[canali]

  Great review - thanks for linking.
 
I like how all the factors are taken into account (price, portability, etc). I've found too many people dismiss DF vs Mojo STRICTLY on sound...but the reality is, we don't make purchase decisions based on one and only one factor. The fact that it's a third of the price...much more pocket-friendly...firmware upgradeable...AND great sounding (even if you don't think it's in the same solar system as Mojo) are all fantastic factors that should be considered.
 
Also, I don't understand the knock on battery/charging, because as I've said before -- you always have to charge something. If you go DF + Phone you have to charge your phone at some point...but the nice thing is you NEVER have to charge your DF. It's always 100% ready to plug and play. If you go Mojo + Phone, you have to charge your phone at some point AND you have to charge your Mojo at some point. It's only plug and play if you remembered to keep it juiced. There were times it ran low...I came back ready to listen to music...and it died after 10 minutes because I had forgotten to charge. Again, another factor that should be considered IMO.

 
guilty as charged on using the DF red alot.

fully agree with your assessment: it's not only about sound, it's often equally important (esp for portable audio) about being user friendly for on the go.  
despite having my iFi micro iDSD and mad tube amp, and a chord mojo
it's the dragonfly red that i use 90% of the time when i just sit down to plug and play quickly. 
yes, it's laziness but it is also 'cause the df red is just so darned easy to use
...even when sitting down the other day on a park bench, trying out the mojo and my ipod it was a bit
of a hassle that cumbersome brick and the two chords....the mojo's new module will be coming out either this or next week (according to to rob watts on the chord thread, so that should help mitigate that issue a bit.
 
I do want to start listening to the mojo and iFi and mad amp for a better comparison.

 

[estreeter]

   
These units were handed to me personally during High End in Munich. It is the way they sound, that is all I can say. I'm listening to both units at this very moment and I couldn't possibly say the Red is brighter and quicker. It does have more detail though, I don't think I said Red had less detail, it is richer sounding. Red's bass isn't harder hitting, it is bigger in body but with better detail and layering. Black's bass seems tighter, punchier and faster.
It's perfectly fine you don't find it a good review, different people have different tastes. I haven't read any other reviews of these units myself and I'm sure AQ will react if they don't agree (but hey have read it already). Did you yourself hear both DF's side by side?

 
I appreciate the courage you've shown in being willing to address a critique publicly, but I've always found your reviews tough going. I have no problem with critical reviews - especially with FOTM gear that no-one else seems willing to criticise - I just find it odd that you seem willing to rip into gear that doesnt conform to your own sonic preferences. If there's one thing that sets the pro reviewers apart from the average joe, surely its the ability to set their own preferences aside when discussing the merits of a component ? I dont need to read the DF review to have a pretty good idea how it will go, but this goes well beyond the product we're discussing here. On the plus side, you frequently review gear well in advance of anyone else, and often yours is one of the only reviews of a budget component outside Head-Fi : kudos for your efforts in covering gear that is clearly beneath the 'big' reviewers.
 
John Darko made the point a while back that there will always be people who dont relate to his writing style, and that's their problem not his. I agree 100% and this is clearly my problem - I wish you every success in the future.
 
Edit: I typed the above before reading the review as it was a general criticism of the Headfonia reviews I've read - my apologies to Lieven when the majority of said reviews were written by Mike. I'm going to leave this post in place as the DF review doesnt change my feelings about the overall bias displayed in Headfonia's reviews - its simply a lot less obvious in Lieven's reviews than it is in Mike's.

 

[SpiderNhan]

On the subject of differing opinions as to how the DFB and DFR sound in relation to one another, has anyone done in-depth comparisons using different operating systems?

Someone mentioned that the sound of their DFR changed when their iPhone's battery fell below a certain percentage. People have even reported differences between USB Audio Player Pro and Onkyo HF Player. What about the sonic changes that might occur between iOS, OSX, Windows, Android and Linux? Could this be leading to the discrepancies everyone is hearing?

 

[estreeter]

On the subject of differing opinions as to how the DFB and DFR sound in relation to one another, has anyone done in-depth comparisons using different operating systems?

Someone mentioned that the sound of their DFR changed when their iPhone's battery fell below a certain percentage. People have even reported differences between USB Audio Player Pro and Onkyo HF Player. What about the sonic changes that might occur between iOS, OSX, Windows, Android and Linux? Could this be leading to the discrepancies everyone is hearing?

