There are a few things that factor in to the price of Gustard products, low margin is one, but they're also clever with sourcing and manufacturing. As a result their product time-to-market is very long but the price point they can sell it is very low. You can do that with high-end audio since hey, what's good now is going to be good years from now. In other businesses like computers or mobile phones you just can't do that.
By the way at no point has Gustard said the balanced amp will be called H20. It's what head-fiers keep calling it. There's still time to influence the design of the amp so if you guys do have any suggestions I'll pass them forward for sure.
I really want to see an attenuator volume control, preferably a relay attenuator. Audio-GD has shown that this can be accomplished at $399 USD, offering excellent channel balance. I want the amplifier to be a fully balanced discrete Class A design with less emphasis on sheer output power and more on quality. Headphones are becoming increasingly efficient, and I don't want to pay extra for the ability to push 10 watts into 32 ohms. The new amp should have the same dimensions as the X20, and stack well with it.
I trust Gustard on the implementation though, the only thing up in the air is their choice of volume control. Far too many amps in the $500-2000 range are using volume pots, with only a few noteworthy exceptions such as Audio-GD, and the Schiit Ragnarok. Seeing volume pots on $1500+ amps like the BHA-1 and Taurus MKII is just unforgivable.
Man i've been reading this thread and the original H10 thread. Totally sold on getting a gustard now, just a matter of which and when lol.
Did want to ask a question about the X12 though, if im connecting via toslink, does it make sense to have the U12 still? i'm assuming toslink will sound better than USB right?
Btw i personally love the name. (i pronounced it Gu- Star- d) Also Gustard H20 (aka H-2-O / gustard water) sounds awesome =)
I think the U12 is a pretty cheap buy and will be a good improvement, but it's hardly necessary. With toslink you will avoid ground loop issues but you will add a little interface jitter and be limited in sample rate to 192khz, which is more than enough anyways. The interface jitter won't be an issue since it will be reclocked anyways. On the other hand, buying an expensive Gucci external reclocker, and then connecting with a non-i2s interface is a big no-no lol. The X12 and the U12 have a compatible i2s connection though, so I would use that.
I feel though, overall the input section on the X12 has definitely been an area where it has been built to a price by necessity, and the U12 does much to alleviate that.
Personally, I'd wait for the X20 since it's essentially the same price of the X12 + U12, and will very likely do better than the combo. They really paid attention to the input section this time as I speculated that they would months ago. I think with the X20, an external USB interface will no longer be of benefit and would actually degrade performance. Jitter performance will be very good even with the Chinese TCXOs. With a few clock mods it can get even better, but when jitter is better than -120 db (barring jitter spikes), I wonder if it really even matters.
