Yes, it seems no one 'doesn't even bother' to give you an answer, even though it is a duty and obligation of Headfi members to do so. On behalf of everyone, I apologize, and I'm hopeful that in future we will serve you better!
As for headphone jacks, and copper rings, I don't see any difference in headphones socket failure rate, and correlation in production batch, the latest X1A excluded. My player is late 2016, it has snug copper sleeves surrounding the sockets, the heaphone plugs sit in both sockets snugly, they are not loose, there is no more play than any player or phone I've used.
What failed in my DP X1 is the 3.5mm output socket, one channel went silent, and remains silent. I have never NEVER put the DP X1 in pants pocket, I was well aware how easily the sockets fail, before I bought it I had read tons of socket failure reports. Still I bought it, thinking sockets won't fail, as long as I don't carry it in pocket with headphone plugged in. Well, I was wrong, sockets fail all by themselves, you just have to use the player, which means you will have to plug in headphones. And that is all it takes to damage the sockets.
When using the player outside I have it in belt pouch, there is zero stress on the socket from headphone plug, and the cable I use is factory Shure SE846 cable, a very soft cable. The headphone plug is outside the pouch, standing free, not touching to pouch, the belt, nor my pants, shirts or any body part. It's simply pluged in.
Truth is, the headphone sockets of Onkyo DP X1 fail no matter how carefully you use it, all it takes is plugging in the headphones plug.
I have emailed Onkyo Japan and Onkyo USA, asking them to sell me the LCD (no reply), because in order to get to sockets, LCD needs to remove, and player dismantled. I have replaced several smart phone LCDs, my own Sony Z5 tha I dropped, and cracked the screen, and few friend's phone screens. it is not a difficult job. But every time I've removed the cracked LCD, the removal damages it further no matter how long you use the heat gun to soften the screen glue, no matter how gently I try to lift the screen. So I know there is almost no chance I can get the LCD off the unit without cracking it. All I need is to buy a new Onkyo LCD, but this seems impossible. How can such a huge corporation totally ignore requests to repair, or just sell spare parts? How do they get away with it?
DP X1 is defective design, if any major phone manufacturer had such failure rate of any of their models, there would be a very swift recall. How many Galaxy Note 7 battaries self destructed before Samsung recalled it, and refunded full price to every single customer? I think it was 6 failed units of Galaxy Note.
I wouldn't sweat around this topic if the DP X1 wasn't such an amazing sounding DAP, when it functions. Now I need a new DAP, but don't know what to buy, I don't consider any Astell for ethical reasons. So that leaves me with what? Fiio X7? Not as good, unfortunately, and it's hard to take a step back in sound quality after having DP X1.
/rant
