So I had stored my T90 in the pleather case that they came with, unused for about a year. When I recently took them out I noticed that the headband was coming apart. Easier to explain with a picture: The rest of the headphones was fine, including the earpads. Any idea what could cause this...

  Hugo is $1,000 in China. Battery making up for 40% of the cost is just silly. 

    This is what I'm interested in too. Here they cost the same, double the price of a last gen Hugo...  

Ah, new Hugo coming out. That explains the recent price drops down to $1000 for the original Hugo around these parts. They probably want to clear the storage.  

The price you can buy a Chord Hugo in China is between 8,000-10,000 RMB, depending on the seller. Seen it at 8,500 ($1,225) at absolutely legit sellers that have 7-day no questions asked return policy.    Also seen on erji (think chinese head-fi) second hand for around 6,000 RMB by members. 

  The biggest change will be the headphones. I would start with those. Then the DAC. Since you already have a passable amp, depending on your choice of headphones you can upgrade that the last. 

  http://www.seowon-audio.com/store/c1/Featured_Products.html

  Thanks! Wow that was hard to find. Here is the non-international Taobao link: https://item.taobao.com/item.htm?spm=a230r.1.14.1.bZ8GJX&id=40193288881&ns=1&abbucket=16#detail   2900 rmb is not cheap though. Not sure if I should get one just out of curiosity. @stuartmc you reckon a guy who...

Hey guys what is this Tanly everyone is talking about? I can't find one for sale anywhere. Is it Chinese? If anyone can point me to a Chinese link to buy one I'll be super grateful.

  I have one too by the way. Seems OK.

  Gustard manufactures Gustard H10. The company has no website. The closest you can get is this: http://www.seowon-audio.com/ 

  I happen to have all the mentioned. H10 sounds fine with ODAC to me. H10 with X12 is better across the board than ODAC/O2 is. My bassiest headphones are probably HE400 and H10 does remarkably good job with them, so may not be a fair comparison with whatever you have. T90 sounds fuller with...

  He said he can tell you what works well, which is 5532 and 5534, but it's hard to say about stuff that the amp is not designed around. You really just need to try.

  So, the original design uses two dual op amps which are 5532, and two single which are 134. Gustard recommends sticking with 5532 and 5534 when you swamp them out.     Edit: Oh and there is a discontinued brand that you can recognize by a big S. In China we just call it "big S". Those are a...

  Can you do some simple soldering and have a multimeter? Use DC20V to measure R22 to ground, that should be 1.6V. R22 resistor is the one next to 100M crystal. If it shows 0.x V or 3V, it means the crystal has failed. Replacing it will fix the problem.   If it does show 1.6V, or if you have...