[musicday]

Wow thanks for posting that.Now you may turn away many potential Alien buyers with your statements.Life is good.

 

[T.R.A.N.C.E.]

Yep, pretty happy with myself, I just knew something must be up with Alien's internal's given how bland and unremarkable it sounded to me. There's no tricking me 

 

[BruceBanner]

  The truth about Alien, a most unremarkable dap...
 

 
 
 
 
Bottom right square chip is the DAC and amp, Cirrus CS42I52CNZ. a budget, low power, space saving combined chip solution that is primarily targeted at smartphones, and no it is not a high fidelity part, 91dB dynamic range, weak inbuilt amp using a simple charge pump circuit. In fact most modern smart phones have a better dac and amp than Alien's...
 
Top right chip next to the sd slot is the memory card reader, GL827L. It has it's own clock which is good.
 
Big middle chip is the CPU, above it the TCXO.
 
Top left chip is the lithium-ion battery charger, TP4056.
 
Bottom left chip is a data flip-flop, for button inputs I presume, CM013B.
 
The smaller black chips are voltage regulators.
 
Nothing on the other side of pcb, just the battery, li-ion polymer, 4.51Whr.
 
Conclusion: I feel ripped off. Alien should cost half of what it does. This seems to be the running theme with shozy products. The insides of shozy magic and aegis are also unremarkable compared to their price, and more importantly compared to competitor products.
 
Aliens circuit is well thought out, but is extremely simple and mediocre in component, the issue is it's price is ridiculous, the Fiio X3ii is at the same price point, and is leagues better, it would also cost Fiio a heck of a lot more to build X3ii than it costs Shozy to build Alien. Even at cheaper price points, why would you buy Alien over the cheaper yet better Xduoo X3?
 
Shozy seem to think they are entitled to higher profit margins for their mediocre designs, and their other products also indicate the same thing. I will not be buying from Shozy ever again, and I see no reason why anyone should when there are unquestionably better products to be had. Shozy remind me of Hisoundaudio, another rip-off merchant selling mediocre designs for more than their worth.

 
Nice, well done!
 
I for one am glad the Alien has been probed good and proper this time, with its guts all exposed! I wouldn't know what those chips are, how good they are or price etc.
Still, I was a fan of the Shozy, still am to a certain degree. From all the DAPs and phones I have tried it feels like it has a nice warm signature with a good degree of air and spaciousness/imaging. But then, I am also an avid believer in 'new toy syndrome' and placebos and what not. I haven't used my Alien in a number of months, instead been very content with the AP100.
I have now come across the Colorfly C3 (which I'll review in due time), I will be digging out my A/B switch and putting it against the Shozy and AP100 and see where I feel it slots into the mix.
One thing I would say with a degree of confidence is that I have never come across a DAP or phone that has such a black background (paired with a couple of IEMs I own), I mean I can have my IEMs in ear, power on and not hear a bump. click, electronic humm, or hiss, its as if its off, but then the music starts playing. And with that I am able to reach fairly high levels of volume before distortion kicks in, something that seems to be semi rare for IEM geared devices these days (C3 can't do that, and all Android phones have volume capped via software codes). So it has those two things which I feel are semi concrete. YMMV of course.

I look forward to digging my old shozy out and seeing if I am coming around to yer way of thinking or not, or whether I still hear something unique and special about it's sound signature coming across.

FWIW I followed the Xduoo X3 thread quite closely, a few Alien Shozy owners there said they found Alien to be quite a bit superior in sound quality to the X3 (one of the reasons I never jumped for one).

 

[T.R.A.N.C.E.]

 
One thing I would say with a degree of confidence is that I have never come across a DAP or phone that has such a black background (paired with a couple of IEMs I own), I mean I can have my IEMs in ear, power on and not hear a bump. click, electronic humm, or hiss, its as if its off, but then the music starts playing. And with that I am able to reach fairly high levels of volume before distortion kicks in, something that seems to be semi rare for IEM geared devices these days (C3 can't do that, and all Android phones have volume capped via software codes). So it has those two things which I feel are semi concrete. YMMV of course.
 
I look forward to digging my old shozy out and seeing if I am coming around to yer way of thinking or not, or whether I still hear something unique and special about it's sound signature coming across.

FWIW I followed the Xduoo X3 thread quite closely, a few Alien Shozy owners there said they found Alien to be quite a bit superior in sound quality to the X3 (one of the reasons I never jumped for one).

