[DoctaCosmos]

I heard the codex this w3weekend and left very disappointed. Before I go any further I have to say that it was only being ran single ended. I suggest to the guy who had beta test it that they should terminate a cable for it to run balanced. I figured for some one who glamours in the title "beta tester" he'd hold a little more respect for it and knowledge that it simply should have been running balanced. He told me that aside from the Orpheus, sennheiser was coming out with a replacement for the hd800 and that it wasn't in production anymore. I told him he was talking about the hd800S and that it had already been released and sennheiser still sells the original. He insisted it wasnt what he was talking about and that we wasnt going to waste his time terminating a cable ifmthe cable ends were goimg to chamge (what about an xlr to pono style adapter}He had the typical hifistore snob attitude and i wouldn't have put it past him to have his boyfriend come to the store and yell at me if I'd said what I wanted to say to him. This was after my testing and it in no way males sense to ccarry over a grudge from that situation onto what really matters, the sound of the codex.
First things first, it did rid the 800 of its pesky peaks and added some good weight to the bottom end. The sound was very soft and wooly throughoutjust as ssomeone just recently suggest. The soundstage for the 800 should not have been so weak and there was a noticeable lack of air for an 800.
Now i know that balanced would have helped it immensly but it could still tell that it just wasn't that musical. Admittedly, the day after I went to a meet and realized that I'm a hybrid tube kind of guy. Solid state, solid state, solid state solid state was all I'd heard at the beginning. Admittedly some of them were pretty good but it wasn't till id moved into gear with little glass thingys that I started feeling the music. Some of the really tubey signature stuff was pretty good but a bit too much for me. The hybrids seemed just right.
One last thing is that I heard a pono sourcing a microztl amp that was powering an he1000 and it was wonderful. So I'm thinking the 800 is just very revealing of the 9018 chips attributes which seems kind of soft and then mixed with single ended power from a solid state foundation that I found isn't my thing anymore is what led to a bad experience. maybe runnimg it balanced as a source only wpuld be amazing woth the roght setup

 

[DoctaCosmos]

Edit* typo meant to put girlfriend . don't want it to seem like i was profiling someone

 

[mink70]

  Very interesting. Please keep us posted about how the sonics change as you continue to break it in.
 
Can you tell us the rest of the chain: source(s) and headphones?

I've been listening to the Codex through a Senn HD650 terminated with a Cardas 4-pin XLR balanced cable and Cardas XLR-to-Pono adapter. Also listening through speakers: Codex > Shindo Aurieges > Shindo Montille >  Tannoy Arden. Cables by Wireworld and Auditorium 23.

 

[KmanChu]

So I am 2 weeks in with a Codex now, to build further on my previous comments...
 
1.) Purely as a dac it is better than the Qb-9DSD. This is a big statement, because the QB-9DSD is a very good dac. I preferred the QB-9DSD to the Auralic Vega, BMC PureDAC, and NAD M51. So take that for what it's worth, one dude's opinion. When you run SE RCAs out of the back in DAC mode the dac continues to run "Balanced" (the LED on the front next to the "Balanced" label stays lit) and the sound is really excellent into my hybrid tube amp (see next point for why this is significant.) 
 
2.) There is a tremendous difference in driving headphones between balanced and SE mode, at least with LCD-3s. I wouldn't expect the difference to be quite so profound but it is almost like listening to two different setups. SE the sound was congested and quite disappointing. If you plug in an SE headphone the "Balanced" LED goes out and some functional changes are made to run in some highly compromised way. They obviously did this so that two separate sets of headphones could run from the dual 3.5mm jacks in shared mode. They would have been far better off to just run off of a single leg of the balanced configuration and not change whatever they changed. I can see someone listening with an SE headphone and being disappointed. 
 
