[CEE TEE]

 

[CEE TEE]

Top (3) chips = Stock Rolling Kit
Bottom (5) chips = HiFlight "TopKit"
 
TopKit = (2) Combos of Opamps/Buffers
 
"Jazz/Classical" = (1) Pink Dual Opamp + use (2) silver buffers
 
"Rock/Pop" = (2) LR Brown/Red Opamps + use (2) silver buffers. 

 

[jamato8]

Here is a link to the new 1300 fiber optical cable. I find it also enhances the sound quality of 16/48. The cable without the bends like the one linked to is 37 dollars up to 1 meter and I believe it is 16 dollars for each additional meter. 
 
http://www.sysconcept.ca/product_info.php?products_id=349

 

[Rndmness]

Any ideas on how this amp would sound with the SA6 and ESW9?

 

[jamato8]

I have the ESW10 and it does a fine job driving them with ease. 

 

[Rndmness]

Are there any noticeable changes to the sound? Also, the d12 is better sonically and power-wise than both the d4 and the d10 right?
Thanks.

 

[jamato8]

The D4 is has more potential for power as it runs at a higher voltage when using a 9 volt battery. The D12 is better sounding than the D10, which it replaces. The D12 is to my ear, a very excellent sounding amp and with the dual dacs, gives you a very good dac section that can handle input from USB, optical or coax for the digital connection. 

 

[Anouk]

 
Hi everyone,
I have been out of head-fi for a few months but am back now, at least where portable head-fi is concerned. I use an iphone as a source most of the time and will be getting a laptop with optical quite soon again (I LOVED my macbook pro but that had a quite unfortunate accident). I am going to get a pair of iems again quite soon, not sure which yet. But the ibasso d12 (with eventual topkit) is certainly on my shortlist. I hope it will work well with the iphone 4 via lineout.
Such a pity ibasso cant appropriate the chip that makes it possible to get the digital data stream from te iphones lineout, that would be so Ideal. I guess then it would be on a level with iriver h140+d12.
I guess as it is I will use the ibasso just with my iphone and lineout cable and with a laptop and optical when I have a bit more room.
Greetings, Anouk,

 

[jamato8]

Optical on the D12 is 24/96. The cable I mentioned from SysConcepts though is required because the single core optical isn't that effective for transmission of the higher bit rate from what I have read. 

 

[Packgrog]

Just to reiterate: While the iBasso D10 and D12 can handle 24/96 through SPDIF (optical and electric), the iRiver H120 and H140 will only ever output at 16/44.  It's still unclear what the hardware could be full capable of, but the software will only output 16/44.  I believe the original firmware can't even play higher res files, but Rockbox will: it just downsamples everything to 16/44.  I've also done comparisons between playing a high-res file in Rockbox on the H120 with the same song transcoded and dithered from the hi-res to 16/44 in Foobar2000, and the pre-transcoded version did seem to sound much better.  The Rockbox developers openly admit that the downsampling is not very good, and you're better served by just sticking with files already in 16/44.  Don't let this diminish the quality of it's output, though.  The sound of a properly encoded file with Rockbox on the H120 through my iBasso D1 is amazing, and can only be better with the D10 and D12!
 
If you absolutely must have hi-res in a portable, you'll need to get one of those HiFiMAN players, which will set you back more money, and have less robust and feature-rich software.  I'm dying to find out which would ultimately sound better in a direct listening test, though.  

 

[jamato8]

I have been using the D12 with my MacBook Pro which can output 24/96 on the optical. Too bad someone doesn't work on the software of the Rockbox but I doubt they will. 

 

[Armaegis]

I know I've seen some mention on these forums about a portable digital transport that can provide coax/optical into the D10/D12. Can't remember what they're called though... I just remember them looking like little portable hard drives (which doesn't narrow it down at all, hmm).

 

[CEE TEE]

I think iRiver H120

 

[pekingduck]

The QA350? http://www.head-fi.org/forum/thread/479032/qls-qa-350-wav-a-new-portable-player-with-digital-output
 
There are other PMPs with SPDIF outputs but the names escape me..
 
Quote:

I know I've seen some mention on these forums about a portable digital transport that can provide coax/optical into the D10/D12. Can't remember what they're called though... I just remember them looking like little portable hard drives (which doesn't narrow it down at all, hmm).

 

[Armaegis]

Yeah, the QLS stuff was what I was thinking of. Now if only they could build one with a compressed format decoder... but that would require more software/firmware shenanigans. I guess that's the advantage of wav, just pure audio data that can stream (sort of) directly out.