musicheaven said:

 
It is still happening but the pace has somewhat slowed down, now you are talking about 6 months to a year before the fastest and best PC comes out, look at SSD drives now, that was/is the rage but larger capacity is still too costly.
 
It goes without saying that the one who is patient, will be the richest man among others. It is people like us that spends sizable amount of money on gears that will be eventually poor.

 
I think we have our cake and eat it too! I find that by establishing a gear budget that kind put a stop to how far I can go buying new equipment, my rules are simple: fix amount of money which can only be replenished  by either selling some old gears or making money from a hobby. Other than that, that's it. So that makes me become patient and only spend the amount of money where my budget can take it and I feel I still have some cash left for other items, else sell or hobby cause if I reach the bottom, I won't be happy!

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Not in the scale like the old days, every piece of upgrade was substantial. Adding a video ram to a video card adds substantial improvement. Every 10 Mhz overclock is substantial. All applications see benefits. Nowadays even a 5 year old computer is still usable.  The applications that see benefit for an upgrade today are high-end games and benchmarks. Put on a 256 GB SSD and you don't need to upgrade it till it stops working. Just throw non-system files/data to a NAS with cheap terabytes of HDD.

 
Now we see a lot of different players. As the market for hi-res DAP grows big names will join to take a share of the pie. Then we will see a consolidation and or merger. We have Sony on board now, I'm curious if we see another big name joining the party.
 
Fiio and Ibasso reminds me of Acer and Dell of the early days of PC.

lanzky said:

  Ack. What to hock off this time to raise the funds? Furniture, kidney, first born? Must own!

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LOL  that makes two of us

don lehrer said:

  LOL 

 that makes two of us

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i wiill take a diff path
 
steal other ppl's kidneys

sardar17 said:

  i wiill take a diff path
 
steal other ppl's kidneys

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I keep it ethical, I only steal kidneys from people carrying donor cards

dc-k said:

  I keep it ethical, I only steal kidneys from people carrying donor cards

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lol,we must be ashamed of ourselves

jamato8 said:

  The ZX1 is interesting but no slot and I don't want just internal memory. The price, IMO, is too high for what you are getting. I have read it sounds very good, and that is great but I don't understand why they did not go with a SD micro slot. For the DX90, I have plenty of cards with different types of music and that is all I need but I respect differing opinions. It's all good and getting better. 

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expansion is important to me as well. Perhaps we're both old school but I also understand the use of 2 DAC chips and defer to IBasso here. Also like proven technologies. Hard to know what you don't know.
 

purk said:

  The price is on a high side but not too high, IMO.  What I like about it is the "S-master Pro" digital amp module and the ability to enjoy Andriod & the web on one device as well as an excellent all-in-one device.  Yes, I agree with you that an expansion slot would have been nice but 128GB of on board should be suffice.  Having an 128gb on board and powerful cpu should make scanning files much faster than other DAPs, same can be said with transferring the content.  Plus I can always stream additional hi-rez data from my wireless hard drive such as the Seagate Satellite drive.  The battery life on the ZX-1 is over 20 hours playing hi-rez files according to Turok.    I think having a huge screen is great b/c I want an all-in-one device that also sound top class.

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S-Pro master is just a class D output amp with all the good and bad that can come with it. Class D amps aren't generally favored for home use but it seems they got it pretty right for this purpose. Best one I heard for home use had a linear power supply and good size output chokes. Not things that we'll see here. They are very efficient but Sony haven't reinvented the wheel. They made their 1st class D amplifier almost 40 years ago. It's not new tech.
 
Makers like FiiO and IBasso can choose from a variety of devices and proven tech. Even using output coupling caps has certain advantages over active dc cancelling. Everything is trade offs, including the Super Duper S-Pro Master Blaster amplifier. Sorry, it's not a dig of the device, just the marketing terminology to be bantered about by fans.
  I don't think we should tell others what storage type will suffice just because it does for you. With 24/192 files 128gb will you'll get about 60 albums. Try streaming 24/192 wirelessly. It may not work as well as you suppose and you're now carrying 2 devices around. 
 That said, I think it's great that you found your personal perfect DAP. 

Looks great to me!

Subbed!

jamato8 said:

  The ZX1 is interesting but no slot and I don't want just internal memory. The price, IMO, is too high for what you are getting. I have read it sounds very good, and that is great but I don't understand why they did not go with a SD micro slot. For the DX90, I have plenty of cards with different types of music and that is all I need but I respect differing opinions. It's all good and getting better. 

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I'd guess to avoid customers breaking it. The more you can plug-in, the more customers bring theirs back broken claiming warranty issues which were their fault. The other reason is they don't expect people to fill one with anywhere near 128GB of music.
 

hiflight said:

 

don lehrer said:

I have a wish list for iBasso

one DX90 with
1. 128 GB internal memory
2. Dual micro SD card slot
3. Full USB DAC support.
4. Optical, Coax and USB out mode (Split on the USB between DAC (prefer) or OTG)
5. Dual DAC
6. Stable FW (with updates and customer support for the next 5years?)
7- 3Gain switch
8. Loooong life battery
9. User friendly battery replaceable
10. Leather case or silicon case (already available by the release date)

more to come...

