[svyr]

6moons and burson should stop bsing customers. (deja vu thread title eh?)

Burson has not publically stated the USB transfer mode on the 160D in their specs page.
They made no attempt to correct the description posted and used in multiple ads by 6moons.

http://www.6moons.com/audioreviews/burson5/5.html (still in the conclusion even after numerous emails, and them removing the ad...f-g appalling)

http://www.6moons.com/showcase/burson/burson.html (used to have async usb in read, was a showcase ad, now removed by 6moons after this thread has been started)

http://www.6moons.com/audioreviews/resonessence/4.html

Everywhere it says it's asynch. It's not, it's a TE7022L and adaptive. And burson definitely know it/read the review/etc. Moreover, Burson link to their review on their product page. http://www.bursonaudio.com/HA_160D.html (juuust below the menu)


Burson have also potentially being less than honest with this:

http://www.head-fi.org/forum/thread/526998/burson-ha-160d-headamp-24-96-usb-coax-dac-unboxing-first-impressions/45#post_7122691

I e-mailed Burson directly before hand and confirmed it is supposed to be 24/96 asynchronous. I have been attempting to trouble shoot whether or not it is my system or not. I really wish another person with the 160D and a Mac was present.


As I said I contacted Burson about this issue and they have been extremely responsive. Apparently I am the first person reporting this experience (though I may be the first person who has OS X, a 160D, and tinkers with USB Prober .

I am working on it with them and will let you all know how it resolves itself, thus far I am quite satisfied with the responsiveness and friendliness of the Burson guys. Too bad they are in Australia .

Dave

http://www.head-fi.org/forum/thread/526998/burson-ha-160d-headamp-24-96-usb-coax-dac-unboxing-first-impressions/285#post_7362170

I checked with Burson.The 160d uses adaptive transfer which is kind of a hybrid between synchronous and asynchronous.

At the end of the day, what matters most is how it sounds. It sounds great. My only complaint with usb was lack of 88.2 support, and i have a moderate amount of 88.2 source.

For this reason I use coax instead of because it gives me more sample rate options, but I didn't particularly notice a change in sound making that switch. The coax interfacenhas a 10pps clock.

Couldn't resist. Either Burson and 6moons mislead us, or myinitialsaredac told us it was async without checking.


PMed myinitialsaredac, he says:

I was mislead, in the earlier literature (when I bought mine) the selling companies and Burson informed me that it was indeed asynchronous.


I have checked with usb logger and it is an adaptive endpoint.

and I believe him.

The adaptive transfer mode spec is confirmed by Moon Audio. http://www.head-fi.org/forum/thread/523568/burson-audio-ha-160d-headphone-amp-dac-preamp-new-product-alert#post_7364430 as well


See, I would've left this alone, but I feel burson and 6moons have behaved very poorly. Moreover, 6moons keeps saying 160D is async in its recent reviews and make pretty ads with async in red.
The original debate about this has been buried by fanboys in the 160D thread, so I thought I'd make it a separate thread, after I double checked with the parties involved.
6moons and burson have declined to comment for weeks now (aww, ignored) and new reviews and ads with incorrect facts continuing to crop up on 6moons.


Hopefully this makes them cease bsing and issue a correction.

 

[BrainFood]

Sounds like you've got a point and they really should update their description. 
 
But what grabbed my attention was this from 6-moons:
 
"When analog extremist Kevin Scott of Living Voice dropped by to set up his Avatar OBX-RW speakers he brought some discs which I duly imported, then played back for him over my iMac/Burson source. So impressed was the British Kondo importer—and he's thus far resolutely resisted streaming digital—that he vowed to duplicate that very front end upon his return to Blighty".
 
That's quite an endorsement coming from someone of Mr Scott's repute

 

[El_Doug]

This is the very definition of tacky!  IMHO, this doesn't even border on fraud - they have already crossed that line.  Shameful

 

[h320]

I have been eyeing the HA-160D for some time
Subscribed

 

[project86]

svyr - I suspect you are more qualified to discuss asynchronous than most of the pro reviewers out there. That raises the possibility of it just being an honest mistake on the part of places like 6moons. Or not.
 