 
FWIW I do not find the Alien warm whatsoever, it is just dull and flat. I own and have also heard several daps that have much blacker backgrounds, better detail, better spaciousness, more power and more airiness than Alien. Actually just better in every conceivable way.
 
Frankly not everyone recognises better when it's in front of them. You could say when it comes to audio, "better" is subjective, yet there is usually a clearly better option in actuality from a performance standpoint, regardless of sonic preference.
 
I knew from first listen to the Alien that it ranked near the bottom of the 15 daps I've heard. Other's feel differently. At least my conclusion is now backed up by the fact that the hardware inside Alien is also ranked near the bottom of the 15 daps I've heard. Adds up, as it should.
 
My golden ears track record continues 

 
 
Also if you are after a warm tonality dap, maybe check out Xuelin 770C, can be had for usd $77 delivered, uses Wolfson WM8740 as dac. Although Xduoo X3 is superior form a hardware, performance and sq detail perspective, that doesn't stop the Xuelin having a more enjoyable tonality.

 

[NLNH]

  The truth about Alien, a most unremarkable dap...
 

 
 
 
 
Bottom right square chip is the DAC and amp, Cirrus CS42I52CNZ. a budget, low power, space saving combined chip solution that is primarily targeted at smartphones, and no it is not a high fidelity part, 91dB dynamic range, weak inbuilt amp using a simple charge pump circuit. In fact most modern smart phones have a better dac and amp than Alien's...
 
Top right chip next to the sd slot is the memory card reader, GL827L. It has it's own clock which is good.
 
Big middle chip is the CPU, above it the TCXO.
 
Top left chip is the lithium-ion battery charger, TP4056.
 
Bottom left chip is a data flip-flop, for button inputs I presume, CM013B.
 
The smaller black chips are voltage regulators.
 
Nothing on the other side of pcb, just the battery, li-ion polymer, 4.51Whr.
 
Conclusion: I feel ripped off. Alien should cost half of what it does. This seems to be the running theme with shozy products. The insides of shozy magic and aegis are also unremarkable compared to their price, and more importantly compared to competitor products.
 
Aliens circuit is well thought out, but is extremely simple and mediocre in component, the issue is it's price is ridiculous, the Fiio X3ii is at the same price point, and is leagues better, it would also cost Fiio a heck of a lot more to build X3ii than it costs Shozy to build Alien. And it gets worse, why would you buy Alien over the cheaper yet better Xduoo X3?
 
Shozy seem to think they are entitled to higher profit margins for their mediocre designs, and their other products also indicate the same thing. I will not be buying from Shozy ever again, and I see no reason why anyone should when there are unquestionably better products to be had. Shozy reminds me of Hisoundaudio, another rip-off merchant selling mediocre designs for more than their worth.

 

Spoiler: Warning: Spoiler!

Sorry to make you feel like you are ripped off. And in fact if you feel like ripped off you should stop buying anything and try using DSP, with a cheap LG phone that supports something like viper4android. Very seriously you don't even need to pay, and the value for that is much higher. If only you have the knowledge to feed in the impulse response. 

 
before it gets salty would you mind sharing your favorite setup and songs preference? That would be helpful as a reference.
 
And to justify how much we charge we should again state that our products are done in-house, we are not employing solutions outside to lower our cost nor trying to use expensive audio parts to justify high price because we are trying to make something simple that sounds good while one of the most expensive devolopement cost is manpower, if you know the wage for a software engineer team

 
But you are correct the circuit is simple, because we simply don't have the knowledge to build a complicated machine with a good UI in-house, that will make tuning more precise and scientific. And please do elaborate more of your thoughts if you do know how to read the circuitry, ears open.
 
And do point out the worst thing in the tuning or what specific areas in the frequencies that makes it sound bad, (of course let us know with which earphones too) or makes you correlated the ''low 91dB dynamic range'' to muddy sound or anything you don't like, for the sake of science lol.
 
There is no fansboying here, so do share your thought, we are trying to be scientific, not asking you dumb questions and pretending to have high grounds, so do share your thoughts

  

 

[musicday]

Is possible for the Alien Gold to get a price reduction after all this?
At least the battery is lithium polymer, better in my opinion then lithium ion.

 

[tbritton]

  But you are correct the circuit is simple, because we simply don't have the knowledge to build a complicated machine with a good UI in-house, that will make tuning more precise and scientific. And please do elaborate more of your thoughts if you do know how to read the circuitry, ears open.
 
