Well, you'd think they'd engineer their balanced connection sockets with proper sizing, robustness and reliability, on a several thousand dollar flagship, but evidently they feel a tiny 2.5mm toy socket is appropriate.
There's no balanced output on the Jr of course, but that's a valid point. Although poor EMF shielding seems to me like it would rise to the level of outright incompetence as that would directly torpedo the central function of the device. I am now going to speak directly out of my butt since I have no direct knowledge on the matter, but I think I read somewhere that they made the balanced out a different size so people wouldn't plug things into the wrong socket. Also, the primary design criteria for the entire product line is to be mobile players, so they probably landed on the 2.5mm jack because other options would have required something significantly larger and affected the size of the units. I can see the logic behind the decision, whether it was a good decision is another question
And here we have the crux of the matter.
iRiver seemingly do not want to engineer the best DAP they can within the price sector.
It seems they merely want to engineer a reasonable DAP that generically competes with others in the same price sector, just to get a piece of their action (and a piece of the action iRiver has traditionally occupied, prior to the A&K marketing bandwagon launching prices into the stratosphere).
God forbid they produce anything that threatens their huge margins on their upper-tier offerings. That simply wouldn't do, would it?
I really don't see what this DAP is bringing to the marketplace that stands above the competition in the sector.
I think a big part of it is that we have reached the audio end-game from a technical point--the raw components needed to produce truly excellent audio just aren't very expensive any more so the "added value" comes exclusively from bells and whistles.
It's no secret that A&K are going for the luxury/enthusiast market, which is well known for being strongly irrational as to what kind of prices people are willing to pay, and the Jr is intended to stake out the bottom end of that range. They absolutely could have put out a player with the same specs and internals at a lower price, but why should they if they can do good (or perhaps better) business at the higher price? I'm sure they ran the numbers carefully to land on the prices they've chosen. Once again, I can see the logic behind it whether I agree with it or not. For the record, I obviously must agree on some level since I own an AK120II and am extremely happy with it
FWIW I can't think of any company selling any product that does so purely out of the goodness of their heart, and it would be critically bad business to waste company resources developing and marketing something that undercut the profitability of their other offerings. IMO where the A&K product line distinguishes itself from the other DAP's on the market is in build quality, design, UI, and ergonomics. Individual taste comes into play at that point, and I think they've done an outstanding job on those fronts.