Burson, being self described analog guys, might not even have a complete handle on the topic. And asynchronous is such a buzz word these days. Perhaps they just made a mistake as well. 
 
I'm not defending either of them, just throwing out possibilities. It is also very possible that one or both had a deliberate intent to deceive. Certainly the fact that they have not updated their ads and have "ignored" the discussion (as you put it) is not a good thing. But maybe there is still a reasonable explanation?

 

[svyr]

svyr - I suspect you are more qualified to discuss asynchronous than most of the pro reviewers out there. That raises the possibility of it just being an honest mistake on the part of places like 6moons. Or not.
 
Burson, being self described analog guys, might not even have a complete handle on the topic. And asynchronous is such a buzz word these days. Perhaps they just made a mistake as well. 
 
I'm not defending either of them, just throwing out possibilities. It is also very possible that one or both had a deliberate intent to deceive. Certainly the fact that they have not updated their ads and have "ignored" the discussion (as you put it) is not a good thing. But maybe there is still a reasonable explanation?

not only haven't updated the old ones, but also made a new showcase ad for Burson on 6moons and added a comparison w burson with the incorrect description to the new review (of Invictus).
You have to pay for async implementations (e.g. the TAS1020B custom one you can buy) and it's not available for the tenor chip (I recall one of the people from the 'check your dac is async thread 'emailed www.gfec.com.tw who seem to now own the Tenor brand to confirm) (I'm sure Burson inquired, since it's such a 'buzz word'), I find it very unlikely that 'burson made a mistake' "because they're analog guys".
They have not only ignored the discussion, but emails asking them to explain and correct.

It's smelling even worse after people in the 160D thread pressed in the thread to run USB prober (and the like) to see whether there are async endpoints on the 160D DAC (noo)... and then mrspeakers emailed them and Burson confirmed "it's not async but is adaptive mode" despite their earlier statement. So um, for Burson, why not get the review corrected after that?

IMO, putting 'buzz words' is another way of saying deceptive and misleading advertising and it's certainly frowned upon here in Australia where they operate.

That said, while 6moons is distinct from Burson, the fact that burson links to their review on their product page suggests they know/should know better. And I sure think they'd be working with burson to make the showcase ad as well. (I'm also pretty sure 6moons made a review of 160D before it's release, so Burson send them a unit specifically for making the review/6moons ran the review by them as a courtesy)


Sure, if someone who's emails they reply to would like to contact them and get that 'reasonable explanation', then I'm all ears. (I'd the first one to say 'ok, fair enough, thanks for the reasonable explanation/correcting the ads/reviews' if it does sound reasonable)

 

[ishmael]

I've long been suspicious of 6moons and their relationship with Burson. They just seem to absolutely LOVE Burson and talk about them a little too much. Don't get me wrong, I really enjoy my HA-160 amp. But something just seems fishy there. Especially since I've heard rumors that Burson paid people or gave discounts to do positive reviews (anyone have a source for that story? I read it on Headfi somewhere).
 
When the 160D compared favorably to the Antelope Zodiac I was pretty skeptical. Now reading their Invicta writeup where the 160D is still doing well I just don't know if I believe them. And the whole asynch issue just kind of seals the deal for me.

 

[Happy Camper]

And the machine keeps churning.

 

[Dreaming Of A Better ...]

why is asynch. better than synchronous and adaptive ? is the difference audible or just a fancy word to sell more dac's  ?

 

[wushuliu]

 
Quote:

why is asynch. better than synchronous and adaptive ? is the difference audible or just a fancy word to sell more dac's  ?

It's not better. Like anything else it depends on implementation. I'll take a Teralink X2 and Audiio-GD DI over Hiface and V-link any day. But it's the FOTM and yes it sells DACs. I'm betting this is more about what 'defines' asynch, as I believe
Audio-GD also calls the DI asynch on their site (which like the Burson uses the Tenor chip as well), but as I understand it it's not actually so. So is Audio-GD fishy and shameful too?
 

