Info on XiangSheng DAC-01

Sells on ebay for $199

Its on our site...

nt

Anyone tried this?

Comments on performance would be much appreciated.

Also is it NOS or OS dac?

I just received mine yesterday. I'm in the process of burning it in. Out of the box the sound was very harsh, but after the first ten hours of burn in it began to settle down. After listening to it this morning, it has improved a great deal. It's now sounding airy with a smooth midrange. I have a nos 5670 that I plan to roll a little bit later, but with the stock tube there isn't much difference from the opamp output. The tube out is a little smoother and 3 dimensional, but it's very subtle. I will say that after looking at the specs, I was skeptical that the headphone out would really be that powerful. Well let say that the headphone amp is a beast. It pushes my 600ohm sextetts to insane levels. There's no need to ever go past 10:00 on the volume knob. 12:00 would be insanely loud. Anything past that may result in permanent damage. The dac is nice. I actually prefer it to the dac in the compass. The headphone amp is at least on par with the amp in the compass. The compass amp is smoother but with less detail. This is well worth the 187.00 I paid and IMO it's worth the 300.00 pacific valve and grant fidelity is charging. The only problem I have is the outputs are very hot. I had ordered mine configured in mode "b" which bypasses the volume knob for both the outputs. I can go back in and change it just by changing a plug which I may do because my receiver clips with this plugged in. Non of my other amps have this problem. In fact with my stax and ming da amps, the signal is very powerful and clean. My receiver is just limited on the input volts it can accept. I plan to do a review once I finish burning this in.

I've got a Maverick (supposedly the same thing but in black) in the post. From what i've seen it's one of the few DAC/head-amp/pre-amps on the market that can actually replace a preamp, other options being the Compass and Aune.

BTW Maverick is offering free world wide delivory by DHL ATM.

I would avoid buying Xiangsheng products since they screwed me on my purchase of one of their tube hyrbid amplifiers. In China, they promised me that their amp which includes a 110/220V voltage switch would work in China and Canada/US. Upon returning to Canada, I'm left with a dead amplifer, and Xiangsheng's customer service refuses to fix the problem.

Haoting: You need to post this kind of thing in the vendor feedback forum instead of just going around to every thread that mentions the company and trashing it.

Currawong, I'm just wiping my slate clean from endorsing Xiangsheng's products. Actually, I'm kinda surprised and glad Xiangsheng (aka Maverick) has become the "flavour of the month" on Head-Fi, taking over your Compass dac/head amp that you've pitched for months.

I didn't pitch it, as you put it. You say that because you were pitching Xiangsheng left-right and center whether it was appropriate or not, ie: in threads that had nothing to do with them. Now you are going around slagging them off in the same manner because of your customer issue.

Since you mention the Compass, and since other people will read this: I encouraged its creation in the hope it would replace the popular but troublesome Zero with a reliable alternative and be something at an entry level price. That didn't quite happen. Since then quite a few seemingly good products from a few companies have appeared which fulfil that (NuForce, iBasso and Head Direct/Hifiman come to mind), so it's moot. I don't judge companies on my experience, or single experiences alone, something which you might consider.

personally I appreciate when someone warns me about a deal gone bad regardless of where it has been posted. But I understand if forum rules dictate other ways

Amen to that! Currawong can give second/third/fourth chances to sub-par companies with inferior products or horrible customer service, but definitely not me.

That's the end of this discussion.

x2

who actually goes to the vendor feedback forums anyway?

Google does.

You might actually ask "Who Googles a company and/or product before buying it?"