Why is everybody convinced that high sq MUST equal high price?
How about Fiio make a DAP that ticks all the right boxes and gets it just right at a reasonable price.
look at x5.. how much do you think it would cost you to build it from the ground up?... i say that it is over 200$ to build it, not considering the work done by people which costs, only materials as display, the wheel and every component... consider how much the systems for making a cuircuit cost, and how much the rest cost...
Building an iphone costs less than 100$ and it costs over 1000$, [iphone 6 being 2000$ at the moment]
if x7 is stated at 700$, it is a must see thing.
Also, about analog volume, it would actually be bad to have an analog wheel for volume. That one creates a bad situation,.. or analog potentiometre...
as for UI and the rest, the ui doesn't have to be fancy... but you should be able to live with it... i really do mean it... if it is so bad "hifiman bad" you will not get a product because of it... build quality, the same "hifiman again"... they have some of the best possible sound quality, but the ui and the build quality, and battery life, and space for keeping files are awful.... but hifiman is one of the best as far as sound quality goes...
ak240 is the best all around player at the moment, but it costs way too much for a DAP... exactly like hugo chord. they are way too expensive at least for what they do... for the price of hugo cord or ak 240 you get a gaming laptop [say asus g750jm], a DAP-DAC[x5] and a gret pair of headphones [say, i think that at 2500$ you can enter hd650 from sennheiser or ultrasone signature and if not ultrasone pro900].... so... why again does one have to pay that much for either hugo chord or ak240?.. simple, because they cost very much to develop, they have very good build quality, sound quality, battery life, and etc.
Of course i want the x7 to sound better than ak240 or chord hugo, but, i want it to be usable in every day life, and i want to be able to hold 2 cards, or have a LOT of battery, or other features that make a DAP so much better...
EDIT::: fiio cleared all the boxes in x5... x7 is more of an upgrade, as it will cost double than the actual price of x5, it is not going to sound 2X better, as it is not possible, [you really think that ak240 or chord hugo sounds 2X better?... they are like 15% or at most 20% better than x5... there is a limit where sound just cannot get better].. so x7 can be at most a 15-20% better sq than x5, but it can be way better at UI, battery, space, touch screen, everything it is going to be.
[My ultrasone dj one pro... I want to get hd800, at price point of 2000$ in my country vs 300$ for ultrasone. The difference is not bigger than 25% for hd800+sennheiser dedicated amp for them....] but i still want to get hd800..
EDIT 2::: this things do not respect math... this doesn mean that chord hugo + amp +hd800 is going to be 50% better than my x5 + ultrasone dj one pro... they are going to be in that range of 25% better...just to make myself clear... and i really listened to those things....