[adrian0115]

I've been testing the Infinity 2.0's for just a little over 2 weeks now and yesterday I decided to try out the wall-wart/SMPS for fun.  I was a little surprised that the smps was DOA.  I'll gladly admit I'm not the sharpest tool in the shed but I do know how to plug in a wall-wart.  
 
I'm just glad that the LPS works since it's just been sitting around for so long and I had no way of knowing whether it would work or not.  I've got my fingers crossed that the Infinity/LPS continues to work.
 
Sound quality wise, the Infinity/LPS is the best I've ever had but as I stated in a previous post, I don't exactly have other references/gear to compare with at the moment.  I'm going to try and get some time to compare this with my friends mytek/mdac/vega but that will take some time.  I don't have all the fancy lingo that most guys use to describe the sound but IMHO it sounds clean and I can hear the layering of tracks I'm familiar with.  I personally feel that the digital harshness/hash/glare is taken care of since I don't have a problem with hi-hat/cymbals like with lesser kit.  
 
Anyway, I've got it on low gain -0.0dB and I feel it drives my HD650's pretty good.  
 
Like everyone else, I know exactly how you guys feel but objectively, I need to thank Steph, Gina, Manny once again for making the delivery happen.  Despite all the marketing BS, I gotta give the customer happiness team 2 thumbs up.  
 
Looks like it's time to open another ticket for the SMPS.  Will report back when I get some more time comparing it to other gear but the bottomline is I feel the sound quality is the best I've heard but you guys can take that for whatever it's worth since I've got limited kit to compare to at the moment.  

 

[adrian0115]

Consider yourself a fool if you wish. The evidence is that LH Labs is shipping, albeit slower than all would like. Yes, I waited 22 1/2 months from my first campaign contribution until I received my DAC. Yes, I was frustrated. I am still waiting for more LH Labs products and don't expect to receive the last of them until some time in the middle of 2016. I have even made a few pointed posts about LH Labs, their inability to calculate a reasonable development, production and shipping schedule and their sometimes poor customer policies. The difference is that I don't go around ranting and raving calling them liars, cheats, and thieves. I don't go around crying about having 'bought' product in their indiegogo crowd funding campaigns and never receiving it. Ranting and raving does nothing to speed up delivery, it just makes people look immature and impatient.

While I am thrilled to have my Pulse X infinity DAC, I am greatly disillusioned with LH Labs for releasing even a few into the retail stream before delivering all units to campaign backers. At the same time, I do understand their need to feed the retail supply chain even a few units as early as possible to start building that business and to satisfy contracts that were signed before they fully understood the production delays that they have obviously experienced. If I were still waiting, I too would be thoroughly incensed at this. Unfortunately, they have had to do some things that nobody likes due to some poor judgement and ambitious planning. This will hurt them in the long run, but they have forced themselves into having to choose a path that they think will cause them the least damage. Hopefully they will learn from this and do better in the future. This has been precipitated in part by having a company owned and operated by engineers and salesmen. They could really use some hardcore business managers at the helm who can properly predict development, production and shipping schedules. I suffer from the same poor ability to calculate the completion time of a project, and when a manager asks me how long I might think 'two weeks'. This could work if everything goes right, but it never does. If I catch myself in time, I will triple my guess and this is often close to the actual cycle. LH Labs has yet to learn this, although they are getting better at it.

Bottom line is - Yes, they have our money, and we will eventually get our toys. There is little we can do but wait and occasionally push for updates.

J.P.

I agree with most of what J.P. is saying but quite a while back I already saw the BS that the marketing guys were pushing and called them out on that.  There was an update saying that the 2.0 chassis was only going to add 4 days to the manufacturing lead time which sounded like total BS to me already.  This move was to get people to switch over to the 2.0 since the 1.0 was supposedly too expensive to manufacture.  Since the mechanical design was iterated a number of times, that added further delay.  I assume they realized the BS timelines weren't gong to sit well with people so the option to jump back 1.0 was given but at this late into the game, might as well wait for the 2.0.  
 
This goes back to my main issue with LH.  I personally don't mind if engineering wants to take time to refine something and issues happen all the time.  The problem is the straight up BS from marketing.  I personally would like to see posting of actual project updates/problems rather than marketing BS.  I'm ok if you tell me we've got a problem and we'll update when engineering fixes it and actually following through with communications.  Anyway, I'm done ranting.
 
