Updated: HifiMAN HM-801 Portable Music Player Preorder - Page 24

Good news I was waiting for!
Not only me, my Ed8 and JH13 were eagerly waiting for this great player as well

Thanks Nankai i wanna say thank you for taking your product so seriously and guarded the quality of your product

i m very appreciate of your transparent and detail explanation of whats happening and how you measure your quality control ! u r awesome !

love your work ,keep up the great job ~ and push and prove MIC is also great

Very nice cosmetic improvement, Fang.

Will keep our HM-801's looking in mint condition even longer.

-Ed

update to hifiman page, it now cites september 2009 as date

I look forward to viewing this, preferably in my hands.

Since the HM-801 now supports 24b/96khz, anyone know if support of 24b/192khz depends on firmware or higher-grade hardware? Just wondering, considering Blu-Ray Audio's the latter and all.

hardware. and blu ray audio would i presume, not be simple stereo right? as it wont pass multi channel,ac3,dts etc

Very very cool. With this information, I can foresee Ray pumping out something pretty quickly and maybe Justin too. It would be really incredible to be able to swap between amps while on the go. This will turn out to be the de facto standard on audiophile portable nirvana

dont let xin get his hands on this schematic!!!!

I asked Justin about it before, it doesn't seem like he'll be doing anything. Maybe Ray though.

Well, I figure that if this portable unit really takes off, particularly around these parts, an amp by someone like Ray or Justin or Jan would surely do very well. How great to NOT have to have a separate unit strapped to the DAP + cables etc.

If Justin can't/won't do it any time soon, I could definitely see Ray getting one out for the community. Assuming the amp in the HM-801 is just adequate. If it rocks, maybe Ray would hesitate as well, but we are obsessive and we do like options!

I see the HiFiMan and the JH-13 Pro as being the new Holy-Grail of portable audio.

it could be a sensitive topic but overall a very good opportunity i think what happen is that in a way HiFiMan is sort of competitor to the Ray & Justin 's product as well and before they r clear about the direction of what Head-Direct wants to do, they probably dont wanna be involve in helping their competitor ( i mean seriously, dont tell me no one thought about this ? )

on the business side HiFiMan probides a platform for the AMP builder but one would wonder if this also restricted them and also could squeeze the profit margin as if u r growing under one rooth, you can only grow this big, how ever if you built a completely new one and stand alone one by yourself under your own brand then you control what ever the price you like to name and enjoy the profit margin all to yourself.

but the funny thing is that it's a free market system right now Nankai provides the platform and also it's open one for people who's interest in getting involve. and this provides an opportunity for AMP builder who were never hear before to pop up out of no where as long as they could prove themself in that tiny space

Ray and Justin is Highly regarded and hence their brand and their territory are protected well~ but i could see this as a chance for unknown small AMP builder as compare to building stand alone AMP and just hoping some one might one day pick up and talk about it on here ~ its much harder that way. while if they can push their name out from HiFiMan, then later they can start building their own products under their own brand

so i think people should be flexible about it~ otherwise by the time you realize it might just be too late as new guys on the block just found a opportunity to penetrate the market share and dont say you never figure

Good and interesting points. I suppose first off, the amp or amps offered by Head-direct may be completely awesome and for an ES3X or a JH13, it may be all that is needed to hit nirvana. Imagine lossless files, a great DAC AND a great AMP + the best IEMs on the planet. For personal listening systems it would be hard to best. If this platform does take off however, it is hard to argue that since the module specs are open, any amp builder could try to sell a great amp for a system that many already own.

The key will be in determining overall numbers. If the market penetration is large here at Head-fi alone, I'm telling you straight up that VERY few people will want to have multiple units stacked when on the go. For something like an IEM, clean solid power is all that is needed, particularly when they are 120db or more. I mean, one can breathe on some ES3Xs and power those things.

For larger phones, different amps could come in handy. I hope to use this as a desktop system at work. Plug it in, and away I go! Some might want to amp larger headphones with it and if so, a swapping of amp modules would be very convenient rather than an an additional device however slim.

Of course there will be others still who want their toys and love seeing stacks of gear everywhere they go. Others who will prefer the sound of other offerings or the capacities or functionality of other units. But for those of us with the HM-801, at least for me, the thrill is going to be having a good amount of music in my wallet in the form of tiny cards that are easily swappable into a device that is geared towards audiophiles for sound and IEM lovers for the background noise. All in one nice slick package.