[AxelCloris]

I fully expect delays, and have since the Out campaign delivery debacles, so I have no angst as long as it only a month or two.  Anything over that and I'll START YELLING!!! 

 
Agreed. I'm hoping the team takes what they've learned from the GO launch and apply that knowledge towards the Pulse and Wave launches. They've expanded their team so they have more manpower with dedicated roles so that should help as well. But we'll see once the dust settles and all is said and done. I'll be a bit disheartened if they can't manage Pulse delivery better than they are the GO.
 

  AxelCloris,
 
Thanks for your reply and recommendation.

 
Happy to help!

 

[AlterSack]

We all hope that they have learned from the GO issues.
On the other side they have not bettered their information policy to the geek force.
 
This could mean that
a) (hopefully) they have loads of work and are just too busy developing and producing to care much for giving information to their customers or too often
b) (less desireable) they just do not consider giving information to the geek force generally as important or
c) (very much to be feared but also probable) they are overwhelmed by their funding success and the $$ but have no plan (yet?) how they can fulfill all promised technical goals and get the orders straight somehow and hopefully without too much delay.
 
At this stage as a member of the Geek Force all we can do is wait and hope for the best.

 

[miceblue]

I wonder how the Wave will compare to the iBasso DX90. The DX90 offers dual mono DACs and is only $419 USD.

 

[doublea71]

I will be incredibly disappointed if the GW doesn't wipe the floor with the DX90. It won't be enough that it has balanced out (the XD128 which I backed), more storage, etc. The sound has to be on a whole other level or I will put a voodoo curse on them. 

 

[AxelCloris]

Isn't the DX90 limited to 24/192? Native DSD playback isn't supported and it gets converted to PCM before output. So that's already a big plus for the Wave over the DX90. And if the current Vitto design is what gets manufactured then the Wave will look much better as well.

 

[SilverEars]

Anyway, I was disappointed with the DX90 because I heard U shape response on my CIEMs although it is measured perfectly flat with very low THD+N.  It's ES9018K2M so hopefully the GW can prove that the mobile ES9018 can stand up to the non-mobile version that DX100, HDP R10(which I heard and sounded fantastic), HM-901 uses.  

 

[doublea71]

  Isn't the DX90 limited to 24/192? Native DSD playback isn't supported and it gets converted to PCM before output. So that's already a big plus for the Wave over the DX90. And if the current Vitto design is what gets manufactured then the Wave will look much better as well.

If that's the only advantage sound-wise, the voodoo curse is still on. This thing should sound significantly better in all formats imo. 

 

[AxelCloris]

From what I've gathered we should be pretty safe from a U-shaped response on the Wave. It seems Larry loves mids so a V or U shaped signature would be a voicing he'd avoid. Larry has commented on the LHLabs forums about the decision to go with the ES9018K2M over the ES9018 and while I can't remember specifics I do remember that his explanation made perfect sense at the time. I'll see if I can find those posts later and link them here.

 

[SilverEars]

  From what I've gathered we should be pretty safe from a U-shaped response on the Wave. It seems Larry loves mids so a V or U shaped signature would be a voicing he'd avoid. Larry has commented on the LHLabs forums about the decision to go with the ES9018K2M over the ES9018 and while I can't remember specifics I do remember that his explanation made perfect sense at the time. I'll see if I can find those posts later and link them here.

Please no flavoring on the output, just give it some preset, and let it put out the flat response that the chip was meant to put out.  We don't want any sound changes with firmware changes that ibasso DAPs are doing.  It has been suspected that they are applying some sort of preset every firmware.  None of that, no filter, let the user choose.  Let the user be aware of any filters or sound changes!!!  Let it be neutral, not cold neutral, but it's fair to say people are ok with light warmth from neutral.

 

[miceblue]

I have to wonder what all of these circuit drawings are for anyway. You never see this kind of diagram for other products like the Geek Pulse, it's only in portable media players. Whatever the case, I hope it sounds as good as the Geek Out, which sounds pretty much on-par with my current reference ODAC/O2 stack. I opted out of the X or XD models because I was hoping the stock Wave would sound just as good and perform pretty close to the GO.

 

[SilverEars]

I have to wonder what all of these circuit drawings are for anyway. You never see this kind of diagram for other products like the Geek Pulse, it's only in portable media players. Whatever the case, I hope it sounds as good as the Geek Out, which sounds pretty much on-par with my current reference ODAC/O2 stack. I opted out of the X or XD models because I was hoping the stock Wave would sound just as good and perform pretty close to the GO.

Do you have the 1000 or the 450?  How does it compare to the ODAC/O2 stack?

 

[miceblue]

I have to wonder what all of these circuit drawings are for anyway. You never see this kind of diagram for other products like the Geek Pulse, it's only in portable media players. Whatever the case, I hope it sounds as good as the Geek Out, which sounds pretty much on-par with my current reference ODAC/O2 stack. I opted out of the X or XD models because I was hoping the stock Wave would sound just as good and perform pretty close to the GO.