LH is shipping but the QC can still use some work I feel.  Fingers crossed that the Infinity/LPS keeps working.

 

[nudd]

But not only the timelines are BS their policies are schizophrenic, discriminatory and infuriating. Off the top of my head:
 
1. BS about refund policy
 
Total BS. Indiegogo's policy says Indiegogo itself cannot refund because the money has gone to the company. Indiegogo then says it's up to the company and the backer to come to an acceptable result. The truth is that LHL itself decided internally not to refund and is trying to shift the blame on Indiegogo's policy.
 
And then they go and refund certain people but not others.
 
Total BS. Just be honest and say that it is you policy to do this and stop trying to blame indiegogo.
 
2. BS explanations followed by radio silence
 
Eg, cannot have a sanity check on flashing of firmware because the USB interface cannot detect what model of Pulse you are flashing? This was the explanation offered by Gavin and he said someone would follow up with a more technical explanation. BS. There is nothing preventing them from writing a wrapper that will detect what version of Pulse you are using before loading the firmware flasher. This is obvious from their control panel software which can tell whether you have an infinity or a normal Pulse.
 
Another example - advertising the Geek Verb for audiophiles. Then saying nothing wrong with Geek Verb and sounds totally fine. Then claiming they tuned this deliberately for consumer friendliness and sounded exactly to taste.
 
3. BS about transferable warranty
 
First piece of BS was Larry who said there would be fully transferable warranties and Gavin over-riding him.
 
Second piece of BS was then putting up the extended warranty perk for like half a day and then taking it down because they said nobody was interested.
 
Third piece of BS - so some people do get transferable warranties! Well done LHL you preferentially treat certain customers over others yet again. What is your criteria for doing this?
 
I could go on, but I have to go to work tomorrow ...

 

[greenkiwi]

The verb was disturbing.

I heard from someone directly at lhlabs that they didn't sound at all like the prototype, and that they were taking legal actions against the manufacturer... But they didn't then provide returns and or refunds to backers.

And what ever happened to the balanced verb?

 

[doctorjazz]

True, I forgot there was supposed to be another Verb sent out, balanced, we haven't heard anything about it, wonder if I'll ever get it.

 

[hwlyall]

Verbs are being sold on Amazon, though it doesn't say much about being from LH Labs. Just search "Verb Earbud."

http://www.amazon.com/Verb-LH-VRB-Earbuds/dp/B00V5JXGOW/

Hopefully they are selling a lot of them so they can develop the rest of our products quicker.

 

[Audio Addict]

Verbs are being sold on Amazon, though it doesn't say much about being from LH Labs. Just search "Verb Earbud."

http://www.amazon.com/Verb-LH-VRB-Earbuds/dp/B00V5JXGOW/

Hopefully they are selling a lot of them so they can develop the rest of our products quicker.

Interesting they are selling them less than sold to the backers. Surprisingly there are 57 reviews and overall shows 5 stars. I had 2 pairs I gave away for a meet raffle and no one wanted them.

 

[wingsounds13]

They are less than the indiegogo price and yet are still way overpriced for what you get. I don't know why they didn't reject and send the shipment back rather than selling them.

As for the Verb-X balanced version... It would be nice to hear where they are in the process, and get some idea of when they might ship. Seems like a couple of months ago now they were getting the final samples for production approval, then nothing heard since then.

J.P.

 

[germay0653]

Larry mentioned, in October, they were getting samples.  I guess they're weren't up to standards so I suppose no news rather than bad news.

 

[one-eyed-xander]

Hi - it's been hard to keep up with the latest on this thread. Can someone please summarize the general consensus, particularly regarding the Pulse X (non-fi)?
 
Personally I'm reasonably happy with this device. It seems to work fine - although I haven't been able to spend a lot of time with a direct comparison to my previous rig (NuForce Icon HDP / Emotive m-100). In fact my cat decided that I needed to upgrade to a balanced cable termination for my HE-500s, so now it's a little difficult to go back and re-compare the old rig to the Pulse X.
 
