[M-13]

Okay guys. I just thought it would be "interesting" to discuss, but I'm not super into it or anything. No seperate thread will be created.
 
My gut feeling was that the DX90 schematic looked better, part of the reason I went for the DX90, but I could not explain why so I just wanted to get other people's thoughts. To me it looks like the DX90 has better seperation of duties while the X5 has used more dual channel op-amps, while Ibasso went for more single-channel op-amps and thus used a greater number of them. Technically, I understand they should be the same anyway, but yeah I guess the proof will be in the pudding. I might go ahead and order the X5 anyway to satisfy my curiosity. We'll see...
 
Also, I'm a huge fan of the Sabre delta-sigma sound. I sort of got hooked with the Concero, realized it was for me. That was the other reason I went for the DX90, although I hear great things about the PCM1792.

 

[SilverEars]

   
If it is the number game -
 
K2M only has 2 DAC cores on each chip (for stereo), so 2 K2M have a total of 4 DAC cores, for dual-mono setup. On a single full fledged 9018, there is already 8 DAC cores,which can do 8 channels output (i.e. 7.1ch setup), or like DX100, in a quad-mono setup (4 DAC decoding single channels). So with all things equal, 9018 should still beat K2M easily. Remember, K2M is actually more of a simplified 9018. When the Chinese smarphone maker BBK vivo went to ESS asking for a dumb down version of 9018 for portable use, ESS answered with the K2M by taking away 6 of the 8 DAC inside 9018.

So that means both should be equal since DX90 uses 2 DAC each having 2 cores.  And DX100 is quad-mono so a single has 4 cores.  Both implementation has 4 cores for 4 channels, but 4 channels are not actually being used?  

 
Does anybody have the block diagram for the DX100? 

 

[Hobgoblinpie]

  So that means both should be equal since DX90 uses 2 DAC each having 2 cores.  And DX100 is quad-mono so a single has 4 cores.  Both implementation has 4 cores for 4 channels, but 4 channels are not actually being used?  

 
Does anybody have the block diagram for the DX100? 

 
I believe what ClieOS was saying is that the DX100 uses 4 cores per channel. There are 2 channels, so that's 8 in total. At least that's how I read it.

 

[warth0g]

   
Could you elaborate a bit more on "... I haven't found them to be the greatest with classical music ..."?  I only care about SQ and comfort; looks never scare me. 

 
 
Thanks.

 
In order to keep the thread on track, you should probably head on over to the HE500 thread (which admittedly, is huge) but in short:
 
I found that for very complex music like classical, instrument separation and so on starts to break down and it becomes a little muddled and the sound recedes. It's just not such an involving listening experience as it is with other genres. The rest of my audio chain is now exactly brilliant though, and you may find that you have a better experience if you have a better DAC and amp than I have. Having said that, the HE500 is not exactly renowned for classical and people tend to recommend the HD800s etc instead (rather more expensive though!)...

 

[thegunner100]

I guess we'll see wheter the dx90 ships today or tomorrow. I think most of us in the States probably won't be getting it til early next week. 

 

[SilverEars]

   
I believe what ClieOS was saying is that the DX100 uses 4 cores per channel. There are 2 channels, so that's 8 in total. At least that's how I read it.

 
edit: ok, DX100 uses 4 cores per channel, gotcha.  So DX90 uses 2 cores per channel and DX100 uses 4.
 
What's the benefit of using more cores per channel?

 

[glockhit]

   
Did it ever occur to you that our lives might be too short for us to keep answering the same 3 questions 15 times a day? At least use the search function.
 
Addiction is only a problem if you run out.

I have always enjoyed reading your information in these forums. I was dissapointed to read your response to a question about my iBasso purchase invoice. Not delivery time. I did do a search for the DX90 invoice information. Nothing appeared.
 
My 26 year old son was rushed to St Josephs Hospital ER on 03/27/2014. He was in the Critical Care unit until 04/05/14. The worst day of my life was when three surgeons told me there was a good probability my son would die on the operating table and to be prepared. Be prepared! How does a parent prepare themselves for that. If he made it through the operation we would have to wait 48 hours to know whether he would survive.
 
