New high end DAC

Very cool, they could probably make a killing selling a dual unit with AES inputs to the pro/mastering crowd. Also probably not long before we get this kind of quality in portable players. My Fiio X5 sounds as good as my Crookwood DACs when used as a USB DAC.

I wish these kind of products came with the option to have balanced connections. They're always aimed at the hifi crowd and seem to always only have rca connections. But if it's all that and then some, $399 is still pretty cheap.

I also have a question about the power supply and distribution. It comes up again and again how important of a role power plays in high quality conversion. This thing is powered by a micro-usb power cable and, for $399, it seems hard to believe that the power distribution inside is up to the same level as that found in mastering level dacs. That seems to be a contradiction?

Do any of this company's boxes provide adc, or is it all just dac? A $399 adc of the same quality might be cool to try for dsd mixdown.

A wall wart through the micro-usb connection? I don't see a typical wall wart dc type of connection?

But regardless of the voltage, it's still unbalanced? Regardless of the amount of voltage, how is that as good as a proper balanced connection? Unbalanced connections have no way to cancel noise. I know that some people prefer unbalanced circuitry because of there being no need for balancing circuitry and the apparent sonic benefits that may come from that. I defer to your knowledge on such things, but I don't see the equivalency?

So - I guess it's the implementation...but considering the Symphony uses the same chip, it would be a bit redundant, right?

The thing about balanced vs unbalanced is this while over long distance and in RF hell balanced may be better, in general is adding another stage to balance the signal really worth it ?

spoke with a person who used to work for the distributor who used to carry project audio products. He said that although the products were good for their price, the failure rate was almost borderline unacceptable and wouldn't recommend buying them just from reading what's on their website.

Wow, I am certainly intrigued.

Could be a fun box for me here, in a few different places.

He said it sounded incredible with his Monoprice headphones, but not so great with his Sennheisers. Must be an impedance thing.

Mine arrived today.  I've been sitting here listening to all my favorite CDs and not getting any work done.  I received new Monoprice M1060's the other day as well so I'm a bit giddy to say the least.  

In a nutshell I'm really impressed.  I've only used this thing in USB mode driving headphones and playing CD's on my computer.  But I'm smitten.  It comes with a little remote that allows me to control digital input, volume, mute, filter settings, etc.   It actually controls the transport on Windows Media Player which is making me really happy right now.

It has a 5V wallwart that plugs into a micro-USB port.  It can also be USB bus powered via the larger USB-A connector.  I can't hear a difference between the two power settings.  I'm sure someone out there has measured the difference.  The manual says that using USB and the wallwart could cause weird power issues.  Whatever.  Sounds fine to me.  If your source is optical, or coax then I believe you probably want to use the wallwart.  I'm finding it convenient to just have it powered via USB since that's my audio source as well.  I'll be curious to get Jim's take on this once he tries it.

There are a ton of filter settings.  Somewhere on the web I found some frequency response measurements showing the filters.  I am using Min Phase w/ Fast Rolloff.  The manual recommends Transient Optimal.  I think it's going to be a while before I have a preference there.  It's subtle stuff.

I've listened with both Sennheiser HD600's (via Sonarworks Reference 4) and my new Monoprice M1060's.  I compared to the headphone output on my MOTU 8A (generally considered to be a pretty decent DAC I think). I first tried the HD600's and promptly wrote Jim a note saying it sucked.  Lack of low end power, no punch, lame soundstage.  The MOTU headphone out sounded much more lively and engaging and deep.  Jim confirmed that it would have issues would those headphones.  So I tried my M1060's.   HALLELUJAH!!!  It was like heaven descended upon my ears.  F*ck YESSSSS!  Deep, punchy, tons of transient detail and extension.  Excellent presentation that was very engaging and real sounding.  I switched to the MOTU.  Oh geez so lame in comparison.  Sounded flat, recessed, and dull in the top end as if someone closed the door of the top secret audio speakeasy in my face.  Back to the S2 and everything just opened up.  It was not subtle by any means on these headphones.  Perhaps the MOTU just blows at driving these 50 ohm Monoprice phones.  But the contrast in fidelity was stark.  I feel like I'm pretty honest with myself when it comes to subtle changes in audio and generally have no interest in things that make less than 1% difference.  This was more like a 20% difference to me.

By no means is this any kind of exhaustive test/comparison.  I tested two headphones and two DACs with built-in headphone amps playing back a CD from 1993.  But I think Jim made a good call on this thing.  Crap this day is getting away from me!  I've been listening to music all morning and having a blast.  Did I mention this thing fits in the palm of your hand?

Brad

You would have to use a separate headphone amp for the HD600's to get optimal performance. 

Brad

The merits of a good design only get one so far in business. A lot of it just comes down to marketing.  In this industry people are often skeptical of affordable prices.  If it's super expensive it must be good right?  For a business owner this psychology is appealing (I'll take selling $3k items to 100 people over $300 items to 1000 people any day).  As a consumer...I'd rather search for the hidden gem at an unbelievable price point and then judge it for myself.

Which in this case I did.

Brad