I'll let jamato8 handle that point:
You mean the vast majority of the people who contribute to the AK240 threads?
What about the 'vast majority' of those people who have listened to the AK240 but
didn't feel inclined to post their impressions in the AK240 threads, knowing there'd be a lynch mob waiting for them if they did..?
That's therefore a potentially-skewed sample group from which you are drawing your 'vast majority'.
As I'm sure you're astute enough to realise, there's a substantial amount of discussion occurring 'behind closed doors', via 'Private Messaging', here on Head-fi, and a surprising amount of the content of those private conversations
doesn't necessarily concur with what is being posted in the public threads. Some does concur, some doesn't.
I can tell you now that I am not alone in my thoughts that the AK240 sound quality may comfortably be matched by circa-$1000 competitors. Without divulging who I've been chatting to, I can't prove that to you, so I could just be making it up, couldn't I? ...but I'm not.
The thing is, no one with an AK240 need feel threatened by me saying that the SQ may be matched by circa-$1000 competitors. If I was saying this 5 years ago, then there might be cause for annoyance, but this past couple of years, the SQ of TOTL DAPs has improved so dramatically that what you get now is frankly bloody marvellous. In the TOTL sector of the DAP market, it's largely a case of personal taste rather than in terms of one DAP outright sounding 'much better' than a competitor. For a one-box solution, a DX100 sounds superb. So does an AK240. I haven't heard an HM-901 but I'm confident that it sounds every bit as good, and perhaps may even nudge ahead in one or two nuances, given the flexibility of the amp card options.
This isn't aimed at you personally, piercer, but I would even venture to say that anyone buying an AK240, who actually expects all that
extra money to go towards
extra sound quality is, sorry to say it, naive. You just aren't going to get 'twice-as-good' sound quality for twice as much money. "Diminishing returns, diminishing returns, blah blah blah..."
So, with that being the case, why am I being challenged by AK240 owners for my remarks that the AK240 SQ does not (to my ears) substantially exceed the SQ of more reasonably-priced TOTL competitors?
What AK240 purchaser could not have realised that the gargantuan price incorporates a
very fat manufacturer profit, a fat dealer cut, a premium marketing costing, a 'lifestyle device' premium, etc. etc. ?
HiFiMan, iBasso, Fiio, and Calyx aren't aiming for any of those things. They're just producing the best
performance they can, for a certain pricepoint, and all of them are doing a great job, in each of their sectors, but it's an evolving thing, with lessons learned along the way. What they
are getting right, for the most part, is treating their customers with respect, in their pricing strategies, because they understand that if they are to grow, they can only grow with a customer-base willing to support their growth and evolution. iRiver, OTOH, is out to grab as much profit as they absolutely possibly can, and as fast as possible. Are iRiver's A&K DAPs innovative? Yes. Yes, they are. Well done iRiver (if you care to search, you may well find me praising the iRiver development team, several months ago). But are they sufficiently-innovative to embarrass their competition and/or justify charging 2-to-3 times more than the premium offerings of their competitors? Err....
NO.
The AK240 isn't any more advanced than the Calyx-M, but it's in a flashier package with flashier marketing and near-triple pricing. It may offer wi-fi and D-O, but those things, while useful, cannot accurately be classified as 'innovation', on iRiver's part.
I would be interested to hear from any AK240 owner who can tell me what actual technical innovation the AK240 has that justifies it being retailed at 2.5 - 3 times the price of the Calyx-M. I mean innovated by the iRiver team in the AK240 product, not a pre-existing feature that they just happened to choose to include in it.
That's not intended as a 'red rag to a bull' - it's a sincere, sober remark.
My point about 'the review', and indeed the review
thread to which you are referring is that there is quite a bit of gushing to the brim with over-excitability. That doesn't mean the essence of the reviews are incorrect or mean that I don't respect the reviewers who wrote them. They may well have written it with complete personal honesty and sincerity. It just means that sometimes human beings get extremely excited when they get a new expensive toy, and that, when the excitement has died down, and there's an even newer expensive toy being delivered by the postman, the first expensive toy may come to be looked upon with a more sober outlook. That's just human nature, and I'm not judging it; I'm just observing it.
The Head-fi archives are absolutely
littered with decaying threads, wherein precisely this FOTM behaviour can be seen, and then these products eventually disappear into the obscurity of a black hole of their own making, like dying stars who were once heralded as shining brighter than anything else in the galaxy, but whose admirers have now moved on to the next brightest star, then the next, and the next....
And I'm very happy for them. Really. Good luck to them. May they have many happy minutes enjoyment from it, before they find the next overpriced piece of gear on the horizon.
...but seriously, the AK240
is a decent DAP, and I really do hope that everyone who has spent their hard-earned cash on it thoroughly enjoys it, yourself included. All of us, here on head-fi, enjoy beautiful sound, and all of us are seeking 'that piece of gear' that fulfills are audio/musical desires. Everyone's nirvana is different.
The AK240 is undoubtedly a good-sounding DAP, but, peculiarly, some of those of its fans who see me not gushing about it, seem to feel rather threatened by the fact that I anticipate that its SQ may well be matched by existing or forthcoming circa-$1000 competitors, even though I have said it sounds good. Whether anyone likes to admit it or not, there
absolutely is a 'Halo-effect' to 'most-expensive-in-class' pieces of gear, in any arena. This halo-effect can influence otherwise-rational people into doing whatever they can to justify to themselves and others that its performance totally warrants the large sum of cash they paid for it. They're still absolutely honest and sincere, but they are driven by a
subconscious need to justify their outlay.
If I hadn't actually
heard the AK240, then you could quite justifiably throw all of this back in my face, but the uncomfortable fact is...
I have heard the AK240. It sounded very nice, but it did not (to me) sound significantly better than a DX100. My listening was with LCD3 and MG6 Pro.
There are many who would vehemently disagree with you about that, and, with respect, it's that kind of attitude that makes companies like iRiver think
(know) they can greedily charge whatever they like, and people will still queue up to empty their wheelbarrows of money onto the company driveway. Do you think that kind of scenario serves the longterm best interests of the hi-fi community?
I'm not speaking moralistically (heaven forbid!) - I'm just asking pragmatically.
There is only
one....
*one* AK240 owner that I have observed, here on Head-fi, who has the level of honesty to
even-handedly tell it like it is, and I have great respect for that. That person is
kkcc, and I know of no one else who has shelled out around $2400 for the AK240 and who can openly engage in constructive critique of it's pros and cons, and indeed, of its relative
cost
erformance ratio without feeling threatened or presuming that my remarks about AK240 this past week must be based on nothing more than prejudice.
I think that's rather insulting to iRiver's competitors. The AK240 isn't as stunningly innovative as you seem to be asserting. IRiver's competitors aren't all stuck in the dark ages, needing iRiver to show them a light at the end of a tunnel.
As kkcc accurately pointed out, a few pages back, I do not only critique the AK240.
But a few marauding AK240 owners seem to actively hunt down anyone who's not drinking the same koolaid, as they appear to feel threatened by that, in some way.
I share Mimouille's view that I hope Calyx show the world that iRiver performance need not be retailed at the price iRiver are greedily charging.
There are quite a few people (myself included) who would (
broadly-speaking ) embrace A&K DAPs if only they were retailed for fairer prices.
You are right, piercer, that none of us truly yet knows how the Calyx-M SQ will stack-up against that of the AK240.
But we will know quite soon, and I, for one, am looking forward to that particular showdown with optimism.
