well its been a few weeks since i bought this and i just wanted to post a few more impressions/mini review. the bass is finally there, this DAC has extremely good bass, neutral, textured, detailed natural, and uncolored but musical. the treble is no longer hot, there is no grain or edge or thinness anywhere to be found, and the midrange is completely uncolored, transparent, yet musical and extremely detailed, huge improvement over my previous DAC. this is an extremely transparent extremely revealing DAC, yet its not completely unforgiving even when paired with headphones like HD 800 and T1. it maintains naturalness and musicality, which not many dacs do.
the USB 2.0 works perfectly and i can switch from DSD to PCM, from any format without any issues (theres a small click when switching between DSD and a PCM file, but thats about it, and its not a problem, only happens once if u switch between DSD and regular pcm files). theres no delay or gap when playing songs, theres no issues with any DSD, all my rips play perfectly.
the amp has enough power for basically all my headphones (they all get loud enough), and the amp while lacking some soundstage and space that better amps give, is completely neutral, very detailed, and much better than i could have expected. its a surprisingly good sounding amp, so i am happy that i also get a decent SS amp out of my purchase! its good enough to use as a stand-alone if you need a smaller setup, or if you are moving around and only wanna carry 1 component.
remote control (apple remote) works perfectly and i can control the volume on my amp or pre-amp built in, its nice to have somethings and i notice no loss of quality changing from digital preamp to bypass to analog preamp. i prefer bypass mode.
this dac was a huge improvement to my system, most of my headphones, especially my Audeze and Hifiman planars, really benefited from the upgrade and i noticed a much improved soundstage as well as more detail. i am extremely happy with my purchase as this DAC has met and exceeded all my expectations and i'm sure its one of the better buys right now. highly recommended!