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Originally Posted by ecclesand  Crank up the hype and FOTM machines. I got sucked into the Compass frenzy, but will not make that mistake again with this. It is however, a solid looking piece of gear as was the Compass, but looks certainly aren't everything.
And, the idea of swappable modules is not a new concept (or even an interesting one) as some folks have posted. I have a little Chinese DAC/AMP made by HA INFO that allows me to swap DAC boards. The older Zhaolu's used to allow swapping as well.
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ecclesand,
I understand that you might have been disappointed by the Compass. It is an all purpose entry level product that packs a lot of feature : DAC+Preamp+Headphone amp in one enclosure. I never had the chance to listen to the Compass, but I own the DAC-100 which is the DAC section of the Compass. I bought it because I liked the sound of the Zero DAC before it started having problems. I was looking at that time for a unit that had the same sound signature and that was perhaps better sounding.
When I received it I was quite happy with it because it was better than the Zero DAC and different from the EMU 0404 usb. Because my expectations were not too high, I was quite happy with my purchase.
That is to say, that people shouldn't expect that their Compass should outperform a top tier dac or headphone amp. Audio-gd has many other products in their line up and they are all better than the Compass. What everyone can agree on is that the build quality and the components used in the Compass were of a very high quality for the price (Vishay resistors, discrete output stage, ...). Whether that is good for the sound or not is for every listener to decide.
As for the FUN, I personally think it is a genius idea to have that many modular pieces. You can swap : the usb module, the Digital input module, the DAC module, the opamp module, the gain module and the buffer module ...
These are a lot combinations to play with.
Maybe by using those modules instead of one single board, it will decrease the quality. But I think it is a very good thing because I have always wondered what are the benefits of Current gain vs Voltage or Diamaond output vs. Fet ... So at least this product will let me know what each section of dac/headamp can bring to the table and I will be able to choose more easily gear I haven't listened to when looking at the internals.
I don't believe for one second that it will outperform my current system (dac-19mk3 + C2C) but it will be nice to try and see what an entry level product can bring to the table.
