That's great news.

Nice sale of Matrix Cube 24/192 ASRC DAC

For those of you who ordered on ebay from coolfungadget, did you get a shipping notice after you mentioned the color preference of the amp? I didn't receive any notifications after I was asked the color, which I replied since Sunday night
 
edit: Nevermind tracking received

Quote:

kuze said:

Thanks Purrin, feel free to share more mods.

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Just some ideas - some very crazy - only #1 and #5 below has been tested:

• Solder bypass cap between +15 and -15 rails of opamp. 0.1uF?  
• Buy another one and go balanced with creative use of in and out adapters.
• Replace diodes with soft fast recovery.  (Can't do this with V2 - lacks room on board and may not be as necessary)
• Re-case unit, remove ~400uF caps and replace with big huge honkin' ASC oil/film caps (with wires off the board and caps secured off-board - with maybe smaller lower value bypass caps near on or on the board)
• Solder resistors on DIP socket piggyback adapters for plug-n-play class A.
• Replace transistors (I would have no idea where to begin.)

Class A plug-n-play adapter (avoids accidental destruction of expensive op-amps and save time while experimenting)
 

 
Caps to remove (C21-C24), Jumper C21,C22, BEWARE OF SOURCE DC OFFSET:
 

 
Finally, too lazy right now to open up and post photo of the 0.01uF WIMA bypass cap on bottom of board off the +/- 15 VDC pins of the op-amp.
 
[placeholder for photo]
 
 
 
 
 
I think I've said this before, but I finally find this amp "acceptably good with fairly natural tone" - not that there is anything wrong with the stock configuration, not at all.  I will not hesitate to say that this has got to be one of the best deals period for headphone amps right now (I'm betting that this amp will cost more or almost as much if you purchased every individual component from Digikey, Mouser, etc.)

I still don't understand how this amp sells for under $300 while the Lehmann Black Cube Linear goes for $1,100. Is it all markup? Can anyone even begin to account for the difference? Has anyone identified any price difference when it comes to the internal components? For example if you were to build a Lehmann Linear by hand what would it cost you? Now what about the Matrix V2?

 
Quote:

blackstonejd said:

I still don't understand how this amp sells for under $300 while the Lehmann Black Cube Linear goes for $1,100. Is it all markup? Can anyone even begin to account for the difference? Has anyone identified any price difference when it comes to the internal components? For example if you were to build a Lehmann Linear by hand what would it cost you? Now what about the Matrix V2?

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• Very low labor costs and immense manufacturing competition within China
• Volume purchases of components by factories that tend to make a lot of different kinds of stuff with the same parts
• Willingness of middlemen (coolfungadget/jtam in this case) to work their ass off and allow discounts just to make a sale
• Volume sales approach - consider internal Chinese market where most folks demand value.
• Open discussion of merits of products, i.e. on Head-fi, etc.
• BCL has a much better case and volume knob
• The upper and lower metal shells of my M-stage case are off by about 0.1mm. The screw holes are not perfectly aligned with the case.  But I'm laughing all the all to the bank, while folks like SP Wild (who has a real BLC, while happy for all of us, can perhaps only grin and bear it )

 
This is very difficult for us American (US) citizens or westerners to fathom.  I hate to say it, but anything and everything in "high-end" audio (with the exception of digital) was solved and designed two generations ago.  What the Chinese manufacturers (enabled with the free flow of discourse in an open Internet) have done is to bring higher end audio to the masses.  Traditionally high-end audio was purely the domain of a few manufacturers in western nations.  It was also difficult for them to stay in business.  Costs were kept intentionally high, volume was low, equipment was marketed to men with money to burn, branding was essential.  
 
Here's an analogy: I always make fun of my wife's cosmetic, skin care, etc. stuff, which can be pretty expensive.  There is so much marketing, B.S., testimonials from doctors, "experts", independent tests, on how great a skin care cream is, etc.  This actually works - it appeals to woman's vanity.  Now doesn't this all sound a little bit familiar?
 
To put things into perspective, the XBOX, which is a far more complex device costs less than the M-Stage.
--
 
Looking at some internal pics of the Lehmann, the parts do not seem to be higher cost nor necessarily quality better. I see some German / European components in there, but this is pretty normal as European manufacturers tend to have a sense of national pride and therefore use parts made there rather going for the best bottom-line value.
 
The M-Stage is similar to a two channel PPA with simplified diamond buffer (no CCS circuit). A PPA will cost between $200-$300 in parts alone. The parts quality of the M-Stage is indeed pretty good, just one step below magical audiophile parts like Blackgate caps, etc.

 
Quote:

purrin said:

 
 

• Very low labor costs and immense manufacturing competition within China
• Volume purchases of components by factories that tend to make a lot of different kinds of stuff with the same parts
• Willingness of middlemen (coolfungadget/jtam in this case) to work their ass off and allow discounts just to make a sale
• Volume sales approach - consider internal Chinese market where most folks demand value.
• Open discussion of merits of products, i.e. on Head-fi, etc.
• BCL has a much better case and volume knob

 
This is very difficult for us American (US) citizens or westerners to fathom.  I hate to say it, but anything and everything in "high-end" audio (with the exception of digital) was solved and designed two generations ago.  What the Chinese manufacturers (enabled with the free flow of discourse in an open Internet) have done is to bring higher end audio to the masses.  Traditionally high-end audio was purely the domain of a few manufacturers in western nations.  It was also difficult for them to stay in business.  Costs were kept intentionally high, volume was low, equipment was marketed to men with money to burn, branding was essential.  
 