Do you have any children? Do you have any idea what that feels like to know that your child’s life can be cut short by a disease of fate. One day you have a healthy 26 year old son and the next day you are in an emergency room watching him suffer and near death. My son has made it through this nightmare and has come home to live with us until his next surgery in one month. I won’t know what will happen in the next several months. I do know that his life will change drastically.
 
My love for music has helped me keep my sanity during all of this. Most of it anyway. Although I am still recovering from the shock of that horrible day and not knowing what his future will be now.
No Sir it didn’t occur to me how short our lives would be answering the same questions 15 times a day. I really wasn’t thinking about that at the time. I was simply asking for help. Life can be taken away from us at anytime and any age. I do know how short someone’s life could be.
 
Thank you to the members that kindly did answer my question.

 

[wickson]

I have always enjoyed reading your information in these forums. I was dissapointed to read your response to a question about my iBasso purchase invoice. Not delivery time. I did do a search for the DX90 invoice information. Nothing appeared.

My 26 year old son was rushed to St Josephs Hospital ER on 03/27/2014. He was in the Critical Care unit until 04/05/14. The worst day of my life was when three surgeons told me there was a good probability my son would die on the operating table and to be prepared. Be prepared! How does a parent prepare themselves for that. If he made it through the operation we would have to wait 48 hours to know whether he would survive.

Do you have any children? Do you have any idea what that feels like to know that your child’s life can be cut short by a disease of fate. One day you have a healthy 26 year old son and the next day you are in an emergency room watching him suffer and near death. My son has made it through this nightmare and has come home to live with us until his next surgery in one month. I won’t know what will happen in the next several months. I do know that his life will change drastically.

My love for music has helped me keep my sanity during all of this. Most of it anyway. Although I am still recovering from the shock of that horrible day and not knowing what his future will be now.
No Sir it didn’t occur to me how short our lives would be answering the same questions 15 times a day. I really wasn’t thinking about that at the time. I was simply asking for help. Life can be taken away from us at anytime and any age. I do know how short someone’s life could be.

Thank you to the members that kindly did answer my question.

I understand your pain. Someone close to me was recently diagnosed with Leukemia, she's 9 years old.

You must understand the frustration of a repeated question though.


Good luck to you and your family.
Have faith.

 

[darkwasim786]

  I have always enjoyed reading your information in these forums. I was dissapointed to read your response to a question about my iBasso purchase invoice. Not delivery time. I did do a search for the DX90 invoice information. Nothing appeared.
 
My 26 year old son was rushed to St Josephs Hospital ER on 03/27/2014. He was in the Critical Care unit until 04/05/14. The worst day of my life was when three surgeons told me there was a good probability my son would die on the operating table and to be prepared. Be prepared! How does a parent prepare themselves for that. If he made it through the operation we would have to wait 48 hours to know whether he would survive.
 
Do you have any children? Do you have any idea what that feels like to know that your child’s life can be cut short by a disease of fate. One day you have a healthy 26 year old son and the next day you are in an emergency room watching him suffer and near death. My son has made it through this nightmare and has come home to live with us until his next surgery in one month. I won’t know what will happen in the next several months. I do know that his life will change drastically.
 
My love for music has helped me keep my sanity during all of this. Most of it anyway. Although I am still recovering from the shock of that horrible day and not knowing what his future will be now.
No Sir it didn’t occur to me how short our lives would be answering the same questions 15 times a day. I really wasn’t thinking about that at the time. I was simply asking for help. Life can be taken away from us at anytime and any age. I do know how short someone’s life could be.
 
Thank you to the members that kindly did answer my question.

Im only 20 at the moment, i can't even begin to imagine how your son or your
family are feeling right now, all i wanted to say is may he recover back to normal and have a wonderfully long and beautiful life.
You have my wishes and prayers.

 

[T.R.A.N.C.E.]

