rredline

I'm a bit disappointed when I see Mr Charles saying this... We should not judge a country and its companies with false prejudice... It is true that some very low end Chinese companies might use counterfeit parts, but the higher end companies (e.g. Gustard, LKS, Goldenwave...) are not known for using fake components. In fact, being a higher end Chinese company, where they know their local components' supply chain very well, they are more capable and experienced to differentiate the genuine and counterfeit parts compared to overseas companies. And so far, none of their local customers, whose has become very experience in noticing counterfeit parts, has ever complained of finding something counterfeit in their products. Some companies in China might produce some pollution, but a large percentage of it is actually produced by American/Western companies who secretly violating the rules. And the current government lead by President Xi has imposed the strictest ever environmental rules to his officials to follow and execute. They even lead the Paris Accord by example where the US has withdrawn for their selfishness. Workers in China might be paid little, but that is not the reason you look at them from a wealthy person point of view and saying that 'I will never let the factory there produce my products'. You should let the factory produce it and impose strict guideline to the factory owner to treat and pay the workers well. That's the right way to treat the poor workers.

MQA = 16-bit FLAC + 8-bit MP3 = rubbish. Condemn anything related to MQA, where it's real motive hiding behind the scenes is collecting heavy licensing fee and impose DRM one day (check their patents).......the evil thing that all of us will cry foul when it happened one day.

The cost of CH Precision's DAC is high, but some of their design choices does make sense.

Disagree. It is the flaw of 1-bit SDM engine that caused DAC chip maker to produce 5-6bit SDM engine. DSD is not converted to PCM in these engines as there is no decimation fllter applied in the process. Mr Andreas has been saying the SAME thing again and again in various interviews/workshops, It is a bit disappointing that a man with his level of expertise, so many of tasteless marketing talks and so little of technical tidbits have been revealed to the community.

Sorry I think this is BS To achieve ASIC chip level performance, you need a much more complex and power hungry FPGA, certainly not that kind of entry level FPGA in Mojo capable of.

Disagree If DSD recording causes non-linear time error, PCM will too, because that PCM is came from DSD after decimation filter applied.

To be honest I'm not a fan of them. These people are selling DACs at exorbitant price where most people won't be able to access. They seldom reveal technical know how in depth to the public. I'm more interested to hear something from someone like Mr Ed Meitner or Dustin Forman.

It is definately Meitner MA-1. It sounds awesome and continuous update or upgrade is available while others require you to buy a new unit.

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For audiophiles/consumer, DSD128 is the sweet-spot, given the huge increase of file size and minimal returns from DSD256. DSD256 is more suitable for recording studio to provide mixing and mastering headroom.

I HATE to see vendor uses MQA codec! It was a failed format last time for a reason. One thing that they never tell you is that it cost MONEY. There is no reason to pay for the greed of some particular vendor, since nowaday the open source formats are so capable, FLAC, Opus 1.1 (as being used in Google VP9 codec) are good examples.

The main advantage of DSD is not the so called AD-DA direct philosophy, it is the elimination of decimation filter (which is kind of "lossy" process) in the ADC stage.

Thanks Bogi. I will try your solution.

I have tried HQ Player many years ago. I can live with the GUI, but I can't tolerate the lack of APE lossless format support, where the majority of my collections are in. So I have decided not to purchase and continue to use my trustworhty foobar. APE is the dominant lossless format in the east, particularly in the dragon's mainland, it is a shame that it is always being overlooked.

For portable, ES9018K2M (or the headphone-amp in-built version, ES9018Q2C). It doesn't require different analog output filters for PCM and DSD.