....
 
There is no fansboying here, so do share your thought, we are trying to be scientific, not asking you dumb questions and pretending to have high grounds, so do share your thoughts

  

 
One thing I am curious about is whether that really is a Cirrus CS42L52CNZ (there is no "CS42I52CNZ" - looking at the Cirrus site, the "I" had to be an "L") . I certainly would love to see a reference to an actual spec sheet from T.R.A.N.C.E. if I am to take this claim seriously. Is the one I linked to the actual chip?
 
I am wondering how you get so much power with a "cheap" DAC/Amp combo? I do see it is rated at "2 x 44 mW Into 16 Ω @ 2.5 V" so perhaps that is where adjusting was possible to bring it up to 55mw into a lower ohm system.
 
Also, how do you "tune" such a thing as a combo DAC/Amp? Doesn't the amp feed directly to the headphones in that case? Just curious about that - no gripes here.
 
Whatever you did, I think it sounds pretty amazing. And the aesthetic design is worthy of being in the NYC Museum of Modern Art's industrial design collection, if you ask me. You should send them one.
 
Terry

 

[T.R.A.N.C.E.]

^ Yes that is the correct chip, it is indeed an L not an I, you can see it written on the chip in my pic if you click original size.
 
There is no tuning done, the cirrus dac/amp chip is wired directly to the headphone output, it is designed to be an all in one chip, there is no option for tuning, what your hearing is a class d sound that is similar to iphones in particular which also use cirrus dac/amp class d chips.
 
The alien may still sound better than a smart phone using the same chip though, because it has a good digital audio process with two clocks that can reference each other (between card reader and cpu), and software that is uninterrupted by other processes.
 
Nonetheless using such a chip as the backbone of a rrp $200 device is unacceptable, (although Sony and Apple do it) although particularly when shozy gives us the marketing spiel that we are going without a screen and OS but are getting the best sound for the price. Nope, were just getting a card reader being fed to an all in one dac/amp class d chip. That is literally it.
 
The Alien isn't a bad product, actually it is a good product, just overpriced (to me), like so many products are, I'm not singularly mad at Shozy, I'm practically mad at half the daps on headfi, I just happen to be having a field day with shozy at this particular time.

 

[NLNH]

  ^ Yes that is the correct chip, it is indeed an L not an I, you can see it written on the chip in my pic if you click original size.
 
There is no tuning done, the cirrus dac/amp chip is wired directly to the headphone output, it is designed to be an all in one chip, there is no option for tuning, what your hearing is a class d sound that is similar to iphones in particular which also use cirrus dac/amp class d chips.
 
The alien may still sound better than a smart phone using the same chip though, because it has a good digital audio process with two clocks that can reference each other (between card reader and cpu), and software that is uninterrupted by other processes.
 
Nonetheless using such a chip as the backbone of a rrp $200 device is unacceptable, (although Sony and Apple do it) although particularly when shozy gives us the marketing spiel that we are going without a screen and OS but are getting the best sound for the price. Nope, were just getting a card reader being fed to an all in one dac/amp class d chip. That is literally it.
 
The Alien isn't a bad product, actually it is a good product overall, just overpriced (to me), like so many products are, I'm not singularly mad at Shozy, I'm practically mad at half the daps on headfi, I just happen to be having a field day with shozy at this particular time.

 
To be objective. Audio market is a luxury market and values are relative.
 
But then you are neglecting the fact that noise control, power management, gain, parts pairing and many many other areas on the circuitry takes a huge role. On the other hand not to employ an amping stage also doesn't suggest inferior output, and in fact adding an amping stage may highly lower the S/N ratio, if that is what you like to be a higher number.
 
you may pick to believe tons of parts = a lot more effort but then, better hype DSP on a phone if you want much better figures. (and real performance)
good to know you are not only mad at us but then it just doesn't feel right when you are looking into parts price and info while seeing so many iems in your arsenal 

 

 

[T.R.A.N.C.E.]

 
To be objective. Audio market is a luxury market and values are relative.
But then you are neglecting the fact that noise control, power management, gain, parts pairing and many many other areas on the circuitry takes a huge role.
On the other hand not to employ an amping stage also doesn't suggest inferior output, and in fact adding an amping stage may highly lower the S/N ratio
good to know you are not only mad at us but then it just doesn't feel right when you are looking into parts price and info while seeing so many iems in your arsenal 

 

 
Like I already said, value can be looked at both from a subjective standpoint or an actual performance standpoint, I look at performance.
 
