Been using this little guy at work for awhile now. Myself and few other coworkers I pointed the deal out to. We've all enjoyed it and it certainly was a steal at $25 shipped. My notes about the unit are as follow:
First for sound quality. It sounds pretty darn decent through USB/bluetooth, and great through SPIDIF. There is a little bit of coloration to the sound. It is certainly warmer and a tad more bass than my Schiit stack. Through bluetooth it seems even warmer than through usb or spidif.
It is light and easy to carry. The battery lasts throughout the day easily even with continuous play.
The gripes I have are as follows. The bluetooth range is pretty bad. I get 30ft and that is it. I compared them to the Symphonized Wraith 2.0 bluetooth headphones which easily go twice the distance before cutting out. Still if you are in the same room as the source audio, it will work fine distance wise. Just don't expect to walk around your entire house with it away from the source.
The auto sleep mode. If you have no sound being pumped through the device for about 60 seconds it will go into sleep mode. It doesn't turn back on either unless you move one of the knobs. Go long enough with the sleep mode and it won't turn back on unless you see the source knob to off first. It is mildly annoying to say the least. It does this to help conserve battery power, but does it even when plugged into USB regardless. The print around the knobs are also very hard to read. Black text on very dark grey plastic isn't the easiest to read and in the dark you might as well not even try.
The volume knob has no stops. So it will spin in either direction infinitely. As noted by others, turning the volume knob up adjusts the volume of the unit AND the volume in windows through the USB if plugged in. However, turning the volume knob down only adjust the volume of the unit down and doesn't turn the windows volume output down. So basically be careful if you have the device plugged into your computer when you turn it up if your windows output volume isn't already maxed out. You may blast your ears out by the double volume increase.
Pretty sure I would never have paid the original $200+ asking cost. At $25 it was an excellent deal though. Most places are sold out, but you can still get one fairly cheap off Amazon and Ebay. Not $25 cheap, but $50 or less. Still a good deal at that price.
Pretty sure I would never have paid the original $200+ asking cost. At $25 it was an excellent deal though. Most places are sold out, but you can still get one fairly cheap off Amazon and Ebay. Not $25 cheap, but $50 or less. Still a good deal at that price.
Just got one for 35 USD from eBay, plus USD 16 shipping to Norway.
Plus VAT and import fee!
But want the Bluetooth feature, so a cheap solution if it really is good!
I have an o2 amp but no o2 dac. Can this be used as a stand alone dac and have the o2 amp hooked up to it? and if so, how do i connect the external amp? spdif out to 3.5 mm input of external amp?
I have an o2 amp but no o2 dac. Can this be used as a stand alone dac and have the o2 amp hooked up to it? and if so, how do i connect the external amp? spdif out to 3.5 mm input of external amp?
If you use SPDIF (coaxial) link out, you will need another DAC, with coaxial SPDIF in.
Your o2 amplifier is no DAC, so this cannot be used.
You need to connect the Brookstone 3.5mm headphone out to your o2 amplifier analog in.
But why?
The sound from the Brookstone is really good, it is better than my Hegel Super used with my laptop,
Even the Chord Mojo is not immediately "better" in comparison.
I've just ordered one of these off eBay (similar pricing to the guy who ordered to Norway as I'm UK based).
Not a deal breaker if it doesn't work, but using the SPDIF coaxial out, I should be able to connect this to to my Schiit Modi 2 Uber which has Coax in using an RCA connector right? Would be good to be able to add Bluetooth to my speaker set up at home, but as I said not a big problem if it doesn't work as it was bought mostly to drive IEMs at work.
I have been using this now, portable and stationary with my laptop, and I am very satisfied with this unit!
There is one gripe with this device though; It charges through USB whenever it is connected.
Used portable connected to a phone, it draws power from the phone battery as long as it is connected, reducing the phone battery runtime.
Used stationary it also charges constantly, making me worry how this will maybe reduce the Brookstone internal battery lifetime expectancy.
I just disconnects it when not in use to remove my worries though.
Using this with my MacBook Pro via USB. No problems playing 24bit-352.8khz test files from http://www.2l.no/hires/.
I'm using the VOX player for Macs. I had the amp for a few months but neglected using it much, I have an LG V20 (quad-DAC phone) and a Fiio X1, this is perfect for office use while I'm working on the laptop.
Anyone figure out any way to repair it to another device? There doesn't seem to be anything in the manuals either from Brookstone or Vencer. I loaned it to someone so they could go to the gym, and now it's paired to his phone until I get out of range, lol. I had to disconnect it from my tablet (even turning off BT) so he could pair to it. Only flaw I can see, otherwise it's pretty nice.
The Brookstone is a "slave" in the Bluetooth chain, and you can never unpair the connection from the "slave".
I know of no Bluetooth device that can do that.
You must unpair the connection from the "master" device, here your phone or computer.
But as long as the current "master" device is either turned off, or out of range, you can do a new pairing procedure with a new "master, and this new pairing will hold when the old "master" again has it's Bluetooth turned on.
So there is no fault with your Brookstone.
So, yes, that makes sense, but every other "slave" device I have has a pairing button, so you can pair it with another device. This one doesn't appear to have it, and it only enters pairing mode when it's not in range of something it's paired with, at least, that's what it appears to be.
So, yes, that makes sense, but every other "slave" device I have has a pairing button, so you can pair it with another device. This one doesn't appear to have it, and it only enters pairing mode when it's not in range of something it's paired with, at least, that's what it appears to be.
Almost eveery bluetooth speaker or headphone I've ever had - even if it's already paired with something else, I can hit a button or hold down a button and put it back into pairing mode to pair with a new device. This is the odd one - every other device has had the capability. Some cheaper devices this apparently overwrites the pairing, others seem to be able to pair to multiple sources. Just a short list: my jbl headphones, every bluetooth speaker I've ever had, multiple bluetooth keyboards, and so on.
Oddly enough, I couldn't get this to output sound on my Chromebook (Samsung Chromebook Plus) -- even though it detected the DAC, and I could play audio through it, it actually didn't output anything -- when I would use ChromeOS to swap sound output to built-in speakers, that worked, but when I re-selected this little device, it would go back to "silently" playing audio. Very strange, and I did not have that problem with this same Chromebook using my gen 1 Schiit Fulla.
However, I paid < $25, and it works great as a Bluetooth device, so I'm still very happy with this purchase overall.
i wasn't quite sure if i should get this or wait for the fiio BTR5, but i just now found the device on brookstone's own website (brookstone.com), at a vicious closeout price of 9.99.
i wasn't quite sure if i should get this or wait for the fiio BTR5, but i just now found the device on brookstone's own website (brookstone.com), at a vicious closeout price of 9.99.
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