  The diagrams are not using the same block setup and the Fiio one actually doesn't make sense coming off the last stereo 1612. iBasso shows the separate channels of a single chip as independent blocks and Fiio shows entire chips as blocks. Either is fine but not directly comparable pictures. Fiio improperly has the last 1612 as a single channel out becoming stereo again. 
 
 The DAP's 2 paths are very much the same in practice except for summing in the LPF of the iBasso with only parts selection and voicing being different. There is no material advantage to either unless the new Sabre DAC chip proves to be one.

 
Afraid you are quite wrong, both the diagrams actually show exactly how many opamps the x5 and dx90 use. The x5 uses a single dual channel opamp for LPF and another for AMP, while dx90 uses two single channel opamps for each, the dx90 is technically the better design, using two extra opamps over the x5 to completely separate the channels.
 
The reason why the x5 and dx90 have two dual channel opamps after the dac is because both dacs output a 2 channel current for each left and right channel (so 4 channel total), so either 2 dual channel opamps are needed, or 4 single channel opamps, after this the signal is converted to 2 channel and you need either 1 dual channel opamp or 2 single channel op amps the rest of the way down the chain.
 
The only thing the x5 does better than dx90 in the schematic is x5 can be said to have a better IV stage than the DX90 (the two chips after the DAC) purely because the x5 uses two better opamps than the dx90 (x5 uses opa1612, dx90 uses opa1602), all the rest of the schematic the dx90 is much better than the x5. I do wish that the dx90 used the same IV opamp as x5, then the dx90 would have been faultless.
 
It is right after the DAC where ibasso went with slightly lower end chips, so that affects the rest of the chain. I would have thought it was a no brainer for ibasso to use the opa1612 instead of the 1602. In the rest of the line up ibasso use the opa1611, which is a high end, high power consumption chip, it doesn't make sense to go with a lower power, lower end chip for converting the dac signal!

 

[Lilfurbal]

  This is actually my first DAP, can't wait to see how much better the sound quality is compared to my htc one which is my current dap and phone lol, going to pair it with my denon d2000's and my ciems the 1964 quads 

 
I got the DX50 to replace using my htc one for listening to music.  I find there to be a noticeable difference between the two, however the biggest most important thing for me is not the sound quality upgrade in this situation, it was that the dx50 offers 256 volume steps whereas the htc one offers only 8 using the volume buttons on the side.  Can never find that perfect volume >:O
 
If the DX50 sounded exactly the same as the htc one, I'd still buy and use the DX50 purely for the fine volume adjustment.  Lol.  

 

[huckfinn]

Hi,
Is the difference an actual......improvement in S.Q. or just a difference?
Thanks

 

[goodvibes]

  I have always enjoyed reading your information in these forums. I was dissapointed to read your response to a question about my iBasso purchase invoice. Not delivery time. I did do a search for the DX90 invoice information. Nothing appeared.
 
My 26 year old son was rushed to St Josephs Hospital ER on 03/27/2014. He was in the Critical Care unit until 04/05/14. The worst day of my life was when three surgeons told me there was a good probability my son would die on the operating table and to be prepared. Be prepared! How does a parent prepare themselves for that. If he made it through the operation we would have to wait 48 hours to know whether he would survive.
 
Do you have any children? Do you have any idea what that feels like to know that your child’s life can be cut short by a disease of fate. One day you have a healthy 26 year old son and the next day you are in an emergency room watching him suffer and near death. My son has made it through this nightmare and has come home to live with us until his next surgery in one month. I won’t know what will happen in the next several months. I do know that his life will change drastically.
 
My love for music has helped me keep my sanity during all of this. Most of it anyway. Although I am still recovering from the shock of that horrible day and not knowing what his future will be now.
No Sir it didn’t occur to me how short our lives would be answering the same questions 15 times a day. I really wasn’t thinking about that at the time. I was simply asking for help. Life can be taken away from us at anytime and any age. I do know how short someone’s life could be.
 
Thank you to the members that kindly did answer my question.

Good luck but the guilt tripping is way over the top in response to a very common phrase. Best wishes to your son. 

