[Saoshyant]

Moto X certainly doesn't have it.

 

[cooperpwc]

Deducted audio players are a dying niche market. Generally a mp3 player with lossless support, built-it in DAC/amp, no internet connectivity. usually priced at least $200. Just buy a better portable DAC/amp for that price to hook up to your smartphone ftw. (+SD card for extra memory) & you are golden.

 
I am always amused by people that think that whatever works for them now represents the market. Lord knows where you came up with this word "deducted" but high-end DAPs are anything but a dying market. Actually they represent huge growth with companies like AK and Fiio doing very well.
 
Some of us do not want to use our phone for music. I am firmly in that camp.

 

[ClieOS]

I'll agree that the general mp3 player market is indeed dying, or more correctly IMO, stop growing, mainly due to the popularity of smartphones. But on the other hand, the higher end digital audio player market is growing faster than ever.

 

[Saoshyant]

Oh, I WANT to use my phone as a dap, but for me I'm pretty much either streaming or OTG cable to do it, and the second option doesn't really work for me bc I use an a200p. I really should get in the habit of leaving a rockbox clip in my car for general use, but I certainly adore my Fiios, and have zero regrets purchasing them.

I personally have no clue if Fiio and AK are doing well because I haven't done the research, and due to me being a part of Head Fi, these companies have become second nature, where for all I know 99% of the world may have never heard of either of them. I know two years ago when I started this journey, I was utterly clueless of their existence.

 

[cooperpwc]

  I'll agree that the general mp3 player market is indeed dying, or more correctly IMO, stop growing, mainly due to the popularity of smartphones. But on the other hand, the higher end digital audio player market is growing faster than ever.

 
True. Maybe I did not understand the meaning of 'deducted'. (Actually I certainly did not understand it.)

 

[Saoshyant]

Assuming typo of dedicated

 

[money4me247]

 
I am always amused by people that think that whatever works for them now represents the market. Lord knows where you came up with this word "deducted" but high-end DAPs are anything but a dying market. Actually they represent huge growth with companies like AK and Fiio doing very well.
 
Some of us do not want to use our phone for music. I am firmly in that camp.

 
lol. It was a typo for "dedicated." I am sure someone of your intelligence level can infer that *humorous tone hahah!*
 
It is a dying market. This is an observation based on looking at the recent market trends and using logical reasoning from a consumer viewpoint.
 
The "audiophile consumer" (aka someone willing to spend a premium for audio products) is already small niche. This group has recently experienced a growth due to the popularity of the Beats headphones. (note this is just people willing to spend a lot of audio products, the quality of the products is irrelevant).
 
So what is this 3.2 billion dollar 'luxury-audio' brand spending its R&D money on to stay at the forefront of the audio industry? Subscription-based music service. How do you use a subscription-based music service? Via your smartphone. 
 
Well, Beats headphones suck you say. lol sure, I agree; overpriced for their sound quality. Does not matter! Beats control 70% of the headphones market share. When you are talking about markets, you look at market leaders.
 
The market leader in portable music players is Apple. The popularity of the standalone audio player made popular by Apple's iPod has faded at a staggering rate since 2009. The recent 2014 3rd quarter earnings report of Apple reported rapidly declining iPod sales. The revenue for iPods has dropped 82% since 2011!!! From 3.4bill down to 973 mill. 54% revenue drop in the past year. Sales have dropped down 52% within the last year. The iPod is Apple's worse performing product segment only contributing to 2% of Apple's overall income. The iPhone, on the other hand, has tripled its revenue since 2011 making over 32 billion for Apple this year.
 
What does it say about the state portable standalone music player industry when the company making most popular mp3 player in history is experiencing such a decline? Perhaps consumers are rapidly losing interest in standalone portable music players.
 
Let's talk about the actual players in the audiophile DAP market. Just because there are companies releasing new products in the DAP market does not mean this market is worth it. Fiio and iBasso are both primarily focus on audio components such as DACs and amps. They release a few DAPs, but their main source of income is definitely not DAPs. If they were depending on DAPs to make a living, they would already be bankrupt.
 
You mentioned AK DAPs, made by iRiver. Oh yes, I remember that company. They used to make mp3 players to compete with the Apple iPod. Their products were more fully featured and technically capable than the iPod. Let's ask Mr. Average Joe what an iRiver is. Blank stare response. iRiver is the company has vanished into obscurity. They have a profit margin of NEGATIVE 15.6 percent. That is right. Their net income divided by revenue equals a negative number. Btw this is the company on your list that SPECIALIZES in DAPs. This is the company that you say is doing well. ROTFL!!! They have been sidelined to only making only niche 'audiophile' audio players because they were being murdered in the general portable mp3 player market by Apple, a computer company! This company's bread-n-butter is its portable music player. That is all they do. Their market share for portable music players does not even register on a graph. Their steady fall is so well-known that even on their wikipedia page, it says "working to improve the company's prospects as its MP3 player business has dwindled." Its parent company, Reigncom shifted its focus from portable music players to gaming in 2006 after 36.68 million loss from its music player business in 2005.
 
Just look up the net worth of iRver compared to Spotify. It is pretty easy to infer that the future of audio lies in subscription-based music used on smart phones over a dedicated audio player... especially when 2 of its 3 major selling features can be replicated on a smart phone, and the 3rd can be accomplished with by spending the money you wasted on a DAP on a portable dac/amp.
 
