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Zhaolu 2.5

post #1 of 150
8/26/06 at 10:37pm
Thread Starter 
I'm wondering if anyone has any info on the zhaolu 2.5? I think zhaolu 2.0s have cleared out for the most part, so now it's a matter of waiting for the 2.5

I've seen these photos of it so far, and that's about it:
http://coemaudio.com.au/images/265.jpg
http://coemaudio.com.au/images/264.jpg

One thing that I can see for sure is that it doesn't seem to have any balanced out (despite the labelling). Also I've heard that it's supposed to sound a bit more like the zhaolu 1.3, but that could just be a rumour.

Maybe we should put together a zhaolu 2.5 information thread
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post #2 of 150
8/26/06 at 10:39pm
Interesting. What were the differences in sound quality that people talked about between 1.3 and 2.0? Is there an expected price difference with this new unit?
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post #3 of 150
8/26/06 at 10:44pm
Interesting, separate dac, preamp out, and power supply boards. However, there are no balanced outputs which makes it worthless to me anyway. The headamp also seems to have been beefed up, now having the largest heatsink on its transistors.
Very interesting, unfortunatly just not for me.
EDIT: Appears to come with the descrete headamp standard, which explains the beefy heatsink.
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post #4 of 150
8/26/06 at 10:45pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Azure
Interesting. What were the differences in sound quality that people talked about between 1.3 and 2.0? Is there an expected price difference with this new unit?
I dunno unfortunately. Hopefully someone else can fill us in. I emailed COEM to ask about it and he wasn't able to provide any pricing information.

I'll post up if I find out anything though

(ps i wonder who's leg is in that photo???)
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post #5 of 150
8/27/06 at 1:22am
Eddie Wu (http://www.diykits.com.hk/index.html) says the 2.5 will be in next week and posts prices.
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post #6 of 150
8/27/06 at 1:27am
looks like a "lite" 2.0
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post #7 of 150
8/27/06 at 1:45am
Quote:
Originally Posted by educator
Eddie Wu (http://www.diykits.com.hk/index.html) says the 2.5 will be in next week and posts prices.
Looks like he already has at least one price up:
Quote:
Originally Posted by eddie's site
D-2.5 with AD-1852 DA-Chip Price > HK $980.- (126USD)
So, a little more expensive than the stock D-2.0. I would guess better headamp, no balanced outputs, and maybe some other less important changes (as far as im concerned in terms of importance at least).
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post #8 of 150
8/27/06 at 2:13am
That will be interesting to see more pictures of it. Keep us posted.
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post #9 of 150
8/27/06 at 3:33am
Thread Starter 
I asked about it over on the COEM forum:
http://coemaudio.com.au/forums/YaBB....1156504727/0#1

They replied:

Quote:
Hi hugz,

At this moment in time we don't have any technical details about the new DACs.

Prices have gone up for the D2.5, however we will be keeping the prices the same for Australia .


This is an email from Zhaolu:


Quote:
Hello!

After integrating the first set of users' comments on D2, we are correcting it in order to make it more suitable for users DIY as well as in pursuit of a better effect of the tone.
New edition of D2 has now entered the final debugging phase. It is expected to come into market in early September. The detailed information will be given to you by E-mail next week.

Thank you for your concern and support to Zhaolu Product.

"next week" has long gone so I've emailed them again, hopefully they will be able to provide us with more information.


Daniel.
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post #10 of 150
8/27/06 at 3:54am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Azure
Interesting. What were the differences in sound quality that people talked about between 1.3 and 2.0? Is there an expected price difference with this new unit?

From what I've been told, the stock 1.3 walked all over the stock 2.0. Much of the issue with the stock 2.0 was the caps added to protect against opamps being installed backwards and damaging the DAC.

I thought I read somewhere that the next Zhaolu was going to have a discrete output stage. From the second picture, it still looks like op amps there. Maybe I'm wrong.
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post #11 of 150
8/27/06 at 6:50am
Well,after seeing the photo's I think I'll be keeping my Zhaolu D2.0,there is no easy dac board swop on the D2.5 but all the digi processing is done on one large expe$$ive looking board which initially has a 1852 chip.

I must confess I was looking forward to buying an interchangeable 1794 dac board for my D2.0,does this mean this will be no more ?





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post #12 of 150
8/27/06 at 10:02pm
New products come out very quick ! I'm not sure when Zhaolu will tell their customers that D2.0 is end-of-production. So, no more add-on boards will be available too. I don't want to think about spare parts for warranty. Maybe broken D2.0 will be replaced with a new D2.5
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post #13 of 150
8/27/06 at 11:23pm
Very bizarre. Looks like they have went back to a 1.3 approach to the design with the modular direction. The power supply looks completely different than either the 1.3 or 2.0. The discrete headphone amp looks identical to me (in fact I just looked at mine and it IS identical), perhaps the earlier poster who said it looked beefed up was thinking of the smaller stock headphone amp. It's interesting to note the stature of Zhaolu which is a company that isn't driven by their own designs and ideas but rather they are an extension of the Chinese and Asian DIY community which feeds off of one another in approcahes to DIY DAC circuit design which is flourishing over there right now. Probelm is over here it comes off as a bit of a "Grover-esque" image and his UR series inteconnects which seem to come out even more frequently and is viewed as somewhat bizarre among many, although a proven design and has it's fans (what's he up to, UR-8? ). So I guess there will be no D2B with the BB1794 then? Strange indeed. Wei over here at iFi hasn't heard anything more than what you guys know here so he's not sure what the deal is, FYI.
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post #14 of 150
8/28/06 at 12:37am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Sean H
The discrete headphone amp looks identical to me (in fact I just looked at mine and it IS identical), perhaps the earlier poster who said it looked beefed up was thinking of the smaller stock headphone amp.
Yea, i wrote that the headamp looked beefed up because i was thinking of the stock headamp (i dont use mine anyway), and then when i checked against some pictures of the discrete, it looked to be identical. The second time i said it looked beefy was just the very large heatsink that the 5 transistors are on.
But yea, going down all the rows, it appears to have identical parts, unless some of the transistor values were changed. I would guess that its just exactly the same though...
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post #15 of 150
8/28/06 at 4:45am
Thread Starter 
If the headamp is being replaced with the discrete upgade then that explains the small price rise and possibly makes it an even better deal (assuming the DAC is improved also)

Although frequent changes can be frustrating to current owners, as long as the changes are better it's a big win for the community

hopefully more info will surface
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