[Tenashus1]

I am going to take one more shot at it by asking Amazon for a replacement.

 

[Leo]

My replacement unit of DFC that I ordered from Music Direct (2nd Unit) arrived tomorrow - so long as FedEx doesn’t delay delivery (happened on the first shipment). If the unit still has the defect I’ll notify Audioquest who may tell me to just return it to the merchant like last time. If that’s the case I’m done and will stick with my DFR until I hear better news that the manufacturing problems are resolved. Trying to remain positive but it’s waning.

 

[Hifiearspeakers]

That’s unfortunate for all of you that got defective units. My Cobalt was perfect out of the box. LED lights work correctly and nothing wiggles.

 

[Gus141]

I did email AQ about the LED colors and this was their excellent reply:
“We are working on updating the Cobalt manual for 96kHz. It is not magenta but more of a light blue. This helps make more of a distinction between the MQA Magenta(MQA Purple) and the previous magenta 96kHz on DragonFly Red and Black. Which looked to close to each other when playing Tidal Masters/MQA. We most likely will have the downloadable manual of our site updated first with color descriptions and then the printed manuals for future production of Cobalts. We apologize about that. There are no firmware updates at this time nor changes. No defective LED’s. It is the manual that needs to be corrected.”

Cheers,
Gus

 

[Saberlarry]

Hey @supadupaninja and @Gus141,
If the light is a concern you guys, you should drop AudioQuest an e-mail and see what they have to say about it. I've found their customer support to be pretty responsive, even though it took something like 48 hours for them to reply. The Cobalt is new enough that they may not even be aware of this problem, so you might want to point them to this thread and wherever else people have been talking about it.

@Saberlarry, whether or not you can tell a difference between a decent DAC and your iPhone depends on a few things:
1) the actual difference— personally, I can hear a distinct difference between my DFR and my Samsung S9, though between the DFR and my MacBook Air, the difference is very subtle, to say the least; I don't use an iPhone, so can't speak directly to it, but there are plenty of people in the other DragonFly thread that can hear a difference.
2) other equipment, including files and playback software— I've not heard the Billie Jeans, but I've read a few reviews and I don't doubt that they're resolving enough to hear a difference if you know what you're looking for; as regards the files, each person's hearing acuity is certainly different, but I'd be a little surprised if you could actually hear a difference between 256kbps MP3 and lossless, especially if you're not an audiophile "whatsoever." The difference between 256kbps and 320kbps MP3 or lossless is extremely subtle, and the difference between 320kbps and lossless is, for all intents and purposes, non-existant. Spotify, on the other hand... Well, they claim that their "Very High" quality streaming is 320kbps (though I'm not sure if it's MP3, OGG, or what), but to me it sometimes (but certainly not always) sounds a bit compressed, though I don't have any equivalent files to do a comparison. My point is not to sweat the 256kbps files from iTunes, but maybe double check stuff on Spotify... Now that I'm thinking about it, are the files from iTunes MP3 or AAC? AAC 256 are actually about equivalent to MP3 320, and therefore almost completely indistinguishable from lossless. I have found a difference in playback apps— on android UAPP sounds a lot better than Google Play Music— so it might be a good idea to trial the Onkyo player if you can do it for free.
3) Yourself— you say you're not an audiophile, but you've already bought some pretty good IEMs and you're thinking about a DAC/amp, which means you're interested in good sound. Guess what that makes you? An audiophile! Maybe not, like, King Audiophile, but more like an audiophile squire, or something. You're learning. Anyway, part of being able to distinguish between equipment is learning what to look for. My best advice in learning what to look for is to listen, just relax and listen to the music. I think the best advice I've seen is to not listen to how it sounds, but to pay attention to how it makes you feel. Another funny thing about comparing audio equipment is that it's often very difficult to tell the difference when going from a decent component to a great component, but it's much easier to tell when you go from great to decent. This makes it kind of difficult to get a good sense of a piece of equipment if you're only listening to it for a few minutes, like at a store or show, or whatever. You really have to have sufficient time for your ears and brain to adjust and you have to be able to relax.

Anyway. Hope this all helps.

Thanks man, I concur with all of your points. My iTunes purchases are mostly VBR-coded, so that means a song can either range from slightly under 256 kbps to a bit higher than 280. If I recall correctly, they are at least on par or superior to 320kbps mp3 due to being produced by Apple, especially with their Mastered for iTunes programme. Also heard that the difference between a well-coded 320kbps mp3/iTunes purchase and a lossless file is minimal and subtle as well. While using my current IEMs, I can sometimes hear additional instrumental sound in the background but they are quite feeble and would require hard concentration, quiet surroundings and slightly above-average volume. I hoped that the DFR could help me pinpoint those sound better but it was not that significant. I would say from my personal experience, the Apple's Lightning to 3.5mm is a 8.5 while the DFR is 9. Very close and almost no distinguishable differences and certainly not worth $200 upgrade. But well, given the current setup...
I did use Android phones for a while (S3 and S6, most recently S10+ but gave it away). The stock music app is indeed bad, at least when you compare it to the default Apple's music app. I had to install mods like Viper4Android and tweaked around a bit.
And yes, I love music. Given 30 minutes to try out a product at a store with people around me, it was definitely not comfortable. It's like I was creating pressure on my own and if I somehow didn't buy it (which I did), I would be judged by the vendors. Stupid and weird thought I know.

