Where do i sign up to get a pair of Stellas in lieu of the Wave I perked for in 2014?
At this point, a pair of IEMs that actually exist would be of much greater use to me than a DAP (which may eventually come to fruition) with a feature set that's hobbled compared to what today's players offer because I didn't have the money (or maybe the good fortune in retrospect) to perk for the TOTL balanced Wave models.
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@LargoCantabile said a few pages back, when the campaign was going on in 2014, I did my research, saw the glowing reviews for LH's other ventures, participated in the thriving forums on their website, and thought "Ok, March 2015 is a ways off, but I can make do until then because this represents such good value for money" at a time when I think the only other comprable hi-rez DAPS (AK, etc.) were about 4x-6x what I put in to the Wave.
Almost 5 years on and it doesn't seem like I'm any closer to having the Wave in my hand than I was in 2015, and like everyone else who participated in the IGG campaign I've jumped through all the hoops, registering and reconfirming my perk details on two (or three?) different asset management systems, not to mention the various forums I had to register and re-register for, and the continually changing avenues of communication - at first Larry was everywhere, so I had to follow him from here to IGG to LHLabs.com to see what he was saying, and then it was 'we only answer on IGG' and then it was 'we're moving everything to the LHL Forums' and then back to IGG again. Even though the hundreds of dollars I pledged to the Wave in 2014 represented an outlay that was probably 5x more than I'd ever spent on any DAP, at this point I'm not even mad any more, I'm just weary. All I wanted was a nice audio player that would make my FLAC library sound great and instead I got 5 years of handwringing while a well intentioned guy (and his two less-likeable cohorts) burned through a million-and-a-half dollar pile of cash while they attempted to reinvent the wheel.
In the meantime I've bought a FiiO X3 to tide me over and it's served me well, but it's been so long since the Wave was designed that it hardly seems unique in the way it did 5 years ago. The model I'm due doesn't even have a balanced output, a feature that's pretty much standard on every half-decent $200+ DAP these days. So, I'm not being facetious when I say I'd gladly take a pair of Stellas now - I could unsubscribe from this thread, from IGG updates buy a new Hiby or FiiO DAP and end this purgatory.
I also had to laugh at the revelation that the number of Wave perks became a hindrance to completing its development - once or twice a year for the last few years I've posted on either a LH forum or the IGG page encouraging them to cut the number of Wave iterations to 3 or 5, and every time I've done it I've either been met with silence or a refusal to consider the idea. Why, in 2019, the manufacturer of a "no compromise" player is still pursuing the idea of manufacturing a single-ended variant is beyond me.
