I have the same issue, it makes the DAC unusable for creating music or indeed, as you note, watching videos. This was already an issue with my X7 MKII, which has a shorter delay with higher sample rates, which indicates that the buffer length is not adjusted for sample rate. Meanwhile, both my...

Well, unfortunately, like I mentioned in that post, the code is no longer valid now. It was given in the form of a small puzzle to the kick-starter backers.

Heads up! I just noticed the 30% off code for a Ztella is valid until today!

My experience is that as the audio quality of a source or ear/headphones increases, the audio starts to sound more three dimensional, probably because the positional audio queues in the source material are better preserved. I don't have the impression that the Ztella is adding anything...

I think you'll enjoy it. My FiiO X7+THX module sounds more refined and natural (and it should, too bad it has terrible latency as a USB DAC), but the Ztella sounds very good in its own right.

I'm also not sure if the Ztella is completely neutral. It somehow has a very sweet sounding spectrum that is very pleasant to listen to for longer periods of time. I haven't been able to detect any annoyingly boosted frequencies, no need to equalize anything, at least with my ****.

I've had a few clicks on Windows when the computer was very busy calculating things.

That is true. Sadly most people don't care about audio quality at all and MQA is too niche to have a chance of changing their minds.

I must say I haven't used it for anything other than listening to music through UAPP. I'll have yet to try it with YouTube. It does seem like it uses a very small buffer, which is nice for low latency but can cause drop-outs if new audio data takes too long to arrive.

MQA is a combination of finding the best quality master, looking up what ADC was used in the recording and using their own system to de-blur the master (reduce the side-effects of the ADC low-pass filter), making a high quality mix (with limited use of EQing and compressors (that's what I hear...

Yes, I noticed that as well, the sound-stage is like a really nice 3D sphere with the vocals in the middle, which makes them much less forward. I got used to it though. On the iBasso DC01 voices are more forward and in your head, but the sound-stage is almost one-dimensional from left to right...

There's a non-MQA version as well. I suppose it sounds the same, but I only have the MQA version which does sound great and indeed spacious. They are considering a balanced version, I hope they will make it.

Good to hear that, I hope you won't have to wait long.

Yes, good point, so that's probably why they didn't think of mentioning it.

There's no WASAPI option in Renoise unfortunately. Still works well though.