Reliability seems fine. I've had the occasional audio breakup when reconnecting the (LH labs) USB cable to the iPad/CCK, but nothing too frequent to be concerned about. The optical connection from my Mac Pro works just fine.
 
Overall I'm happy with the relatively small amount of money I paid for this thing. $440, seems fine for that money.
 
I share all the same concerns as others about the interminable delays and confusing upgrades and continual upselling. However now that the device has arrived and I've had some time to listen to it, I'm happy with it. Did I just get lucky?

 

[doctorjazz]

I think most people who got their units have had no problems, but one generally hears from people who are unhappy, much less often from people for whom everything went well. Plain human nature...

 

[adrian0115]

  Hi - it's been hard to keep up with the latest on this thread. Can someone please summarize the general consensus, particularly regarding the Pulse X (non-fi)?
 
Personally I'm reasonably happy with this device. It seems to work fine - although I haven't been able to spend a lot of time with a direct comparison to my previous rig (NuForce Icon HDP / Emotive m-100). In fact my cat decided that I needed to upgrade to a balanced cable termination for my HE-500s, so now it's a little difficult to go back and re-compare the old rig to the Pulse X.
 
Reliability seems fine. I've had the occasional audio breakup when reconnecting the (LH labs) USB cable to the iPad/CCK, but nothing too frequent to be concerned about. The optical connection from my Mac Pro works just fine.
 
Overall I'm happy with the relatively small amount of money I paid for this thing. $440, seems fine for that money.
 
I share all the same concerns as others about the interminable delays and confusing upgrades and continual upselling. However now that the device has arrived and I've had some time to listen to it, I'm happy with it. Did I just get lucky?

Indeed I had the same concerns as well.  I have received the Infinity and am now testing.  Apparently the smps/wall-wart is DOA so luckily the LPS that I had sitting around is working.  Things like the wall-wart/verb etc. are all vendor/supplier QC issues when dealing with China companies.  I know first hand a lot of them are a pain in the arse.  Personally it's not a big deal since I have an LPS but for someone that doesn't, it would appear that the Infinity is simply DOA since they wouldn't be able to tell whether the Infinity is dead or the wall-wart.  Thus I believe it's in LH's best interest to test these things as well before shipping out.  
 
I had a few hiccups with unknown errors in foobar just like someone earlier posted as well.  Currently running the 3.26 driver under win7 and it seems ok now.  
 
Leaving all the BS aside, I personally (and objectively) find the sound quality to be great with the HD650s since this is the best I've heard from the HD650s thus far.  I haven't had the opportunity to compare with gear in the same retail price range so I look forward to testing that sometime in the near future.   
 
I hope everybody gets their units and post something positive/objective since I have friends that have pretty much gone all in with LH and I'd rather see them get their kit eventually than seeing their hard earned $ vanish.  A bit of a double-edged sword I know.
 
Sorry for not posting up a pic earlier since I know some people think it didn't happen without a pic. 
 
 
 

 

[adrian0115]

I think most people who got their units have had no problems, but one generally hears from people who are unhappy, much less often from people for whom everything went well. Plain human nature...

Indeed.  That's why I hope people would post something positive once they get their kit.  The negativity doesn't do LH much good especially for people that are still waiting for stuff that's still in R&D.  
 
Like everyone else, I've already been down the complaint/b*tch road at least half a year ago.  I got friends that have backed pretty much everything LH threw at them since the very beginning and have nothing to show for it yet except USB cables.  I can tell you guys, they're not happy campers right now.  
 
I do want to point out that I am highly grateful and appreciative of the customer happiness team and again want to say thank you.  Hopefully you guys see this. 

 

[vnmslsrbms]

Yeah they are far from perfect, but they are a new company, and have to work out their issues.  For all that's said and done, their products do seem to sound great.  Thing is there are so many readily available options out there that this market is pretty saturated.  And they are one of the few companies actually using the K2M (ESS mobile) chip in a desktop/full size device.  After hearing some NOS DACs with tubes, even I am switching over.  I think the Vi Tube is their killer product, but many companies have already produced similar products.  The Vi look however remains unique.  

 

[spyder1]

I must be hallucinating. Am I seeing Pulse, "Positive Feedback"? What is happening to this thread? LH Labs doing something right? I need to print this page and pin to to my office wall!
 
*Multiple Pulse, and LPS owner!