 

[project86]

Quote:

 
It's not better. Like anything else it depends on implementation. I'll take a Teralink X2 and Audiio-GD DI over Hiface and V-link any day. But it's the FOTM and yes it sells DACs. I'm betting this is more about what 'defines' asynch, as I believe
Audio-GD also calls the DI asynch on their site (which like the Burson uses the Tenor chip as well), but as I understand it it's not actually so. So is Audio-GD fishy and shameful too?
 

I agree with you in general. Async does have theoretical advantages, and when done right sounds very good. But plain old adaptive mode can be made to sound quite nice as well.
 
If Audio GD is advertising their DI as Async and it isn't really, then they are in the wrong too. But in their case I don't see a bunch of ads on a prominent website advertising that feature.

 

[svyr]

>They just seem to absolutely LOVE Burson and talk about them a little too much

lol, it's near worship. as it is in the 160D thread ...

 


It's not better. Like anything else it depends on implementation. I'll take a Teralink X2 and Audiio-GD DI over Hiface and V-link any day. But it's the FOTM and yes it sells DACs. I'm betting this is more about what 'defines' asynch, as I believe
Audio-GD also calls the DI asynch on their site (which like the Burson uses the Tenor chip as well), but as I understand it it's not actually so. So is Audio-GD fishy and shameful too?
 

yes, I have already pointed it out in the big similarly named audio-gd thread. Kingwa said it's an 'async process' within the DI (DSP), not the USB transfer mode, lol...which is absolute rubbish IMO too (marketing wise, I'm not disputing whatever ADG DSP does (that's already past USB), although I don't know if using async for it is a misnomer). They've also been asked privately and publicly to correct it. Other than that DI is a (re-clocked?) TE7022L. So yea, audio-gd has also been naughty, but they're blaming it on 'english is not my native language' argument. (me not believe them long time).


>I'm betting this is more about what 'defines' asynch, as I believe >why is asynch. better than synchronous and adaptive ? is the difference audible or just a fancy word to sell more dac's ?

no. asycn usb transfer mode and adaptive mode are very well defined (usb spec) and the theoretical advantage of async is well defined as well.
It's something like this: http://www.hifi-advice.com/USB-synchronous-asynchronous-info.html or http://thewelltemperedcomputer.com/KB/USB.html

whether it's audible or not, is another question (people say it is comparing poor adaptive mode pcm27xx to TAS1020b async ones..but not so much good adaptive to good async), since the difference is the amount of jitter for the PC->DAC transfer ... It is however a marketing FOB. (in the sense if people see your DAC has a good dac chip, analog section and async usb, they feel safer (even if 'theoretically' ) than a dodgy TE7022L adaptive usb section found in Yulong U100 and DI ) Moreover, by extension, at the time it came out (160D) the claim that it was async immediately bested the audio-gd competition (10ES/10WM) using that claim (hence no page on the burson site describing the usb section/coax chip, despite everything else having its own page - and this is of course speculation. That said, I had people in the 160D thread tell me (foam at mouth) that 160D is async and pwns 10WM because of that, and I should RTFM, despite in reality both 10WM and 160D sharing the same chips/tech coax (WM) and adaptive usb (TE) sections, unlike what burson/6moons claimed jointly).



About Burson and dodgy - so what happened to the '96k/24b not working on mac (max 24b/48k?)' problem?

I don't think burson has ever notified the customers who are using the affected dacs. and are going with the "if you have a problem let us know" policy, despite the units needing a ship to base for a (TE7022?) fw upgrade. They should at least publish the serials affected and contact the customers and/or distributors. Otherwise you might sell one and then the guy who buys it off you for his mac might not be too happy, since they don't want to send it to burson... (and who knows maybe by that time the warranty will lapse and you'll have to pay to ship it to burson to get it fixed...)

 

[n3rdling]

It still shocks me that people read the trash on 6moons.

 

[svyr]

It still shocks me that people read the trash on 6moons.

heh, unfortunately for 160D it's linked from the product page and comes up first in google searches for 'burson 160D review' so people might be inclined to trust what it says.

 

[Yoga]

Quote:

It still shocks me that people read the trash on 6moons.

Care to elaborate?