I'm not neglecting that the Alien is well designed for what it is, I've mentioned it has a good digital process with two clocks, and good voltage regulation, but my issue is simply it is designed around an all-in-one cirrus codec chip aimed at low power devices or smartphones, not high end audio.
 
I'd surely take the alien over an ipod and many of the mediocre daps on aliexpress, but not over daps that are packed with high end audio hardware, dedicated dac, discrete amp, audio capacitors, etc, all of which form a specific sound through their combination and design, allowing creativity and tuning by way of the designer, and also higher performance, while the all-in-one cirrus codec is a one size fits all solution of average performance.
 
And no, designing around a good dac and amp stage will not worsen the S/N, it will better the S/N. Please look at measurement's of Alien gold and Fiio X3ii at ohm-image.net, you will find the X3ii excels over the Alien in every metric.
 
Although I'm not actually averse to class d chips that measure averagely, I actually like the sound of Sony's daps which use their own proprietary class d chip.
 
But yeah it's so true that iem's are often the worst offenders in price to performance.

 

[puppyfi]

I sold my x3ii and kept the alien. To me, alien is still a wonderful sounding dap after owning it for close to 2 years. There are times when I need a good sounding dap that is light weight, small form factor, a simple user interface that can operate blindly. Alien fits all the above and, at the moment, is the only dap that allows me to skip folder (long press >) without going back to a screen. 

 

[NLNH]

   
Like I already said, value can be looked at both from a subjective standpoint or an actual performance standpoint, I look at performance.
 
I'm not neglecting that the Alien is well designed for what it is, I've mentioned it has a good digital process with two clocks, and good voltage regulation, but my issue is simply it is designed around an all-in-one cirrus codec chip aimed at low power devices or smartphones, not high end audio.
 
I'd surely take the alien over an ipod and many of the mediocre daps on aliexpress, but not over daps that are packed with high end audio hardware, dedicated dac, discrete amp, audio capacitors, etc, all of which form a specific sound through their combination and design, allowing creativity and tuning by way of the designer, and also higher performance, while the all-in-one cirrus codec is a one size fits all solution of average performance.
 
And no, designing around a good dac and amp stage will not worsen the S/N, it will better the S/N. Please look at measurement's of Alien gold and Fiio X3ii at ohm-image.net, you will find the X3ii excels over the Alien in every metric.
 
Although I'm not actually averse to class d chips that measure averagely, I actually like the sound of Sony's daps which use their own proprietary class d chip.
 
But yeah it's so true that iem's are often the worst offenders in price to performance.

 
It is not about price performance, but design effort and if the effort is really well implemented and reflected in the design.
I typed some 500 words but I deleted it after I saw the bold part 

 ( no offence on X3ii).
 
And don't get me wrong I'm not angry, this conversation is expected 

 

 

[T.R.A.N.C.E.]

^ Um, not sure what you are trying to say. I'm saying the X3ii is designed equally well as the Alien from a circuitry standpoint judging by the pcb design of both, but X3ii utilizes much better hardware and a more complex design than Alien, and the RMAA measurements prove both these points, period.
 
The one thing I like about Alien is it's simple software, the lack of OS could possibly boost sound purity, but nonetheless it is essentially just polishing a turd thanks to being designed around an off the shelf mobile class d chip.
I'm happy to explain to you why the X3ii is equally well designed as Alien but with better hardware, if you are happy to explain why you think that's not the case, because you've lost me there 

 

 

[Stuff Jones]

Judging the value of dap just based on it's chip seems foolish. There's a lot more that goes into making a dap sound good than the type of chip used and consequentially a lot more to the cost than the price of the chip which I suspect in most cases is only a small fraction of a daps cost.

 

[ER4S]

  Judging the value of dap just based on it's chip seems foolish. There's a lot more that goes into making a dap sound good than the type of chip used and consequentially a lot more to the cost than the price of the chip which I suspect in most cases is only a small fraction of a daps cost.

 
That's the point.
 
You can think there's hype about this product but behaving like "Did you see that?!" is weird actually. I can't speak for everyone but I didn't surprise about the cheap components. That's how engineering works. We can discuss Alien's sound quality, build quality etc. but discussing about internal components doesn't make sense to me.
 
I prefer good sound quality with cheap components instead duraluminium.