 

[Lilfurbal]

  Hi,
Is the difference an actual......improvement in S.Q. or just a difference?
Thanks

 
Improvement.  First off for a fair comparison you have to turn off beats audio on the phone, and at that point the phone has no EQ to use without downloading some other app.  
 
To be honest though, the improvement isn't terribly significant to me listening to the same flacs, but it is there.  DX50 sounds cleaner, and the bass more detailed.  The improvements in sound quality isn't actually what I bought the DX50 for, really.  I wanted a stand alone player because I was getting fed up with 8 steps of volume and all the blippity bloop notification sounds the phone keeps making.  Also the original htc one that I have doesn't have a sd card slot, and my model only has 32 gb storage space that is also being shared with pictures and videos.  I had to ditch using the phone and look for something else.  Most cheaper DAPs have very limited storage space, but then I somehow stumbled across the DX50 during batch 5.  It fit all my needs so I ordered.  
 
Was a bit rough at first as I was dealing with freezing issues but that has since been fixed.  Absolutely love the thing, can never go back to using a phone for music.  

 

[musicheaven]

  I have always enjoyed reading your information in these forums. I was dissapointed to read your response to a question about my iBasso purchase invoice. Not delivery time. I did do a search for the DX90 invoice information. Nothing appeared.
 
My 26 year old son was rushed to St Josephs Hospital ER on 03/27/2014. He was in the Critical Care unit until 04/05/14. The worst day of my life was when three surgeons told me there was a good probability my son would die on the operating table and to be prepared. Be prepared! How does a parent prepare themselves for that. If he made it through the operation we would have to wait 48 hours to know whether he would survive.
 
Do you have any children? Do you have any idea what that feels like to know that your child’s life can be cut short by a disease of fate. One day you have a healthy 26 year old son and the next day you are in an emergency room watching him suffer and near death. My son has made it through this nightmare and has come home to live with us until his next surgery in one month. I won’t know what will happen in the next several months. I do know that his life will change drastically.
 
My love for music has helped me keep my sanity during all of this. Most of it anyway. Although I am still recovering from the shock of that horrible day and not knowing what his future will be now.
No Sir it didn’t occur to me how short our lives would be answering the same questions 15 times a day. I really wasn’t thinking about that at the time. I was simply asking for help. Life can be taken away from us at anytime and any age. I do know how short someone’s life could be.
 
Thank you to the members that kindly did answer my question.

 
My heart goes to your son and family. Have faith and continue to use music as your way to cope with your grief, I find it to be a great appeaser and strength when one needs it. My guess about the delivery, you should be getting it next week most likely. iBasso is pretty good with shipping on time, the courier company though might be a different story mainly due to customs handling, one thing is for sure you'll get it, if not they'll refund you.
 

  Okay guys. I just thought it would be "interesting" to discuss, but I'm not super into it or anything. No seperate thread will be created.
 
My gut feeling was that the DX90 schematic looked better, part of the reason I went for the DX90, but I could not explain why so I just wanted to get other people's thoughts. To me it looks like the DX90 has better seperation of duties while the X5 has used more dual channel op-amps, while Ibasso went for more single-channel op-amps and thus used a greater number of them. Technically, I understand they should be the same anyway, but yeah I guess the proof will be in the pudding. I might go ahead and order the X5 anyway to satisfy my curiosity. We'll see...
 
Also, I'm a huge fan of the Sabre delta-sigma sound. I sort of got hooked with the Concero, realized it was for me. That was the other reason I went for the DX90, although I hear great things about the PCM1792.

 
I am also very excited about being used in portable players, I'd like to think this is one of the best delta-sigma designs out there. We all seem to agree that the implementation is a big part of the final product but I like to think that having a great dac helps in starting on the right foot. The balance of the story is how skillful you are in keeping the dac outputs pristine and yet power those phones. I am looking at the Oppo HA-1, not released yet but those guys seem to have nailed its implementation according to their 105 models, price wise they look very reasonable, hope it will be true with the HA-1.