 
On balance, I prefer what I hear from Android and Windows than the results I've had with Linux, but as I've stated earlier the only playback software that consistently wows me is JRMC and Roon, both of which use a client/server model even when both are deployed on the same device. I only have the trial versions of UaPP, HF Player and Neutron so I may not be the best judge, but none of them even begin to approach Roon's sound quality with the DFB. If I can just work out why its only importing a fraction of my library, I'm going to fork out for a 12-month sub when my current 60-days expires. 

 

[Pastapipo]

On the subject of differing opinions as to how the DFB and DFR sound in relation to one another, has anyone done in-depth comparisons using different operating systems?

Someone mentioned that the sound of their DFR changed when their iPhone's battery fell below a certain percentage. People have even reported differences between USB Audio Player Pro and Onkyo HF Player. What about the sonic changes that might occur between iOS, OSX, Windows, Android and Linux? Could this be leading to the discrepancies everyone is hearing?

 
No difference here between PC and Android + Poweramp alpha.

 

[pkcpga]

On the subject of differing opinions as to how the DFB and DFR sound in relation to one another, has anyone done in-depth comparisons using different operating systems?

Someone mentioned that the sound of their DFR changed when their iPhone's battery fell below a certain percentage. People have even reported differences between USB Audio Player Pro and Onkyo HF Player. What about the sonic changes that might occur between iOS, OSX, Windows, Android and Linux? Could this be leading to the discrepancies everyone is hearing?

Never thought about that or even music quality. I'm using Apple products, onkyo hf, bluesound, title hifi or naim. Most of my music is above cd quality at DSD or dxd. Or sacd, dvda played through a universal player. Thinking back the dfr sounded best played through title which is my lowest or cd quality or lossless level of music, maybe the df just struggle with down sampling DSD256 or dxd353. The dfr sounded thin, bright and lacking bass with the higher res music. This might be why the df's didn't work for me.

 

[Torq]

Never thought about that or even music quality. I'm using Apple products, onkyo hf, bluesound, title hifi or naim. Most of my music is above cd quality at DSD or dxd. Or sacd, dvda played through a universal player. Thinking back the dfr sounded best played through title which is my lowest or cd quality or lossless level of music, maybe the df just struggle with down sampling DSD256 or dxd353. The dfr sounded thin, bright and lacking bass with the higher res music. This might be why the df's didn't work for me.

DragonFly doesn't support DSD or DXD, or any PCM rate over 24 bit/96 KHz, so your player is doing the necessary conversion form your source file to PCM (ideally 24/96, but the light on the DragonFly will tell you what its actually receiving).
 
That down-sampling is likely the source of the lower quality from your high-resolution sources.  With TIDAL, it'll just send the native 16/44.1 signal with no additional conversion necessary.

 

[fjrabon]

 
DragonFly doesn't support DSD or DXD, or any PCM rate over 24 bit/96 KHz, so your player is doing the necessary conversion form your source file to PCM (ideally 24/96, but the light on the DragonFly will tell you what its actually receiving).
 
That down-sampling is likely the source of the lower quality from your high-resolution sources.  With TIDAL, it'll just send the native 16/44.1 signal with no additional conversion necessary.

yeah, this may well be the core issue with most of the issues he has had.  Most players simply won't play those higher res files with the DFR (or DFB for that matter) so the downsampling is absolutely being done by the player, which I can't imagine is at all a good downsampling.  

 

[west0ne]

On the subject of differing opinions as to how the DFB and DFR sound in relation to one another, has anyone done in-depth comparisons using different operating systems?

Someone mentioned that the sound of their DFR changed when their iPhone's battery fell below a certain percentage. People have even reported differences between USB Audio Player Pro and Onkyo HF Player. What about the sonic changes that might occur between iOS, OSX, Windows, Android and Linux? Could this be leading to the discrepancies everyone is hearing?

I'm no expert but you would think that if the transport device was passing an unadulterated data stream the DFB/DFR should be doing all of the work and should therefore sound the same across all transports but I'm not sure that all transports do pass the clean stream to an external DAC/AMP so if some processing is done before it gets passed onto the DAC/AMP it could account for variations in the sound.
 
For example the way I understand it is that UAPP on Android completely bypasses the Android Kernel sound processing and passes all data straight through to the DAC/AMP whereas native apps send data through the Kernel and then onto the DAC/AMP which could be accounting for the variations being heard. Different apps may also be doing something with the data before sending it out.