Here's an analogy: I always make fun of my wife's cosmetic, skin care, etc. stuff, which can be pretty expensive.  There is so much marketing, B.S., testimonials from doctors, "experts", independent tests, on how great a skin care cream is, etc.  This actually works - it appeals to women's vanity.  Now doesn't this all sound a little bit familiar?
 
To put things into perspective, the XBOX, which is a far more complex device costs less than the M-Stage.
--
 
Looking at some internal pics of the Lehmann, the parts do not seem to be higher cost nor necessarily quality better. I see some German / European components in there, but this is pretty normal as European designers and manufacturers tend to have greater national pride and use parts made there rather going for the best bottom-line value.
 
The M-Stage is similar to a two channel PPA with simplified diamond buffer (no CCS circuit). A PPA will cost between $200-$300 in parts alone. The parts quality of the M-Stage is indeed pretty good, just one step below magical audiophile parts like Blackgate caps, etc.

Click to expand...

Excellent analogy. There is also another reason the Lehman is selling at that price. There is a distributor who sells to the stores that carry it at a 30 percent increase from 30-40 percent increase and then the stores put another 50 points on top. Here your buying from the Jeffrey and he is in essence the distributor or maybe even the manufacturer as this is not clear. The labor cost in China is very inexpensive and the cost to manufacture this product is not much. Check out parts cost caps are about 3.00 Opamps are less than 4.000 parts are not very expensive/ Still no has compared them side by side but I tell you for this money I do not believe this amp can be beat IMO.

Echo...
 
Yesterday we did an A/B listening with Matrix mini-i and Benchmark DAC1u. Only comparing the D/A part, we can't really tell the difference.
 
Many oversea distributors have approached me and showed interest to resell our products. I was excited in the beginning but sad to know that they want 50% margin at the end. I decided to stick with eBay and direct sale channels to keep a fair price/performance ratio.
 
Sorry for off the topic...
 
Quote:

frank i said:

 

Excellent analogy. There is also another reason the Lehman is selling at that price. There is a distributor who sells to the stores that carry it at a 30 percent increase from 30-40 percent increase and then the stores put another 50 points on top. Here your buying from the Jeffrey and he is in essence the distributor or maybe even the manufacturer as this is not clear. The labor cost in China is very inexpensive and the cost to manufacture this product is not much. Check out parts cost caps are about 3.00 Opamps are less than 4.000 parts are not very expensive/ Still no has compared them side by side but I tell you for this money I do not believe this amp can be beat IMO.

Click to expand...

Quote:

jtam said:

Echo...
 
Yesterday we did an A/B listening with Matrix mini-i and Benchmark DAC1u. Only comparing the D/A part, we can't really tell the difference.
 
Many oversea distributors have approached me and showed interest to resell our products. I was excited in the beginning but sad to know that they want 50% margin at the end. I decided to stick with eBay and direct sale channels to keep a fair price/performance ratio.
 
Sorry for off the topic...
 

 

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Is the quality of the Cube DAC section better than the mini-i?
 
Also, I bought the m-stage from you a few months ago. I have to say that it's a great product and the excellent customer service helped as well.

First, the two DACs use different DA chip from different manufacturer. Second, it's always difficult to say good or bad for products with similar price and tech specs. Let alone different headphones can give you totally different experience. I have started to ship the first batch of "cube". Let's wait and see the reaction.
 
Quote:

clams said:

Is the quality of the Cube DAC section better than the mini-i?
 
Also, I bought the m-stage from you a few months ago. I have to say that it's a great product and the excellent customer service helped as well.

Click to expand...

 

The M-Stage is similar to a two channel PPA with simplified diamond buffer (no CCS circuit). A PPA will cost between $200-$300 in parts alone. The parts quality of the M-Stage is indeed pretty good, just one step below magical audiophile parts like Blackgate caps, etc.

Click to expand...

 
If your interested look at the Lovely Cube thread, on page 2 there is a complete list of all parts needed for the build. Find all the parts on Mouser or Digi-Key and I suspect they would be close to or higher then the $100 the ebay seller is asking for a fully populated board. Parts in both M-Stage and Lovely Cube are very good, top of the line of just one step down from top of the line branded components. If price were no object you can probably build one with all top of the line boutique parts and it may still cost less then a real Lehmann. 

I just plumped down my cash for one of these(given they were discounted today otherwise I would of waited a bit longer), going to use it with the Maverick Audio D1 DAC output and AKG-K702's.  Read earlier in this thread that +10db setting is the best for them, is this accurate?  What would the implications be between the different gain settings besides the obvious volume gain.
 
I was going to splurge on the Yulong D100 but money is a little bit tight atm and this amp fixes most of the problems I have with the D1's HPA as far as audible differences and is still a better HPA even if slightly so than the D100 so its future proof for when I do make that upgrade.(The HD800's are in my HP upgrade path as well some time in a long future.

+10db gain sounds about right.  Other implications?  Could be some superstition or voodoo magic beliefs on my part, but I don't like to run op-amps at zero (unity) gain because I don't think they sound their best.  I still run at +10db gain even for highly efficient headphones like Grados.

Quote:

purrin said:

+10db gain sounds about right.  Other implications?  Could be some superstition or voodoo magic beliefs on my part, but I don't like to run op-amps at zero gain because I don't think they sound their best.  I still run at +10db gain even for highly efficient headphones like Grados.

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Thanks much~