[phrosty]

  Hello all!
So first of all, I'd like to answer phrosty:
 
These specs are measured directly from our engineering sample, and not from the components.
 
 
This second part comes directly from ZO's creator, Paul:
 
...

 
Thanks MizMozie! Too many companies just quote the specs from their opamp or dac chip and call it a day. It sounds like Paul is a stand up dude who cares a lot about audio.
 
It's great to see a company willing to go so far to act on feedback from their customers. I sincerely hope you haven't gone a bit too fast and priced yourself out of the market—I'd love to see you succeed. We'd all do good to remember all the hard work Digizoid went through to get the kinks worked out of the previous version. In fact, I just did—I'll take back what I said before about holding off on the preorder. Just placed mine!
 
Some totally random feedback for your website: The anti-aliasing of the frequency curve background in "The Thrill of Full Spectrum Sound" is horrendous. As a graphics programmer, this bugs me to no end! You can fix it by using a full precision renderer with gamma-correct anti-aliasing. Alternately, you might get away with rendering it much larger and downsampling with a gamma-correct graphics app like ImageMagick (PM me if you're interested and need some help?). You may need to increase line width to completely get rid of the moire pattern, but there's a lot of room to improve without that.

 

[Deviltooth]

Paul's response is a good read and indicative of audio wisdom.  I'm looking forward to the first product reviews.

 

[takutox]

just preordered this for 283 aud to australia
 
pretty big investment for me but giving you guys the benefit of the doubt since i enjoyed the zo2 so much.
 
quite excited actually

 

[gaspir324]

I really really love the ZO2.1/2.2 I have, and it was only what, 70$. But now it is 193.1€+possible VAT and import taxes. I also need a new TV so this is going to have to wait, but I'll eagerly wait for early impressions and hope for either a student discount or other discounts!

 

[MizMoxie]

For those of you who are interested in keeping up on production updates (plus checking out a few other goodies), you can check out our blog here: http://digizoid.com/blog/introducing-zo-fs-and-zo-fs-plus/

 
P.S. The remaining components arrived yesterday afternoon, so we're waiting to hear from our manufacturer on the manufacturing date!

 

[zaim]

  For those of you who are interested in keeping up on production updates (plus checking out a few other goodies), you can check out our blog here: http://digizoid.com/blog/introducing-zo-fs-and-zo-fs-plus/

 
P.S. The remaining components arrived yesterday afternoon, so we're waiting to hear from our manufacturer on the manufacturing date!

 
That's great, Can't wait to receive mine

 

[MizMoxie]

Today we ran some preliminary tests on the ZO FS+ engineering sample. We're happy to report that channel balance was spectacular: within 0.06 dB @ 100mV/1kHz (at an amplifier gain of 2.7)!!
 
Perfect for our IEM users!

 

[RPGWiZaRD]

  Today we ran some preliminary tests on the ZO FS+ engineering sample. We're happy to report that channel balance was spectacular: within 0.06 dB @ 100mV/1kHz (at an amplifier gain of 2.7)!!
 
Perfect for our IEM users!

That sounds sweeet. Seems like the volume control is of very high quality. Granted with only one gain setting and that large scale of adjustment, it had been a stupid decision to skip on the quality of volume control.

I've tried some cheap amp (won't mention any names) with very horrible channel balance at low volume settings to the point it became unlistenable with IEMs, it just got too annoying...

 

[MizMoxie]

 
That sounds sweeet. Seems like the volume control is of very high quality. Granted with only one gain setting and that large scale of adjustment, it had been a stupid decision to skip on the quality of volume control.

 
It absolutely is of high quality! Check it out: http://www.ti.com/lit/ds/symlink/pga2311.pdf
 
Choosing just the perfect volume control was one of Paul's biggest priorities. Apparently this volume control is not your typical type - you have to have a microprocessor just to program it! Therefore, you won't find it in more common headphone amps. It's most often used in professional recording equipment.