3.) I still like the sound of my tube amp better than the headphone stage. This is honestly what I expected, although I had hoped otherwise. My amp is a very good tube-hybrid amp that originally sold for the same price as the Codex. The Codex is very musical, but it still doesn't have the magic that tubes have. The tubes still have the liquid, immersive sound that is easier to get lost in. The Ayre's headphone output, however, might be more revealing of very low-level textures. In vocals fricatives stick out a bit more clearly with the Ayre's output. It is still really good and might be more accurate, but that doesn't mean I will like it better. Perhaps it is just the synergy of my amp with my headphones (the RWA balanced headphone stage was designed/voiced using Audeze headphones.) I have always been a sucker for tubes, so it could just be my preferences. I think my amp is a bit more dynamic and the bass is more filled out.
 
My judgement (so far) is that the Codex was designed, first and foremost, to be a really good dac with a fully balanced signal path that took advantage of their diamond output configuration. It seems the design was centered around optimizing the "DAC" mode. From there, I think they decided to use the same hardware but run it with higher bias or with other compromises to drive headphones. It does this very well, but the hardware is ultimately in a compromised mode compared to dac mode. I really want to like the sound from the Codex headphone jacks well enough to let me part with my amp, but so far I don't think that will happen. Maybe by 300 hours...

 

[jrfmd]

I agree about the balanced output vs single ended--loss of dynamics in single ended removes the magic
also cables and headsets obviously make a difference: (my findings were with the HD800, the usb they send with the codex, audioquest forest optical cable and cardas balanced cable to the earphones.
 
it sounded good when I used the above setup at about 100 hours use
 
wooly bass doesn't occur in my setup unless I increase the 30-120 area too much
 
although I find it as engaging as my tube amp to loudspeakers setup, it doesn't mean you should agree with me--I believe it is a very personal aspect of the sound that changes from person to person and (speaking for myself) from time to time depending on my mood or whether I'm hungry or not
 
Jeff

 

[Chuckjones242]

Have had my codex for close to two weeks now... here's some of my gripes (plenty of praise is out there right now).  I'm probably going to return it this week.
 
Biggest.  For a system that's primarily focused on the DAC, the lack of inputs are just unforgivable.  I get that a large portion of the audiophile audience uses USB, but that seems to be all the Codex is geared towards.  With Optical being there so people with optical audio cards can also use it.  I don't / won't use a PC / Mac as the media player - the experience is awful for me, I like to lay down in the dark and zone out.  With the AK120 as my player, or maybe my iPad / Tidal / Spotify to find new music I might buy.
 
I had assumed, and was told by the dealer that AK would of course work, optical is optical right?  Well no it's not.  To my chagrin the AK player will not work with it at all.  How can this be??  
 
I called support and was told that they didn't know and would ask engineering.  After two days I've not gotten a return call yet, and since I've yet to get it to work, I'm going to assume I'm hosed.  
 
And then I came to discover that the apple camera adapter that works with USB isn't compatible either.  "Not enough power".  Hosed again, so much for Discovr'ing music on my iPad.
 
I've tried my Surface 3 and my Macbook to experiment with different layouts and see if I could get comfortable with it.  Nope.  I've been looking at different players, perhaps the iBasso or the new Fiios player.  But why the heck would I do it when I already have an overpriced $1700 player?
 
The second difference is the audio quality.  It's pretty great.  But it's not that much better than my current Antelope Zodiac which is about the same price and maybe 3 years old?  So much for revolutionizing DACs.

 

[DoctaCosmos]

Admittedly, I shouldn't have researched this product anymore as I plan on using iPad to stream my music via tidal.

 

[Chuckjones242]

Admittedly, I shouldn't have researched this product anymore as I plan on using iPad to stream my music via tidal.

 
I tried to research the compatibility with my iOS devices and the Astell&Kern player, but there is no information out there.  Not in the manual, the internet, the dealers, or customer service.  It's basically why I made the post, to help others that might be looking for that info too
 
It seems shortsighted for them to think people are going to stay strapped to computers, or their CD players.  It's old school IMO (and I'm old).
 
Even despite the slight bump in quality - that slight bump was enough to consider keeping it otherwise.
 
