Click to Pre-order
Good news: HDtracks will provide a 20% off coupon for HiFiMAN player Customers.
The first batch (with PCM1704UK) has been sold out. Preorder section II (650USD) will last from Sept 2009 to Early Oct 2009. Customer at preorder section II will receive their players in the second or third week of Oct 2009. Final retail price will be about 750 to 800USD.
We have sent an PCM1704UK order (for second batch) to our suppliers. However, we will not confirm the second batch will be PCM1704UK version until we receive those DAC chips.
We have finished most of manufacturing work of the first batch (Preorder section I) on Aug 25th. We need several days to finish QC. We will start to ship out the player from the first weekend of Sept. We will ship 10 to 20 pcs per week in Sept 2009.
Features
Modular Design:
Modular Amplifier Bay (Named GanQi Bay) and
14.8 volt Lithium Polymer Battery Bay
Memory: SDHC Card
Volume control: ALPS Analog Attenuator
DAC function: Coaxial (16bit 44.1kHz and
24bit 96kHz) , USB DAC (16bit 48kHz)
DAC Chip: Burr-Brown PCM1704; Op-Amp: OPA627
Weight: about 260g (Main Body), about 2000g (include packing box and accessory)
Size: 114 mm *78mm * 25.5 mm or 4.49 * 3.07 * 1.00 Inch
Output: Headphone out; Line out
Exchangeable Module Battery Life :
7 to 8 hours (Depending upon which Modular Amplifier board is mounted)
Charger and External Power supply: External Power supply also acts as a bettery charger and can deliver Hi-Fi grade sound quality even while charging.
Accessory: Lithium ion polymer battery; Charger/External Power Supply (110-240VAC, 50-60 Hz); USB cable; RCA-to-Mini adapter for digital coaxial input.
Music Format Support
APE Fast、Normal、High Mode
AAC 16K-320Kbps
FLAC lossless VBR 44.1kHz and
24bit 96KHz
WMA 8-355kbps
OGG Quality 0-Quality 10
WAV PCM,MS-ADPCM,IMA-ADPCM
MP3(VBR) 8-320Kbps
Update 07/30/2009 Headphone Amplifier Module Spec
Opamp: OPA275
Input Voltage: +/-7.5v
quiescent current 6-7ma
Input Impedance: 20k
closed loop voltage gain: 6dB
Distortion: 0.002%
S/N: 102dB
Frequency: 10Hz - 60KHz (-1dB)
Maximium Undistorted Power Output (RMS)
32 Ohm 1.5v 70mw
150 Ohm 3.4v 77mw
320 Ohm 3.8v 45mw
Maximium Current
32 Ohm +24ma -30ma
150 Ohm +15ma -16ma
320 Ohm +10ma -11ma
Pictures
How to use a HiFiMAN player?
Warranty policy: 30 days refund, 90 days free replacement and 1 year repair. Customers will be able to buy 2-year free repair warranty plan.
FAQ
1. Will payment have to be made now or upon shipping in June ?
If you pay now, you will get $100 discount. If you pay on June after the product is available, you won't get $600 discount price.
2. Why coaxial?
Coaxial input on HiFiMAN is designed for desktop Hi-Fi CD players. For portable use, all you need to do is to copy music files into a SD card, and insert into HiFiMAN player. I don't think optical output from a portable cd player or a regular mp3 player is good enough. In addition, optical input consume much more energy than coax.
3. Why battery life is only 6 to 8 hrs
Sound quality is always the most important issue we will consider. With so many luxury chips inside, working current of HiFiman is about 200 MA. We'v tried our best to find the best Lithium Polymer Battery for HiFiMAN, and this is the best we can do. 8 hours is enough to play all day, then charge in the night. If you need longer battery time, please buy a battery. Battery will be available on June.
4. Do we have to buy the amp module separately?
No. You will get an amp module with the player.
5. Does HiFiMAN support Gapless playback? Does HiFiMAN support ALAC?
Currently, no. We will try to support ALAC and gapless in the future via software upgrading anyway.
6. How will UI be like?
UI will be similar to an ancient ipod.
7. How much can I DIY with this ones?
I can not image how you will modify this little guy. The board is so small, and full of expensive SMD components. In addition, there is no DIP socket on the board, or anywhere in the player.
8. Please tell us headphone output impedance and its mW per channel.
Current headphone amplifier board design: 100mw - 16 ohm; 64mw - 32 ohm; 80mw - 150 ohm; 40mw - 300 ohm. It can easily boost HD580 and K240DF, and keep hiss at a very low level when driving IEMs.
Modular Amplifier Bay called GanQi Bay. We will provide its spec detail to headphone amplifier builders.
