Two questions:
1) Any thoughts yet on whether you'll have a program like the "Octa-Adopter" program for the "Pro" series?
2) As more and more of us are using software front ends like Audirvana/Izotope or HQ Player, have you thought about optimizing for the interaction with those players and their ability to upsample material to the optimal input setting of the DAC chip?
Hi.
To answer your questions:
1) "Any thoughts yet on whether you'll have a program like the "Octa-Adopter" program for the "Pro" series?"
Something is afoot. More later on this when it is closer to being soup.
2) "As more and more of us are using software front ends like Audirvana/Izotope or HQ Player, have you thought about optimizing for the interaction with those players and their ability to upsample material to the optimal input setting of the DAC chip?"
The Burr-Brown chipset we use allows for a "Bit-Perfect" and this to us, is the raison d'etrre.
We primarily only like one thing - the sound of unprocessed sound (there are exceptions but they are exactly that).
Our history is that we don't like to Up/OverSample. Information theory and all that.
If you take a look at AMR machines, you will get a feeling for our audio DNA.
To us, sushi tastes nicer than grilled salmon but if one like grilled salmon, then it is still possible.
i. At the PC end with your aforementioned audio players.
ii. At the iDSD, we do include digital filters both a "measure perfect" option and one "measure ok and sound better than the measure perfect" filter, because not everyone likes Sushi.
As some of the staff are more partial to Burger King, you can "have it your way".
With the iDSD micro, iDAC2 micro and iDSD mini/Pro you can already bypass any digital processing in the DAC for PCM and directly stream unmanipulated data to the DAC (Bitperfect mode). Thenano and Retro only bypass the digital filter for sampe rates above 192kHz PCM as they do not have the switchable "Bitperfect" Filter option.
In DSD mode there is
never any digital processing - DSD is always in "digital filter bypass mode" with DSD signals directly send to the analogue filter and no digital processing.
We do not see any Up/OverSampling as "optimisation", other than making very high sample rates availble and allowing digital processing bypass, which is precisely what all digital iFi products (except the original iDAC) allow.
With regard to our ongoing audio software players auditions - as is AMR/iFi's company policy, we do not comment on other manufacturers' products. But what we can say is that what you see us using at shows (watch out for upcoming Bristol Show) and demos is what we find sounds "nicest to our ears". And those are the ones that do not mess with a high-quality, well-recorded music file.
Cheers.