With all this troubleshooting going on, I thought it would be a good idea to share some of what I know about the Zero, from a slightly different stand point. Many of you don't know this, but the Zero has been sold to members of HeadFi, dating clear back to August of last year. That is a year and three months!!
Late last year and early this year, Lawrence was the only trusted seller who was "bench testing" his Zero's prior to shipment. The Zero factory was putting out some decent units, and the failure rates were much better than we could get from a US manufacturer. Then, things just seemed to change somehow. Other sellers were popping up, selling quantity to make their profit. Once Lawrence lowered his prices and made deals to compete directly with them, I'm "pretty" sure bench testing went away, except in cases where soldering was involved, like when the Alps pot upgrade was done in house.
Then, we started to notice problems with the cleanup and QC of the boards, prior to final unit assembly. It looked like sloppy work, but I think the cleaning/QC was simply NOT DONE before assembly. It seemed like the assembly line just dropped this cleaning/QC step, opting to shove them out the door quicker. I wasn't impressed. The factory owns this problem 100%. Then, we started to notice the upgrade Opamps not being installed correctly, like they were an afterthought or something. Chalk this one up to final QC. The "seller" owns this problem 100%.
Considering all these things, it seems to paint a "not so hot" picture for the makers and sellers of the Zero. However, all of this is only ONE part of a much bigger picture.
The Zero factory sells Zero's in batches of 50 units, to resellers that sell on eBay or their own web site stores. We already know this part. The part we don't see, is the amount of Zero's that are sold to stores in China. According to two such stores, they are selling Zero's like crazy to the public in China! Way more than the amount of Zero's being sold around the world! So, when you think about production of the Zero's, you have to factor in a much higher quantity demand being put on the factory. Those boys must be jamming big time! We also have to consider what happens to our Zero's during shipping. It is the great unknown, but indicators show that smaller boxes are being tossed around pretty hard. We can't escape this variable, if we want a Zero.
At the end of the day, the failure rates on the Zero's as a whole, are very good. Of all the HeadFi'ers buying Zero's, we always hear about the ones that have issues. These amount to a very small portion of the overall HeadFi numbers. Add in the units that need help after shipping, and you still have a very small number.
So I guess what I'm trying to say, is that the majority of us who order a Zero, will have a decent Zero without problems. The problems noted above were spread out over an entire year! Considering it is a budget DAC/Amp and it was shipped half way around the world to our door steps, it is great that the Zero has had so much success. The price point has saved us a bunch of cash, and the Zero's performance has put higher priced units on notice!
I still believe buying a Zero is a safe bet. Thanks to everyone's hard work in this thread, the small number of problem Zero's identified here, get fixed by the owners, and very, very few will ever have to return their Zero's to China for a fix. This thread has just about every fix known, and the help you can get here is some of the best I have seen on HeadFi. With this kind of backing, I would buy another Zero in a heart beat! You guys are the best!!
Pench