9. Battery and module upgrade possibilities.
The battery we currently provided is almost the best Lithium battery we can find. Four sure we will provide new battery for upgrading when battery factories can provide higher capacity battery in the future.
10. Is the outer housing of the HiFiMan all Plastic, metal, or mixed metal/plastic?
It is a injection molded plastic sturcture with Aluminium panel cover on both side. Will provide larger pictures to show more detail.
11 Is opamp OPA627AU, OPA627BP or cheapy OPA627AP?
The opamp is OPA627AU. We don't want to use this most expensive chip and "electricity eater" at the very beginning. We made our decision after a test between 10 different opamps. OPA627 is the most appropriate opamp in this circuit.
12. About gapless playback: I have tested the time length between two wav tracks: track 5 and 6 of Pirates Of The Caribbean: The Curse Of The Black Pearl [SOUNDTRACK] .I tried to use a stop watch to record how long the time will be, but before I finish the first touch, the track has been changed from 5 to 6. The time is shorter than my reaction time, and the average reaction time of human being is about 0.2 second. Maybe this mp3 player does surpport gapless but nobody told me this.
3D Drawing Generation Pics (Large) :
http://head-direct.com/upload/2009May232014321.jpg
http://head-direct.com/upload/2009May232015052.jpg
http://head-direct.com/upload/2009May232015383.jpg
Update July 17/09
We are very close to finish. Hifiman HM-801 has been able to play 24bit (both 88.2khz and 96khz) FLAC format earlier this week. Our engineer made the following photo by an inexpensive camera. We have contacted a professional photographer today. We will provide more beautiful photographs in the next one or two days hopefully.
Update July 21/09
Photos made by professional photographer
Update July 26
Update July 28th UI examples
Update July 29th
Real Photos. (Taking photo from LCD is extremely difficult)
Update Aug 10th
Estimated Shipping Date (first 20 pcs) : Aug 25th.
*We must be very careful at the beginning so that we will ship 20 to 40 pcs per week in the first 4 weeks.
Good news: ALPS volume control finally arrived. We suppose to have them on July, but ALPS local dealer delayed twice.
Great news: We decide to use PCM1704UK in first 60 to 70 pieces players in current preorder batch to express our gratefulness. If we can find more PCM1704UK in the future, we will keep use it. If not, we will use regular PCM1704U.
Update 08/20/09
What we have done
We have finished PCB board, battery, LCD, accessory, power supply, etc.. last week. We have assembled two final product samples with PCM1704UK: much better than the hand soldering PCM1704U prototype Jude listen to. We have finished 48hrs continuous working test. We have finished battery test and the battery life is more than 8 hours (non-stop, 24 ohm load, normal volume). We are pride of 103db S/N test result at only 1.3v line out voltage (equal to 110 db at standard 3v). It seemed we will be able to ship the first batch in time.
Why we delay another week
However, we decide to delay another week because we wish to do the last improvement: paint. Because anodic oxidation surface is very easy to have scratch problem, we decide to try teflon metal paint. Teflon metal paint will provide 5H hardness, resistance to chemical corrosion and 300C (or 572F) high temperature. Teflon surface will be polished as well. We will receive finished casing sample from our supplier in next 48 hours. If everything is all right, we will post a picture soon.
Firmware
As a brand new product, hifiman firmware will still be beta version in the first two or three month. We know it is difficult to make everybody happy, but we will try. Another very important issue is 24bit 96/88.2 FLAC replay: It is impossible to get all 24bit FLAC tracks and test them at our player. I wish our customers could report us if you find a track that have problem to replay. After received your email, we will download that track immediately and solve the problem at the next firmware update.
Other details
We will email tracking number and HDtracks coupon to the first 10 to 20 customers at the end of August. We will ship the first batch on Aug 31 or Sept 1st via Express mail from China. We will ship 20 to 30 pcs per week in Sept. We will do larger amount after Sept.
Update Aug 25th
We will be happy to help amplifier builders design their Module Board for HifiMAN.
Updated Aug 30, 2009
The first batch (with PCM1704UK) was sold out. Preorder section II (650USD) will last from Sept 2009 to Early Oct 2009. Customer at preorder section II will receive their players in the second or third week of Oct 2009. Final retail price will be about 750 to 800USD.
We have sent an PCM1704UK order (for second batch) to our suppliers. However, we will not confirm the second batch will be PCM1704UK version until we receive those DAC chips.
We have finished most of manufacturing work of the first batch (Preorder section I) on Aug 25th. We need several days to finish QC. We will start to ship out the player from the first weekend of Sept. We will ship 10 to 20 pcs per week in Sept 2009.
Instruction of building Coaxial Cable for Hifiman: RCA to mini stereo (3.5mm)
Updated: HifiMAN HM-801 Portable Music Player Preorder
Looking forward for some impressions\reviews
