Updated: HifiMAN HM-801 Portable Music Player Preorder - Page 5

I think developer is focused a lot on how to make good sound and try to provide great possibility of sound tuning to accomodate different taste (through amp module) in a portable rig, which, I think, is already is a great breakthrough. Recently no single portable player itself (imod need an amp and dock etc.) can compare to old school "legendery" rig for many people. I think on the sound quality side, based on Jude review, this product should have great chance to beat the old school legend, and from the UI picture it seems that its not that difficult to operate. Yes there is room of improvement, and its always happen for any products, to have all in one perfect machine is too difficult as it need too many experts invloved and high cost/ time of test, etc. For me this machine if can deliver excellent sound quality and have such many function its already worth buying, just may not be your cup of tea. Actually Sony D50 UI is suck, heavy, not that portable, battery life is not long, and many people still buy it and use it. Why? because of it excellent sound. It's a bit harsh to say that this product does not worth 600 just because its not perfect.

I'm not saying that it is not worth $600 (or $700), it could very well be, I'm just saying that at that price expectations are going to be higher than for a $200 unit.
And it may well be as some point out that I'm just interpreting his words wrong due to him not being a native english speaker (neither am I) but his comments about eq, gapless etc. did to me sound flippant and selfrighteous.

I want to know menu operation in detail...
I like all-around random reproduction.
Is this possible?

nc8000 language can get in the way. I have met and exchanged email/PMs with Fang quite a few times. He is a very nice guy who is passionate about high quality and great sounding products.

So far the products he has brought to life (EF1, OK1, PK1, G1A, etc) are outstanding both in the sound and cost departments.

Just thought I should mention this so people in general do not get the wrong idea. I repeat that not being a native speaker of a language can and will create communication issues. Now back to the regular program.

Fair enough, and I appologice if I was comming on overly rude

[QUOTE=Nankai;5687941]
Modular Amplifier Bay called GanQi Bay. We will provide its spec detail to headphone amplifier builders.

3. Accessories it will include (Like 128GB SDHC card, digital input adaptor jack, etc.)
Accessory: Lithium polymer battery, External Power Supply, USB cable, mini-coaxial adapter"

I thought some one in this thread has already indicated that the SDHC format can only goes up to 32GB. Now Nankai is saying that it will include a 128GB SDHC card. So which is it? 32GB or 128 GB. There is a big difference in the capacity. 32 gb is definitely not big enough and 128 gb is heaven and above expectation and solve a big problem in capacity.

In terms of amp module, I am still not entirely clear as to what is the design of this unit. Are you saying that the amp module 1, is optional, and I can buy it without the amp module and somewhere I can output the signal to a portable amp like Pico or Mustang etc for sound production? and/or 2, the design or the interface of the amp module will be make public for other amp manufacturers like RSA to build one for the Hifiman? or 3, the amp module that comes with the Hifiman is a high quality module and can compare to the existing ones on the market like Pico, Mustang p-51, Minibox E+ etc.

I think your effort is admirable and I deeply appreciate someone who is willing to undertake the risk to start a project like this to fill a void. I will not complaint about the price because this is not a high profitable project. This is a project of love. In fact, this kind of project many times will result in a loss. That is why there are so many vaporwares.

I know we all want our favorite features to be included and me no exception (like support for apple lossless, Dac and amp line out etc), but we should communicate our desire to Nankai in a supportive manner and not in an arguementative manner. To put in all the cost upfront for R/D and time and knowledge to develop a product like this, and not knowing all the constraint to incorporate any features that we want, Nankai deserves every penny that he can profit from it. We need more people like him. And for what is worth, I do not know this guy and I have never purchase andthing from Head Direct. Good luck.

128 GB was mentioned by mistake early on. I'm pretty sure that SDHC will never go above 32 GB but could have gotten it wrong.

But this was mentioned only today by Nankai in Post #56!

No, that is a quote from WindowsX's question

Googling, there aren't any results for 128sdhc (only ssd or sdxc), but there are some references to possible 64sdhc cards. Can anyone clear up the subject? Are there any intrinsic limitations in making a >32 gb sdhc card, or the need to go for sdxc is just to exploit a new technology and for commercial reasons?

There is nothing bigger than 32GB SDHC available, and the probably will never be, due to the upcoming SDXC cards: Secure Digital card - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

One last try for information on which SoC used in the device?

See, this is where I have a problem. You say that EQ is harmful to sound quality? Perhaps it might have been in the analog world, but here in the digital realm, it doesn't make a bit of difference. EQ may not be wanted by some listeners (I don't really use it, myself), but to say that implementing it is harmful to sound quality is wrong at best. In the digital realm, it is either on or off. I haven't seen what SoC you are using for this, but it must be pretty beefy if you can play high APE files. There is no reason why you wouldn't have plenty of power to implement it in software like we do with many devices. Once again, it is either active, or it isn't. There is no way it can affect sound quality when not active provided that the implementation didn't introduce some code defects.

Regarding the second statement in this quote, I agree, but to a point. Even with your goals, there are plenty of ways that you can use to improve battery life that will have no affect on the resulting sound quality which I hope you have at least made an effort to do. These can include many things I mentioned in my first post in this thread - things like scaling down the processor when the power is not needed, turning off components when they are not needed (accessory ports, LCD, certain chips, etc), improving codec efficiency so that the codecs require less power to run, minimizing storage accesses, and even improving the core of the firmware in general. Many of these are things that manufacturers don't bother to do because it simply works and don't want to spend the money for further development. Many manufacturers probably choose to go with lower end hardware for cost and power consumption reasons, but I am merely saying that that is only one side of the coin here and the other side can be looked at without sacrificing any quality whatsoever.

One part where we agree on. It is nice to see that someone is at least attempting to go the other way, and I congratulate you on putting forth this effort.

I stand corrected. Thank you.

There sure is a lot of complaining in a thread about a product that isn't released for sale yet.

Seriously, there are a lot of people missing the point of the HiFiMan. I feel it's a very important product for Head-Fiers. It will truly be the first production, no compromise (within reason), audiophile portable Digital Audio Player. It's ability to run as an external DAC is icing on the cake.

In a sea of iPods, and poor quality, cheap MP3 players, I am very excited to see a product like the HiFiMan come to see the light of day.

-Ed

BTW, Fang.

Are you coming to CanJam, and bringing some HiFiMan's (HiFiMen?) to CanJam for people to listen to?

-Ed