Sorry / glad I could help

 

[Chuckjones242]

To finalize this, got a call back from Ayre.  Confirms my suspicions. To paraphrase...
 
"They're primary focus is on delivering the best performance.  To them, that's with a computer through USB.  They've not tested against DAPs to know of others that might work."
 
They are aware of the AK compatibility, apparently they follow a non-standard optical protocol, they tried to work with them to solve, but weren't able to.  More shocking is that they hadn't tested iOS at all he said.  It's not like no one had an iphone in the building right?
 
I told the support person they should probably work out a way to let people know of the known compatibilities since the only knock on the product so far is the lack of inputs, and that exacerbates the problem.  Better to know of them instead of buying the Codex and having to work it all out.  
 
I get it's a small company in CO, its partly why I wanted to support them.  I get small businesses and their challenges, but I just have a bad taste in my mouth.

 

[occamsrazor]

 
"They're primary focus is on delivering the best performance.  To them, that's with a computer through USB."

 
In which case I find it surprising that they chose not to implement USB HID volume control...... which would make controlling volume from the computer much nicer.

 

[Chuckjones242]

   
In which case I find it surprising that they chose not to implement USB HID volume control...... which would make controlling volume from the computer much nicer.

 
My takeaway is that they took some USB standards (clearly I don't know what that is, other than they exist) and didn't really put much thought in it beyond that... and spent all their time in the unit itself.  Of the three DAC's that I've owned (including the Schiit even), this is the only one that doesn't recognize everything I throw at the red light or USB port.  Blaming Astell&Kern tells me they don't know why it doesn't work.

 

[KmanChu]

   
And then I came to discover that the apple camera adapter that works with USB isn't compatible either.  "Not enough power".  Hosed again, so much for Discovr'ing music on my iPad.
 
 

 
Would using a USB hub make this work?

 

[austinpop]

Wow, this is really sobering news. I could have understood USB incompatibilities, but in every product I've bought in the last 10+ years, optical just works. Not that I particularly want to use optical, but still...
 
I am scheduled to audition a Codex in the next couple of weeks. Given this news, I will definitely try it first in my own intended configuration before forming any judgements.
 
My intent is to use the Codex (or other DAC/Amp) downstream of an Auralic Aries Mini streamer, pulling music from a NAS over the network. The connection from Aries to Codex could be either USB or S/PDIF. I checked with Auralic, and their opinion was it should work fine, except "It will have compatibility problem if you use USB storage and Ayre USB DAC at the same time." Since I plan to use DLNA to stream over my network from my NAS, this should be OK. But again - many people want to use the Aries Mini with a USB drive. Troubling.
 
I feel compelled to vent at this point at the high-end audio industry. They seem to enshrine a particular use case as the "golden path" and unapologetically ignore others. The idea that people only want use a DAC/Amp via USB from a laptop is ludicrous in this age of portable DAPs, streamers, tablets, phones, etc. The whole point is to embrace flexibility, rather than stifle it.
 
I hope Alex from Ayre, who was on this thread a while back can shed some more light on their plans to address these concerns.

 

[austinpop]

 
I get it's a small company in CO, its partly why I wanted to support them.  I get small businesses and their challenges, but I just have a bad taste in my mouth.

 
Ayre is a respected name in audio, with many iconic and expensive products in their stable.
 
As such, I don't think they deserve a "pass" for something like this. I think we are justified in expecting exceptional products from them

 

[Chuckjones242]

I made the mistake of not bringing my AK DAP with me to the audio shop (or my LCD-X's). I have slightly different musical tastes to begin with so having a demo with chamber music through 20K speakers was pointless. Ayre talked to me as if I was a fool for using optical in the first place, maybe but for me it's better to have GBs of music in my palm, and to be able to read reviews in Pitchfork and find the tracks in Spotify and Tidal. These use cases are the future, as the FiiO X7 with android shows. Unfortunately that player is coaxial, so again, I'm hosed there too.

Def bring your setup with you. I waited a month and drove 2 hours - and infuriated my spouse, i was expecting a new love.