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Project86, do you have more info regarding to Anedio's updating for D1? Their website said that they stop building more D1 but focus on updating the D1 with the high resolution USB. Is the high resolution USB a built-in section of the D1 or a seperated converter box? Thanks.
I do but I've been asked not to give specifics yet. James doesn't want to make promises until he is 100% sure that they will be able to deliver.
I can be vague though and say that the refreshed D1 will have the hi-res async USB solution built in. The stand alone async USB to SPDIF box will be a separate item that they will also offer, and it will be available at a discounted price for owners of the original D1.
Aside from that there will be some other updates as far as features. I can't say what they are yet, but they are things that people have asked for. Common sense will tell you what those things might be.
James specifically asked me not to reveal the details, so I hope I'm not saying too much here. I will say that he had a tough time making this decision. They are a small company and were expecting to grow much slower than they have. As such, they don't really have one team for building and testing the current product, and a separate team for working on the next version.... so you can imagine the difficult choice they faced when the D1 started selling faster than they could build them. I'm sure they already had an idea of what they would like to do for an update (as I mentioned in the first post, a USB update was the plan all along) but having a list of features and implementing them into the design are two different things. And when you are struggling just to build enough product to satisfy the current orders.... you can see how something would have to give.
In the end they had to make a decision as to what would best serve their business and their customers in the long term. Obviously it is not ideal situation to be in. But I think if they can get the updated version out as soon as possible, maintain the excellent quality of the original, and add features without increasing the price by a huge amount, they will continue to have success.
Us owners of the current D1 should hopefully not feel too left out - the refreshed version is not adding anything revolutionary. If the refresh involved something like dual stacked ES9018 chips then it would be different. But then again that would not be considered a refresh but rather a higher model. As it stands, we chose the D1 because its feature set met our needs, so added features on a newer version shouldn't change that fact.
