[hoosterw]

Well if you are asking for typenbrs of the chips used, I will release that as soon as we have 100% certainty. I can tell you that we have chosen this way (using a seperate DAC and not the USB chip internal DAC) because a seperate DAC has a far better performance then the USB chip DAC (our opinion, other people might feel differently here!).
Apart from that it gives us more freedom on synchronising the different clocks, which will give a real step up in sound performance and I think that is commonly accepted (better clock --> better sound).

As for the battery cover (as always) we had to make choices.
For one: Any other options to make the battery-cover 'easier' resulted in a deterioration of the housing 'looks&design' and/or made it much more expensive.

For two: The V2 having a USB input sort of determined it had to be chargeable only and that Alkaline batteries were no option (or at least hard to implement). So the V2 had to come standard with chargeables and that removed the need for changing batteries.

And that is when we decided to drop the removable cover at all.

As for the lifetime of the chargeables we use a very conservative charging philosophy. The more conservative you charge the longer the lifetime of the batteries. So the need for replacing the batteries is........??????....low, rest assured.

Now in case it is needed or wanted to replace them it is possible (I would even call it easy)! It is something we estimate that can (and will) be done on the shop counter.
However we have 'specced' it non-user replaceable to avoid warranty issues with customers opening the units. Because: you always have to take care when opening electronic equipment and it however easy it might seem it can be done wrong, both cosmetically and electrically.

rgds Hans