Congrats on your first post,
It seems your unhappy with the signature. I actually have an idsd signature and love the sound I get out of it.
Tried the idsd Diablo and while it has fully balanced circuitry, found the sound and power output was not for me. Ifi makes different products for these reasons. Looks like your really happy with your hip Dac. That’s great! I’ve never found balanced to make much of a difference except for higher volume. They say it’s better for longer cable runs though which I believe. I have well made XLR cables from my dac to my desktop amp. Since these portable amp / dacs are 1 unit, I just don’t see the point here. I think it’s easy to get lost in the spec sheets of these things. What’s important is weather or not your enjoying the music. Oh and volume pot imbalance is not a problem on my unit or the Diablo I tried out. They work as they should
As for Ifi reading and answering feedback, I can assure you that they do and will respond if you have specific questions.
Hope that helps (if you were looking for help)
Chibs
Appreciate your thoughtful responses. I can assure you that although this was my first post here (which was in no way intended to sound officious to established users), it is not my first foray into audiophile forums, and I’ve been a frequent visitor to head-fi as an authoritative resource for many moons.
I think you made many level-headed and reasonable points. But isn’t the Diablo another example of the point I attempted to make about iFi’s lack of focus in their product development? It is yet another piece of hardware that just seemed gratuitous to me—it looks like yet another retread of the micro idsd line, this time in fancy red, yet bizarrely stripped off all the features! I guess it was intended to be a no-nonsense, “purist” option—but given it’s emergence a little over a year after the Signature was launched, I failed to see what it added, other than perhaps a bit more power. And again, it seems like another piece of clutter in the iFi lineup that is missing a frustrating, essential deal-breaker—in this case any post signal processing.
Like pretty much all of the iFi offerings EXCEPT the Hip Dac, I can’t seem to identity its intended target niche. What was wrong with the XBass feature that warranted a refresh of the micro idsd line without it? Who was clamoring for what is essentially a micro idsd signature minus the XBass or 3D, in a flashier, rounded-corners, Lamborghini-esque, cherry red finish? What is aspirational among their product launches over the past several years to make one want to upgrade, if they’re going to lose something one liked about a predecessor (especially at these price points)?
And although I understand your measured point about personal listening preferences and performance over specs, the truth is that there is a psychology to knowing what’s under the hood of audiophile products—in fact I would argue that the entire audiophile market is in many ways driven by an obsession for the best possible components and a pride in knowledge of how stuff works, arguably at priority over nuances in sound. This site is filled with long-form essays on physics and esoteric frequency response curves and minutia—does that mean that the majority of us could actually discern differences between dual AKM 4499s and a pair of ESS9038 Pros? I can’t say for sure—but I know enough folks care enough about specs to fill the web with endless didactics on these subjects and more.
My point remains that the excitement that informs allegiance to a specific electronics manufacturer comes from anticipating how they build on the technologies that made you a fan to begin with. I upgraded my micro idsd black label to the xDSD for the new Bluetooth feature and a balanced output (the latter of which, no offense to your experiences, has been clearly established to improve audio fidelity, increase useable power, decrease cross talk and lower the noise floor considerably, as is evident in the emerging pentacom 4.4mm reference standard). After a meh experience with Bluetooth audio, I upgraded my xDSD to the micro iDSD signature, excited about the opportunity to recapture the power of the micro idsd line, now equipped with a 4.4mm balanced output.
Then I learn that the 4.4mm output, unlike their $149 Hip Dac, is actually single ended, and also unlike the far cheaper Hip Dac, hasn’t resolved the channel imbalance of its predecessors, which folks have complained about for years? Come on, guy, these sloppy oversights simply make no sense. The Hip Dac makes perfect sense for the affordable market it serves—and it has features that iFi’s flagship products omit, for reasons only iFi seems to know.
So if you’ve actually taken the time to read this far, I will summarize by maintaining that unless one wants to forgo any portability and is willing to shell out three grand for the Pro iDSD 4.4mm option, iFi has to this day failed to produce a mid-range, transportable Dac, intended primarily for headphone use, that doesn’t have a fatal flaw—despite littering the market with many gratuitous nice-try’s year after year. And I’m taking the time to blather on about this because I keep waiting for them to do just that—I’m a fan!
When I first got the unit I thought the same as you, but switching firmware back and forth a couple of times revealed this change pretty quickly.