 

[RPGWiZaRD]

   
It absolutely is of high quality! Check it out: http://www.ti.com/lit/ds/symlink/pga2311.pdf
 
Choosing just the perfect volume control was one of Paul's biggest priorities. Apparently this volume control is not your typical type - you have to have a microprocessor just to program it! Therefore, you won't find it in more common headphone amps. It's most often used in professional recording equipment.

Yea I'm googling on it atm, and indeed it's not the most simple chip out there and it seems to be of high quality that some bigger expensier full-size recievers use. The price is very high on it too. This seems like a higher quality volume control than other portable amps in this price bracket use. Seems to fit nicely in this case so you can make it more simple by only having one gain setting thanks to its wide gain and very good channel balance so it should work in all cases from LOD + IEM use to higher demanding headphone use out of the headphone out.

 

[caprimulgus]

i love my ZO2 and couldn't do without it. was planning to grab the ZO3 for sure, but like a few others, the price is a bit steep for me...$150 would have been an insta-buy for me too!
oh well, i guess i'll wait to see how everyone likes it...and hopefully for a sale!
 
Quote:

 
To me it seems like digiZoid should opt to release a cheaper ZO in the future, they need to have something around the $100 or so pricerange too it feels like. Like a ZO2+

 

in regard to a possible ZO2+, hopefully it has the less bass roll-off, added power and low noise floor of the ZO3. i don't really care that much about the bypass, OLED screen or metal build. although, i'd prefer a $150 unit with as many of those things as possible, rather than a $100 unit that's more like the existing ZO2.

 
tbh, i could do without the full spectrum really. what i'd prefer is a FULL "full spectrum", with mid adjustment and/or negative adjustment (either way would work). i have headphones which i would like to bump up the mids and/or take the treble down a notch, so that would be much more useful to me than a treble adjustment alone.

 

[RPGWiZaRD]

 
in regard to a possible ZO2+, hopefully it has the less bass roll-off, added power and low noise floor of the ZO3. i don't really care that much about the bypass, OLED screen or metal build. although, i'd prefer a $150 unit with as many of those things as possible, rather than a $100 unit that's more like the existing ZO2.
 
tbh, i could do without the full spectrum really. what i'd prefer is a FULL "full spectrum", with mid adjustment and/or negative adjustment (either way would work). i have headphones which i would like to bump up the mids and/or take the treble down a notch, so that would be much more useful to me than a treble adjustment alone.

My mastering engineer in me isn't that sure that less of a bass roll-off is necessarily a good thing, it probably sounds like a good thing to the average person on the paper but in reality it doesn't necessarily have to be. It's one of those things I'm curious to audition in ZO3 though. Usually if you scale off some deep bass in the mastering process it can make for clearer and punchier bass due to the very low frequencies use so much energy and also the "wider" the bass boost is the more unfocused/less punchy etc it tends to become so I hope that isn't the case with ZO3's bass response. Also headphones that roll offf in the bass down deep, say below 40Hz or so and makes a "curve"/pointy bass curve tends to have also punchier bass character compared to those who go linearly down to like 15Hz or whatever. Personally I want punchy bass that ZO v2.1 did especially great (why it's still the version I use).  

The upgraded amping capabilities, noise filtering and the high quality volume control certainly up the cost a bit too besides the new alu shell, oled display. I don't think they'd be able to offer it lower than roughly 180~$190, at least the volume control would have to be exchanged for a lower quality one if having to reach $150 bracket, possibly the film capacitors would have to go/be downgraded to very cheap ones or none at all (still with added power it may be a good thing to have at least some noise filtering).

 

[caprimulgus]

I'm a hip hop head, so i guess low rumbly bass is more suitable to me than for your hardstyle stuff where punchy bass is more important...so for me, less roll off is a good thing.

but yeah, interested to hear impressions (especially compared to ZO2.3)

 

[MizMoxie]

Samples of the anodized aluminum enclosure came in today!

 

[RPGWiZaRD]

You won't go for brushed alu look? I personally dig that finish a loooot. Gives it a stronger/more resistant feel IMO (and harder to detect scratches).