Do you have the 1000 or the 450?  How does it compare to the ODAC/O2 stack?

I have the GO 450 at the moment, but I did pledge for the GO 1000 from the Geek Pulse campaign (when that unit will arrive...I'm not sure).

My unit is defective since it has background hiss with sensitive headphones (there shouldn't be any), but for my less sensitive headphones (AKG K 701 and AKG K450 Monitor), the GO sounds pretty close to the ODAC/O2 to me. If you have one or the other, you won't be missing out on too much, honestly. I find the GO to have a slightly more rounded soundstage with more depth and less width compared to the ODAC/O2. Because of this, the imaging is slightly better with the GO, but I think the ODAC/O2 has a slight edge in terms of instrument separation and background blackness (it might be due to the unit being defective though). Detail retrieval is about the same too, but maybe a slight edge to the ODAC/O2. I don't know how to do a setup to compare 2 DACs, but were I to do an ABX test, I'm not certain if I can tell a difference in sound quality between the two.

As a whole though, they are pretty close, and being able to have a DAC that can play nearly any music file and format out there can be useful for some people. I think for Windows users in particular, the versatility of the DAC is nice unless JRiver Media Center can play back files even if the DAC doesn't support it similar to Audirvana Plus (which is what I've been using with the ODAC/O2 to play back some albums like Daft Punk's RAM album, which is 24/88.2 and the ODAC doesn't support sampling rates of 88.2 kHz).

 

[kkcc]

I wonder how the Wave will compare to the iBasso DX90. The DX90 offers dual mono DACs and is only $419 USD.

DX90 has been the reason I'm only comfortable to back wave 32/64, and mentally set a cap at total cost of $400 when considering perks (nope didn't backed any). I'm not sure what LH can do with the given topology and size/battery constrain to deliver a huge differentiation.

At one point (before many of the perks) I considered the top XD128, and my plan is to get the XD together with the 32 so I can hear for myself to keep it real for me. It is almost certain to see some wave 32 base model owners laughing at how little difference all the extra perks make, while some XD128 owners tell us that yes wave 32 pwnz everything out there but XD pwnz wave 32. Would be very interesting to see what how I would hear them myself!

Too bad with the total cost of the maxxed thing get higher and higher, this little experiment just get a bit too expensive...

 

[miceblue]

I wonder how the Wave will compare to the iBasso DX90. The DX90 offers dual mono DACs and is only $419 USD.

DX90 has been the reason I'm only comfortable to back wave 32/64, and mentally set a cap at total cost of $400 when considering perks (nope didn't backed any). I'm not sure what LH can do with the given topology and size/battery constrain to deliver a huge differentiation.

At one point (before many of the perks) I considered the top XD128, and my plan is to get the XD together with the 32 so I can hear for myself to keep it real for me. It is almost certain to see some wave 32 base model owners laughing at how little difference all the extra perks make, while some XD128 owners tell us that yes wave 32 pwnz everything out there but XD pwnz wave 32. Would be very interesting to see what how I would hear them myself!

Too bad with the total cost of the maxxed thing get higher and higher, this little experiment just get a bit too expensive...

Yeah it'll be interesting to see how they all turn out. Maybe a very generous Geek Force member can lend a fully decked-out Wave XD for a small tour for others to compare it to.

The confusion between perks didn't help very much either. The IEM perk for example attempts to lower the noise floor in case there's some problems between the Wave-USB interface, and I don't think very many people knew that that's what the perk was. The THD perk didn't make much sense to me either. Unless the THD is unusually high from the start, which would be downright unfortunate, cutting the THD in half doesn't really mean much for most applications. The Geek Out has a THD+N value of 0.0027%, which is pretty darn low by itself. Though as some people like NwAvGuy have demonstrated, the THD by itself isn't the only factor to consider when designing something. i.e. the O2 is "Indistinguishable from Benchmark DAC1 Pre’s headphone output in sound quality" despite the O2 having nearly four times the amount of THD.

 

[tomscy2000]

  I wonder how the Wave will compare to the iBasso DX90. The DX90 offers dual mono DACs and is only $419 USD.

 
The diagram you posted isn't the final version, from what I understand. Without knowing how iBasso and LH manage to perform DC decoupling duties and trace lengths on the digital and analog side of things, we won't really know how they'll compare from a performance standpoint. However, I did notice that the DX90 chooses to use bipolar opamps throughout, even in the I/V conversion stage. The final DX90 went for the OPA1602 instead of the LT1678, but it is still a bipolar opamp.
 
From following the progression of the GO, Pulse, and Wave projects, it seems more and more clear that Larry favors J-FET input opamps, at least for I/V conversion and LPF. He switched to the bipolar OPA1612 at one point for the GO1000, but switched back to the FET OPA1652 in favor of its sound. The two were measurably identical, according to him.