Head-Fi made a lot of money from sponsorship. If they allow someone to make money for free here, that'd affect their standing and their sponsors won't be happy to keep paying large sum of money to support Head-Fi. There was time I was interested in DAP modification business too and tried to...

Grounding on analogue cable like RCA is optional. For balanced cable, grounding is mandatory and included in specifications. For digital cable, coaxial is solid core conductor covered by shielding as return on both side. Some companies built RCA cables with coaxial design. Some built RCA with...

I believe I was on the point you said before here. You want linear regulation and I agree with that. So why not asking Kingwa to build R7HE with pure linear regulation similar rather than mixing R27 with R7HE DAC board? Maybe build R7HE like 2021 with new mk2 changes now will cost more like $5k...

I know you're willing to pay for extra on top of R27 but how much will you pay? Wouldn't it be better for you to buy R7HE or custom version on top of that?

R8 is more affordable version from his flagship R7 design. Asking him like that is like "please build me DAC with R7HE board but make it cheaper on power supply and others". What makes RUN more expensive than R8 is circuit board on DAC itself so he won't build that for sure. It's going to be bad...

Straw man what? I heard all his DACs since Compass era and stopped after a few PCM1704K models released. One of my friend used to bring Kingwa's older DAC design to my place and I gave him audition to compare between Kingwa's flagship DAC at that time against studio DAC from Mytek at half the...

Yes stability and accuracy are two different things. Some rubidium clocks have poor short term stability but what Esoteric and what I use has good enough value (1000 times less than typical rubidium clock in GPS). I don't simply use Rubidium clock because it has better accuracy but also consider...

I don't know where you googled that from but most highend studios use Rubidium clock for 10MHz input having least frequency drift (which is the direct cause of jitter). How can Rubidium clock has more jitter if it can send 10MHz frequency over 1000 times more precise than OCXO? Jitter in...

Rubidium clock has lower phase noise which cause jitter and better frequency stability. The advantage of OCXO is having way faster setting time while Rubidium needs 3 days to settle down. If you leave Rubidium permanently on, that'll way better since high precision applications use Rubidium and...

That's not very much the same. For manufacturer's perspectives, even the same parts from different years can sound different. And Kingwa may have other internal adjustments and optimizations for 2021 version besides isolator. Surely some changes on mk2 version will be improvements on Mr...

And I heard crapton of several DACs that cost 10 times more than Kingwa's. And it's not just money or marketing. He may build better performing DACs than some other $4k DACs but it's no where close to most $10k well known DACs in market today. For example, Rockna Wavedream DAC will clearly...

To be fair I haven't heard mk2 myself but mk2 seems to be cost reduction model with easier to build design. Saying it's real close and newer one is little better for $4k DAC is understandable. At the end of the day, neither of us have direct comparison to share our findings. And to be clear on...

Sounds like 2021 will sound better. No wonder why my friend wasn't quite pleased with it and bought $10k DAC after that. Meanwhile I found 2021 pretty worthwhile for its price. I kinda hope some people here will do side by side shootout and share their findings.

Any member compared between R7HE 2021 and mk2 version? I have a friend who uses R7HE mk2 version and I wonder about sonic differences between our units.

Finally, today I managed to flash new firmwares for my R7HE 2021 version having FPGA/CPLD/Amanero firmware update to latest version. Overall sound presentation is more relaxed and smoother. Original firmware that came with unit sounded a bit aggressive and forward so this one should hit more...