessibility-related questions

Free Standard Shipping in the US on orders over $99

Showing 1 of 25 conversations about:

Headphone amp/dac combo

Jan 21, 2016

Regarding o2 + Odac rev (b) whether Mayflower or JDS labs. They both changed the USB input chip and most importantly the DAC to PCM5102a which is medium tier available on Dacs like the new Fiio Q1. Retail $69ish. Reading the NWAVGUY blog and unfortunately his disappearance, There isn't the exhaustive testing he performed on this new PCM5102s DAC. The original odac seems highly refined but it seems there were issues with the ess9023 DAC failures. As much as I am late to the game to miss the original band wagon for the ODAC. The new Rev B. Version seems Unproven. Using the same output filters on a different Dac is not going to garner same results. Otherwise one circuit/pcb layout would do all and we wouldn't need experienced engineers to refine the design for each circuit. Because of this I went another direction with a DAC, The Aune X1. It's tech specs are excellent and is feature rich in comparison to the ODAC+o2 combo. Granted it isn't super Bench tested like NWAVGUY did with a few. Almost ALL dacs on the market are not, which is ridiculous considering the prices esoteric guys like schiit, ayre etc. want to charge. Rant time: sorry... See I am confused, We Pay lots of extra money for example like Schiit for their cutting edge engineering designs but yet they only publicly admit typical "specs" of what we think we want to see. Same ole' Schitt. Now do not get me wrong, I have the Fulla and Loki and from what I gather the Modi Uber and Magni are all good values for the money market wise, but why so much more money for their higher tier products. The actual pcb parts costs couldn't be more than $30-100 more and possibly $30 more for chassis. (also factor in typical manufacture mark up of 2-3x for overhead profit etc.) So we are paying for "engineering" so to speak. So show me the Bench Testing Specs. to support the "Superior" engineering design. If I designed it I would be proud of my "Provable" test benchmark accomplishments. After all it is generally known 99% DAC buyers are looking for True "Transparency" from a DAC. Almost any other technology has extensive bench testing to prove its technical ability. So far at least NWAVGUY seemed to isolate what needs to be tested in a DAC and or audio design. The companies who actually design the DAC chip (TI,Sabre, Wolfson,AKM etc) spend way more in engineering costs (millions) to create and manufacture a DAC yet sell it for $5 to $70 for the chip. Why are we paying the end product makers SO MUCH more? The DAC community Deserves EXHAUSTIVE BENCH TESTS. I wish someone else would carry on the NWAVGUY Torch at least.

Jan 21, 2016

ulysses

May 15, 2016

SagaciousIMHO Reason is that human sound perception consist of 25% ear and 75% brain, we know much about ears, but we know much less about brain interpretation of sound, it's like a magic. So the audio-engineer have to test with group each detail hundred times for getting a good prototype out, also it must be very clever engineer gathering all the actual scientific information about hearing processing, either he will test the things up to the endless times. So you pay for time + research+talented engineering work+ knowledge + testing 40% (best case) and 40% for marketing and near-production costs and only 20% (most i think) for production itself.

May 15, 2016