<Renewed at 2012/03/12>The new HiFiMAN 802 & New UI named "Tai-Chi" - Page 25

Errmmm

 

 

Two ES9018 DSP chips when one ES9018 is more than capable to do 8 channels at a silly -133 DNR in 2 channel mode which will need 24/192 to even take advantage of that????

 

Why o why?!?! I could MAYBE see if they used the ES9012 but dual ES9018? Power a 16 channel system (read theater) without ANY issues!

 

Easy $1300 price tag.

They already mentioned 5999 RMB on the official site so that should be like 950 bucks or so.

 

Very curious about the price tag of new balanced card amplifier module. The one for HM-801 was $249 with a cable included.

Well, they did say (which I didn't translate) that they have made a prototype using a single ES9018. The result is good but then they develop a dual version and find it to be even better. That's their reasoning whether you like it or not. Hey, no one say you need to buy it.

 

Buying or not buying has nothing to do with a god aweful design choice for sake of say.. hey WE HAVE TWO.. TWO IS BETTER THAN ONE!!!

 

pssst.. Two is not better than one.

 

For instance the first question I can come up. are they buffering and splitting the input stream to both DSP? If so how are they making sure both streams are spot on in sync? How are they making sure both OUTPUTS of whatever channels they are using are also in sync??

 

 

Knowing electronics and software developement.

 

Power savings alone using one v two is significant. Sound better? as they say, where is the proof (ie DNR, TH+D graphs, jitter comparison and measurements etc). Otherwise it is an absolutely silly and wasteful design given the limited battery capacity already in use. Now if the object is to see how fast it can chew through a battery.. more power to them. Hell they should throw in 4!! One for the positive leg and one for the negative leg.. make it a full balanced output and even more wasteful!

 

lol

 

Agreed. Don't see the point of using 2. Probably for bragging rights. And charging more for 'higher performance' amp modules is crap.

 

Good to see SDXC card support though. Wonder what the onboard memory will be like. I'll see if my friend wants to exchange his HM801 for this, would be good to compare it to the DX100.

 

Also, I wonder if they fixed the low level channel imbalance issues from the HM-801.

 

I get the uneasy feeling that there might not be any on-board memory at all. I hope I'm wrong about this because it really would be shameful on a player of this calibre and price.

That might be a very accurate guess.

Unless you have heard or seen both prototype, I think we are merely guessing at best at this point and only talking about what Fang has posted so far. I think the proof, if HifiMan is willing to show them, is to have two design showcase at the next major meeting with a blind listening rig, then listener can decide which is the better sounding DAP. Of course, that is assuming they are confident enough in their design.


Every HifiMan DAP so far has some on board memory. In fact, a few of them become larger over the year, so I really don't see how it can be memory-less, especially if you consider where firmware will be stored. But I get your point - 8GB or 16GB probably isn't enough for DAP on this caliber. 32GB and above makes much more sense.

Glad to hear this has full support for the SDXC format (in the future it will use an extra pin apparently). That's great for a high-end player. We'll be able to use this and have as large of a collection as we want really easily.

I hope that the SDXC format mean that the device will support exFAT filesystem, because if you format a SDXC card in FAT32 you void your waranty. That what Sandisk support told me when my SDXC card has failed with I/O errors ...

 

Edit : The extra pin is for faster transfer and the exFAT is for files larger than 4 Gigs.

Edited by Migou67 - 8/16/12 at 7:28am

You are still doing a lot off of a single power supply track. It is one of the reasons some designers don't like chips in the first place. I know of other manufacturers that use a mono vs stereo chip or single channel of a stereo chip simply because of the lowered noise and better current capability. (quiter, more stable and dynamic in real world conditions)

 

 

Wow, am I alone in finding the above extremely arrogant and condescending?

 

 

ALL of us are extremely aware that we are discussing a device in the region of a thousand bucks, here. That's precisely the point; We're not stupid or naive and you'd do well to remember and respect that about your potential customers. For that kind of money, I expect:

 

1) at least 32gb on-board memory, simply so that it doesn't become a useless $1,000 brick in the absence of a memory card

 

and

 

2) I don't expect to be patronized by the supplier.

 

 

I really don't think that's too much to ask..

 

SDXC was designed to support up to 2 TB. There is no such animal at this time. Not even in labarotories of Micron, Toshiba, IBM etc. 128GB are the biggest for the time being.

 

With that said, relying on SDXC or any EXTERNAL card for OS memory is silly regardless if the SDXC is available today with 2TB. That is why all the phones like the Iphone have that 512MB of dedicated ram outside of the 16GB/32GB/64GB, or 2 GB of dedicated RAM onboard plus the SDXC slot on the Samsung Galaxy SIII. the cost of 64GB onboard is not pricey at mass levels (read 1000+ units). I should know as I dealt with more than enough blu-ray player and "connected" tvs that have onbaord memory during initial procurement and engineering phase to remember those numbers. At that time, the RAM prices were alot higher.

Edited by figgie - 8/16/12 at 8:08am

 

You're not alone.

 

I've packed my DX100 full of music and I rarely have any time to listen to all of it. I have extensive choice and if I feel like spoiling myself I might buy a micro SD card when I have some spare cash in the future.

 

Considering how small a 128gb micro SD card is I don't see how much space it would save to get rid of all onboard memory and how useful that tiny amount of space could be in fitting DAC's, etc. Sounds like BS to me.

 

The HM-901 costs a luxury. When I get it I expect ultimate convenience. I don't want to be faced with further expenses like SD card just to be able to use the damn device. And I expect it to sound top notch for that price, and not screw me over and try to squeeze out more hard earned cash just to reach the potential of the device.

 

Frankly this all sounds like crap to me. Why would you need two 8-channel DAC chips? For a portable player. How will that affect the battery life?

 

Fang, audiophiles want great sound. But it is easily possible to achieve great sound whilst having a very convenient and easy-to-use device. An O2/ODAC combo, for example, costs at the very most $250 and provides an extremely high fidelity signal with inaudible distortion. iBasso has achieved that in a portable player that does a great job of being both useable and convenient. They provided a whole package that you could just pick up and be happy with. They also didn't insult their potential customer's intelligence with arrogant posts. It will only help you if you treat your potential customers with some respect and support your posts with evidence and objective reasoning and stop making unsupported claims like: "Directly using the digital volume control from the DAC chip default set up, no matter the manufacturer want to call it "step" or not,  is a kind of lazy, and will not sound as good."

 

In short, some of your comments seem ridiculous (and also rather rude) to me and lack credibility in my eyes. I don't believe your claims but I will watch on with great interest to see what others report.