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Price: $1250.00!

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Centrance M8 + whatever device, and it has...
 

Originally Posted by AmberOzL /img/forum/go_quote.gif
 
11. Balanced out.

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But it is a brick! A good-sounding, feature-overkill brick though.
 

jamato8 said:

  Geez, and 2 months to wait. Gahh. . . . part of the debate I believe shows how informed some are. Good questions and possibilities. One thing I know for sure. . . the UI will be ready. lol 

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And how many YEARS in total have we been waiting for gear now?
 
The UI will be ready? Really? I have a bridge to sell you! 
 
I can only hope though. I wouldn't have sold the DX100 if the software wasn't such a battery-sucking [insert rude word here].  

currawong said:

   
I'd guess to avoid customers breaking it. The more you can plug-in, the more customers bring theirs back broken claiming warranty issues which were their fault. The other reason is they don't expect people to fill one with anywhere near 128GB of music.
 
 

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That's one way of looking at it but we can also interpret that they wish customers to pay for bigger storage higher end model in the future similar to ipod.
With their high res focus, it is not unusual to have more than 128gb of music.

currawong said:

   
I'd guess to avoid customers breaking it. The more you can plug-in, the more customers bring theirs back broken claiming warranty issues which were their fault. The other reason is they don't expect people to fill one with anywhere near 128GB of music.
 
The UI will be ready? Really? I have a bridge to sell you! 

 
I can only hope though. I wouldn't have sold the DX100 if the software wasn't such a battery-sucking [insert rude word here].

 

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I can't buy the 128gb would be more than enough. For hires that isn't that many files and I already have 6X64gb and 5X32gb sd cards. The 128gb would require me to change what was on the DAP and I would prefer to just plug in a card. I haven't read of any problems with inserting the cards as far as breakage. I am sure there is a case here or there but I don't think I could blame the manufacture for that if properly designed. Too many daps are using the slot for there to be any real issues. If there were I don't think they would continue to use them. 
 
The UI for the DX90 will be the same as the DX50. It is pretty polished now. I have run into zero problems with 1.2.7 and gapless is great and sounds natural now on live recorded music. Run time on the Dx90 supposed to be 9 to 11 hours. 

currawong said:

   
I'd guess to avoid customers breaking it. The more you can plug-in, the more customers bring theirs back broken claiming warranty issues which were their fault. The other reason is they don't expect people to fill one with anywhere near 128GB of music.
 
 
Centrance M8 + whatever device, and it has...
 
 
But it is a brick! A good-sounding, feature-overkill brick though.
 
 
And how many YEARS in total have we been waiting for gear now?
 
The UI will be ready? Really? I have a bridge to sell you! 

 
I can only hope though. I wouldn't have sold the DX100 if the software wasn't such a battery-sucking [insert rude word here].

 

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My ZX1 is already full . But anyhow, IMHO for those who are asking for for microSD card slots for the purpose of a future larger capacity cards may not have considered the DAP's CPU/memory specs in mind. For me even with 2x64GB with the AK1x0 the DAP started to get somewhat slow in searching/scrolling/indexing - even slower with the DX100. I'm happier with a faster capability DAP with fixed storage than with a slow DAP with copious amount of storage behind it.

anakchan said:

   
My ZX1 is already full . But anyhow, IMHO for those who are asking for for microSD card slots for the purpose of a future larger capacity cards may not have considered the DAP's CPU/memory specs in mind. For me even with 2x64GB with the AK1x0 the DAP started to get somewhat slow in searching/scrolling/indexing - even slower with the DX100. I'm happier with a faster capability DAP with fixed storage than with a slow DAP with copious amount of storage behind it.

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Also not to forget, microsd cards do "Suck" more battery and shortens its life.

I have my DX100 fully loaded, internal and a 64gb in the slot and it is fast, very fast. One album to another, is snappy.
 
Anyway, looking forward to the DX90 and the possibilities. 

jamato8 said:

I have my DX100 fully loaded, internal and a 64gb in the slot and it is fast, very fast. One album to another, is snappy.

Anyway, looking forward to the DX90 and the possibilities. 

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I can see some people are not going to get the DX90 , more for others

+1

One more source

I have been listening to the DX100 this afternoon with my rewired TH900 directly out, no amp, and the sound is truly excellent. If the DX90 can come close to this it will be a joy. Realizing that there will be two Sabre dacs, also that they are a different model but same basic sound, I wonder if it could exceed? Well iBasso has the DX100 as a bench mark so they have the right sound to shoot for. IMO