[netsky3]

Someone has bought something of this kind from china on eBay?
I've seen a lot of product of this kind recently, many headphones amp (tube or not) and many kinds of dacs.
Usually the products from china aren't of good quality but the low prices of these toys make me curious to try

There's a lot of dacs and amps at low price

 

[nycdoi]

most of them look too shabby to buy..

 

[ericj]

I bought one of those 'noodle' kit dacs. Not really a kit in the usual DIY sense, but just completed boards ready to be paired with a transformer and powered.

Looks nice, but many of the board-level discrete components are the wrong value, and when someone pointed out that they'd neglected to connect the 96khz trigger on the controller part to the 96khz switch on the dac part, they responded by hard-wiring it to 96khz all the time.

Because it was easier to lift one leg of a chip and short it to it's neighbor than to lift it and run a jumper wire across 1 inch of circuit board.

 

[netsky3]

look this, is not so expensive and the quality looks good

 

[francisdemarte]

A lot of these ebay Chinese products have been reviewed here. With a few exceptions most are worth the money.

The above little amp is well received for the price. I own a HIFIDIY Aune DAC/AMP, it works very well. The DAC is about average but the AMP is a clone of the Slee Solo, and is pretty nice.

 

[MacGP]

Like anything else, there's good stuff and bad stuff. Granted there’s really cheap stuff is just... cheap, however as price goes up there's some interesting choices out there. In a sense there’s where a site such as Head-Fi comes into play since it's a premier source to filter out bad products.

I'll definitively be looking at the Chinese offerings when I save enough to buy my first tube amp (entry level).

 

[netsky3]

Why don't we make a list of all the good/bad stuff or seller (especially with an good price/performance ratio) sells on ebay?
Can be useful to avoid useless purchases for who don't know all this items and their specs

 

[nycdoi]

Quote:

Originally Posted by netsky3 /img/forum/go_quote.gif Why don't we make a list of all the good/bad stuff or seller (especially with an good price/performance ratio) sells on ebay? Can be useful to avoid useless purchases for who don't know all this items and their specs

sounds good

 

[ecclesand]

I voted they are nothing special. However, with some DIY upgrades to stock components and a change here and there, they have great potential.

 

[jilgiljongiljing]

havent had the guts to try out even the ones with great reviews. I just cant quite get over how cheap they all end up looking.

 

[Spiritboxer]

I was considering but the product seemed to have issues and while customer service appeared credible, it's a long way to send anything for repair. I'd rather spend extra and go with something close by. But that's me and YMMV, heckuva lot less expensive than collecting watches no matter which way I go.

 

[Landis]

Both my HE-5 and my EF5 are from China.

Let's face it, a lot of manufacturers have their parts produced in China, India, Malaysia, etc. the only difference for a lot of this stuff is R&D and big name brands. Some of these smaller companies can do excellent R&D as seen from HiFiMan, Yuin and MHDT Labs to name a few.

But, there are a lot of bad apples out there with shady production and quality so thus Head-Fi was birthed unto the internets so we may congregate and discuss.

As we all know

 

[Slash47]

The problem I have is that I haven's seen a single design from China that looks good. It's always very tacky and cheap looking. I want something classy!

I'd like to be wrong and if someone has an example of something that proves it, please share!

 

[MomijiTMO]

I welcome all of these companies so long as they have decent support if something goes wrong.

 

[Landis]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Slash47 /img/forum/go_quote.gif The problem I have is that I haven's seen a single design from China that looks good. It's always very tacky and cheap looking. I want something classy! I'd like to be wrong and if someone has an example of something that proves it, please share!

I like think the HE-5s do look quite nice and classy.