It was unfortunate for me that my micro had issue with the PCB which makes the volume become quiet in comparison to the initial state. I contacted iFi and quickly got the replies. I sent the micro back to iFi to have the PCB replaced. Hopefully I will have it back next week. I would vote an...

IMHO, you'll loose ton of time because of the iDSD micro and a good pair of headphones :-)

For everyone who is looking into buying this DAC... be careful!!! It just take 3.5 hours of my life listening to music. Time flies :-). It sounds natural and some how makes my HD800 less fatigue for long period listening. The Sony XBA-H3 is famous for the bass and through this DAC/amp the bass...

These are my subjective feelings. To me, the music flows naturally. With other DACs everything is very clear and seems to be distinct without much interactions. With the micro, everything is still clear but there is a sense of interaction between the instruments that links them together to form...

Thanks to Arts Excellence, I received my iFi iDSD micro last Thursday. I've been playing with it for the last couple of days. Coming from Harman/Kardon HD990, M2Tech Young, and DacMagic Plus, I must say I'm really impressed with this DAC. I don't have chance to try it in my speakers setup yet...

I'm still waiting for the shipment from Arts Excellence. It's ironic that US receives the shipment before Europe while iFi is europe-based.

Pre-ordered yesterday! I'm waiting iFi :-)

I'm excited about this product. Can you suggest an online store in Europe that I can preorder the iDSD micro (I'm from Sweden)?

I really appreciate the explanation from ifi about USB cable. I'm not that long into this hobby but I decided to "leave" a couple of month ago. The main reason is the dishonesty of the industry. Analog cables can have both positive and negative effects on the sound. That is a known knowledge...

It's hard to have a definitive answer to this question. If you stick with Mac then it would be easier to use either AIFF or ALAC. By using these two formats, you can try out a lot of players such as Audirvana Plus, Amarra, Decibel, Fidelia, BitPerfect, Pure Music, ... and use iTunes for library...

When doing an ABX test, the percentage of correct answers needs to be greater than or equal 95% to show that you can clearly distinguish between lossy and lossless source. This is based on well established theory in statistical analysis. In your case the result means that you can not...

I think JRiver is one of the best player on Windows. It's a good news that they already have pre-alpha version for MAC as well.

Yep. JRiver supports EQs very well. In addition you can use DSP for different purposes such as convolution for room correction, sample rate conversion and so on. Like the other high quality playback software JRiver has 64 bit pipeline to keep the quantization error minimal.

I can't create classify :-(. The number of post counts must be greater than 20 or 15?

You have a nice setup. I used to try my best to hear the differences but then it's just less joyful to listen to music. Since then I just seat back, relax and listen :-). IMHO, an one hour well spent with music is better than 15" listening, 45" trying to identify the "weakness" :-)

I totally agree with you on this. That's why IMO it is best to avoid introducing converter to the chain. High quality USB to S/PDIF is expensive (OffRam, ...). Just save that money and add a little more then one can buy high quality DAC with well implemented USB connection

In my experience JRiver is one of the best audio player on Windows. Beside the playback quality, it provides one of the best environment for tag editing. I used to have my whole library in FLAC but the decided to convert them all to Apple Lossless. Although they are not open from the beginning...

You can try to download the app from Focal that teaches "how to listen to music" or try the similar software from Harman Kardon. Basically these softwares teach you how to identify small differences between "high quality" and other sources of music. You have to trained yourself in order to be...

DacMagic plus gets my vote

IMHO, I would go for the "audiophile" cable since it is better looking, more sturdy :-). USB cable can improve sound quality if the DAC in used is not well implemented. For instance, for DACs doesn't have the filters for filtering out the noise transmit from the computer, well constructed USB...

A DAC consists of three main components: an input component (usb, s/pdif, ....), a conversion component (Burr Brown, AKM, ESS Sabre, ...), and an output component. Two DACs using the same components can sound different depending on their design layout and optimIzation. Intelligent design...

I don't think USB is inferior to Toslink connection. Their are three different USB implementations: adaptive mode, asynchronous mode, and bulk mode. The adaptive mode is not fully suitable for audio since the DAC will be slave to the computer thus jitter becomes a big issue. In the other two...

You can try the DacMagic Plus (not the previous DacMagic version). I think it is really good for the price. I've been comparing it with M2Tech Young which has a higher price tag and get impressive reviews. It can match the resolution of the Young in the high frequency department while elsewhere...

Sound quality of a system will be equal to the sound quality of the weakest link. This is more so true when talking about DAC. However, IMO you should not believe much in reviews since they tried their best to stretch small differences into large ones. Of course it also depends on your point of...

Yes, the DM+ will up sample the incoming signal internally.