 

[Hifiearspeakers]

Thanks man, I concur with all of your points. My iTunes purchases are mostly VBR-coded, so that means a song can either range from slightly under 256 kbps to a bit higher than 280. If I recall correctly, they are at least on par or superior to 320kbps mp3 due to being produced by Apple, especially with their Mastered for iTunes programme. Also heard that the difference between a well-coded 320kbps mp3/iTunes purchase and a lossless file is minimal and subtle as well. While using my current IEMs, I can sometimes hear additional instrumental sound in the background but they are quite feeble and would require hard concentration, quiet surroundings and slightly above-average volume. I hoped that the DFR could help me pinpoint those sound better but it was not that significant. I would say from my personal experience, the Apple's Lightning to 3.5mm is a 8.5 while the DFR is 9. Very close and almost no distinguishable differences and certainly not worth $200 upgrade. But well, given the current setup...
I did use Android phones for a while (S3 and S6, most recently S10+ but gave it away). The stock music app is indeed bad, at least when you compare it to the default Apple's music app. I had to install mods like Viper4Android and tweaked around a bit.
And yes, I love music. Given 30 minutes to try out a product at a store with people around me, it was definitely not comfortable. It's like I was creating pressure on my own and if I somehow didn't buy it (which I did), I would be judged by the vendors. Stupid and weird thought I know.

Most iem’s have a very low impedance and are very easy to drive. So because of that, they don’t scale well. If you used a Dragonfly with a fulll-sized pair of headphones that require more power, you’d hear a much more significant difference. If you own any headphones that have at least 50 ohms of impedance and/or fall on the lower side of sensitivity (below 95 db’s), then do your A&B with them.

 

[Saberlarry]

Most iem’s have a very low impedance and are very easy to drive. So because of that, they don’t scale well. If you used a Dragonfly with a fulll-sized pair of headphones that require more power, you’d hear a much more significant difference. If you own any headphones that have at least 50 ohms of impedance and/or fall on the lower side of sensitivity (below 95 db’s), then do your A&B with them.

I understand that as well, that's why I mentioned "technically", if anyone's interested in specifications of my IEMs, could you tell me if the DFC is going to complement them? Here's the link: https://reference-audio-analyzer.pro/en/report/hp/astell-kern-billie-jean.php
As English is not my native language and they use a lot of terms and jargon, I cannot fully understand everything.

 

[Haden2866]

Plenty of vs.............. Mojo comparison in Alan Sircom's new Cobalt review on HiFi+.

Here's the link: https://www.hifiplus.com/articles/audioquest-dragonfly-cobalt-dacheadphone-amp/

 

[teknorob23]

I had a Mojo for 18 months and, with an iPhone, it was a pain to manage a battery and two additional cables (Apple CCK and USB A - USB micro). Oh, and I always used to plug Mojo into my Neco Soundlab v5 amp, which brought, to my ears, significantly improved bass texture and a little extra headstage width. So another battery and cable not to mention quite a large stack overall.
I am looking forward to hearing DFC and the thought of no battery to manage, a single cable (Lavri Cables Lightning to USB A socket, with CCK chipset built-in) and no stacking makes me happy. Mojo is technically awesome but overkill, power-wise, IMO for IEM use which is my primary use case. I'm looking for something with a little more vibe and swing now, even at the expense of that last 5% of detail.

slightly off topic but you've peaked my interest re the lavricables CCK substitute. Is this really a thing because i cant see it on their website. I have their lightening-usb micro cable to use with my iphone/hugo2 and its really good. I'm really hoping this is a thing and i've not just missunderstood your post!

 

[Haden2866]

slightly off topic but you've peaked my interest re the lavricables CCK substitute. Is this really a thing because i cant see it on their website. I have their lightening-usb micro cable to use with my iphone/hugo2 and its really good. I'm really hoping this is a thing and i've not just missunderstood your post!

I don't know, let's ask it.
ARE YOU A THING?
No answer.
Konstantin is pretty flexible - I asked him to make one and it arrived from Latvia two days later.

 

[teknorob23]

I don't know, let's ask it.
ARE YOU A THING?
No answer.
Konstantin is pretty flexible - I asked him to make one and it arrived from Latvia two days later.

whether it can speak or not, you've made me a happy man, well nearly, dare ask how much it cost?

 

[Haden2866]

whether it can speak or not, you've made me a happy man, well nearly, dare ask how much it cost?

You may dare ask. However I won't even admit to owning one, much less how much it cost. If you break it down per centimetre it will make you cry. The Lavri Cables website will give you a ballpark for similar Lightning cables.

 

[Hifiearspeakers]

I understand that as well, that's why I mentioned "technically", if anyone's interested in specifications of my IEMs, could you tell me if the DFC is going to complement them? Here's the link: https://reference-audio-analyzer.pro/en/report/hp/astell-kern-billie-jean.php
As English is not my native language and they use a lot of terms and jargon, I cannot fully understand everything.

It only has 18 ohms of impedance and a sensitivity over 100 db’s. So it doesn’t really need amplification which is why you don’t hear much improvement.

 

[teknorob23]

You may dare ask. However I won't even admit to owning one, much less how much it cost. If you break it down per centimetre it will make you cry. The Lavri Cables website will give you a ballpark for similar Lightning cables.

yes i think i spent about £100 for the lightening - mojo/hugo 10cm cable. Sad thing i probably will spend similar on this, just please dont tell my wife

 

[Haden2866]

yes i think i spent about £100 for the lightening - mojo/hugo 10cm cable. Sad thing i probably will spend similar on this, just please dont tell my wife

She'll love it. Comes in a little jewellery bag and everything. So cute. So silvery. So soundy.