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The Icon HD looks like a killer deal for PC users. At $450 the HDP was considered an excellent value. I imagine most users of the HDP don't utilize the preamp function (I certainly don't), and would appreciate a savings of $100.
I wonder if they should re-word things so they don't just call it an HDP without a pre-amp. I think that is over-simplifying how many features were actually removed and was deceiving to me as what I thought it really meant (lack of variable RCA outs) was not true.
If you really think about it, the Icon HD feature wise.... is just like a uDac or uDac2 but without an SPDIF output so it is actually less featured than those two products. There is no functionality improvement over the uDac or uDac2, unlike the HDP which has much going for it feature wise. What you are getting is improved sound quality over the uDac and uDac2 and the requirement of a separate wall power supply.