 

[Set845]

Earlier I mentioned that I could clearly hear a difference between HF Player and the stock music app on iOS comparing Apple Lossless files. HF Player sounds much better, bigger soundstage, better separation, cleaner. So there's that.

 

[Ultrainferno]

   
I appreciate the courage you've shown in being willing to address a critique publicly, but I've always found your reviews tough going. I have no problem with critical reviews - especially with FOTM gear that no-one else seems willing to criticise - I just find it odd that you seem willing to rip into gear that doesnt conform to your own sonic preferences. If there's one thing that sets the pro reviewers apart from the average joe, surely its the ability to set their own preferences aside when discussing the merits of a component ? I dont need to read the DF review to have a pretty good idea how it will go, but this goes well beyond the product we're discussing here. On the plus side, you frequently review gear well in advance of anyone else, and often yours is one of the only reviews of a budget component outside Head-Fi : kudos for your efforts in covering gear that is clearly beneath the 'big' reviewers.
 
John Darko made the point a while back that there will always be people who dont relate to his writing style, and that's their problem not his. I agree 100% and this is clearly my problem - I wish you every success in the future.
 
Edit: I typed the above before reading the review as it was a general criticism of the Headfonia reviews I've read - my apologies to Lieven when the majority of said reviews were written by Mike. I'm going to leave this post in place as the DF review doesnt change my feelings about the overall bias displayed in Headfonia's reviews - its simply a lot less obvious in Lieven's reviews than it is in Mike's.

 
It is a burden that is hard to shake off, but I have to live with it. I can only hope people actually read something I wrote instead of just playing the bias card without even knowing the whole writing staff changed.
It has advantages and disadvantages, but that's life. We just all try to do our best. Thanks for the constructive post.

 

[DJ The Rocket]

Guys I'm not sure how I can be more clear about the black vs red issue. The red is better in every way. I can't make it any more plain and simple. I'd pay $400 for the red even if the black was still $99

I have a few suggestions on how you could be more clear: you could explain in a little more detail precisely WHY you feel this way. Is the sound quality different? In what way? What kinds of sources are you listening to, on what headphones?

You say the Red is better. How much better, in what areas? Is it, to your ears, a night and day difference, or a matter of incremental improvement in specific parts of the sound that are important to you? If you're focusing on the Red's superior soundstage (for example, if it is indeed superior to you), I would care greatly about that, while others here might not be interested in paying for that at all.

Or are you basing your opinion on Red being a prettier color, and the Black makes you feel sad to look at? You see, we don't know. Really you're not being very clear AT ALL, but the good news is that you have lots of room for improvement!

 

[0rangutan]

Losing a little confidence in my DFB.

I think this was mentioned previously but using almost any of the EQ settings in Spotify (particularly Acoustic) causes easily audible clicking and distortion. Going direct from my iPhone 6 stops this. Disabling the Spotify EQ also stops this.

Can any DFR and/or Mojo owners confirm whether they experience this or not with their devices and the Spotify equaliser?

Thanks.

 

[pkcpga]

Losing a little confidence in my DFB.

I think this was mentioned previously but using almost any of the EQ settings in Spotify (particularly Acoustic) causes easily audible clicking and distortion. Going direct from my iPhone 6 stops this. Disabling the Spotify EQ also stops this.

Can any DFR and/or Mojo owners confirm whether they experience this or not with their devices and the Spotify equaliser?

Thanks.

Spotify equalizer is not very good and distorts sound. Although I found the dfr did not play well even with the onkyo hf equalizer which the mojo has no issues with, but the mojo does get weird bass distortion with Spotify if you try to use the equalizer.

 

[MarkF786]

I just got my DFB, mainly for use with my MacBook Pro and SE846's - and the DFB signal is too darn hot for these sensitive IEMs!  When using the Mac's volume control, on some songs the first step of the volume is too loud.  On some other songs, the tolerable range is only three steps - 1) too quite, 2) somewhere in the middle and 3) too loud.
 
I can go into the "Audio MIDI Setup" control and manually adjust the output one dB at a time, but it's not very convenient.  And I'd prefer not to use the in-app volume controls, since that can deteriorate the sound quality in my experience.
 
Has anyone found a good solution to this issue, to either scale back the volume on the DFB or more easily adjust it granularly?