Let's look at the major selling points of a DAP from an average consumer viewpoint. 1) A DAP is an extra device to carry whose primary function is to play music. Wow, my smart phone plays music. Why do I need a DAP? 2) Oh, it comes with a bundled dac/amp that you cannot upgrade. Well, doesn't it make more sense to buy a better standalone portable dap/amp for the same price? 3) DAPs play loseless files. Oh what? My new android smart phone can do that & studies show that people can NOT actually tell the difference between lossless vs 320kbps mp3s. 4) DAP gives you more space for music storage. lol, $30 external SD card. 5) Well, owning a DAP shows how much you care about music... yeaa, that's what the teenieboppers say when asked why they spend $300 on Beats.
 
Now let's see what can my 4 year old smartphone do that my shiny brand new $700 DAP cannot do? Stream music via the internet. Number of songs? 20 mill+. Boom! Not only are there numerous free music streaming applications, but there are also paid applications that give you 320 kbps mp3s that you can download onto your phone. Smartphones can also use any media player and music organizer you want; you are not locked into the DAP's software.
 
Let's look at the pricing of flagship phones vs. some of the cheapest DAP on the market. Pricing with contract bc phones are subsidized in America with your contract & you obviously need a contract to use your phone. This year's flagship android phones: Galaxy S5 at $199, HTC M8 at $149, LG G3 at $199 on verizon. The cheapest audiophile DAPs on amazon: Fiio X3 at $169 on sale at amazon and the iBasso DX50 at $229.95. So you are telling me I have to pay the same price of the latest and greatest smart phone for the entry level, a few-year old device that ONLY plays music? Mmm... sounds totally worth it. Man, I don't even want to know who are the fools shelling out $700 for the latest AK DAP.
 
Now, I'm sure there are some old-school audiophiles still rocking portable CD players for sound quality, but that doesn't mean that that portable CD players aren't a dead niche. Portable standalone media players have been entirely replaced and made obsolete by smart phones and tablets. Do you see anyone walking around with a portable DVD player? lol!
 
DAPs will always have supporters in the hardcore audiophile crowd, but there is no longer interest in this market segment from the general consumer standpoint and the technology is being made obsolete. Hence, the statement: "Deducted audio players are a dying niche market"
 
After that market analysis and viewing the strengths of a DAP from the eyes of an average consumer, you are seriously telling me that I am the one who "think that whatever works for them now represents the market"??!?!?!?!! lol!! too amusing!!!!
 
final note: I am not an Apple/Beats fan and never owned an Apple/Beats product in my life. This is purely a market analysis. lol!
 

  I'll agree that the general mp3 player market is indeed dying, or more correctly IMO, stop growing, mainly due to the popularity of smartphones. But on the other hand, the higher end digital audio player market is growing faster than ever.

lol... if you define growth as releasing a lot of new products, but not making any money, then sure! Growing themselves straight into irrelevance. heh
 
Just simply look up the market share of high-end audiophile DAPs in the portable audio player business, the overall revenue trend, and the profit margins of businesses that specialize in DAPs. Then I dare to tell me that the high end digital audio player market is actually growing. Yes, all tech/gadget news site love to write about the high-end audio player growth to generate buzz about products, but if you go look at it from the financial analyst and investor's perspective... very different story.

 

[cooperpwc]

Do not get too excited by Wikipedia as a source of primary research. The Iriver entry has not been updated to include the existence of the AK players.
 
Beyond that, lots of verbiage above but the trend is your friend. As I see it you are catching some and missing others. You can disagree. I will leave it at that.

 

[money4me247]

  Do not get too excited by Wikipedia as a source of primary research. The Iriver entry has not been updated to include the existence of the AK players.
 
Beyond that, lots of verbiage above but the trend is your friend. As I see it you are catching some and missing others. You can disagree. I will leave it at that.

lol. Wikipedia is not the primary source of research. The Wikipedia example was simply to illustrate how commonplace the knowledge of iRiver's dismal performance in the portable audio player business is. The lack of update accurately reflects the general attitude of apathy towards iRiver's business endeavors. Considering that my brother is an investment banker in a tech-media-telecom group and I actually follow the financial aspect of tech businesses, I consider myself pretty well-versed in the current market trends. Amusing how you are unaware of iRiver's current struggles and base your opinions on the fantasy that the DAP market is experiencing any significant growth when all figures are pointing to an overall steep drop in that industry. While I do find some of the newly released DAPs to be certainly exciting from a hobbyist perspective, that is not going to change the fact that in a few years most of these products will be distant memories like the cassette player or Wankel engine.
 
I am catching that your statements are missing any quantifiable facts or actual market analysis to back up your opinions. hehe
 
Hope you found this discussion to be interesting and somewhat educational. Cheers!!

 

[ClieOS]

   
... lol... if you define growth as releasing a lot of new products, but not making any money, then sure! Growing themselves straight into irrelevance. heh
 
Just simply look up the market share of high-end audiophile DAPs in the portable audio player business, the overall revenue trend, and the profit margins of businesses that specialize in DAPs. Then I dare to tell me that the high end digital audio player market is actually growing. Yes, all tech/gadget news site love to write about the high-end audio player growth to generate buzz about products, but if you go look at it from the financial analyst and investor's perspective... very different story.

 
Yes, companies just release a lot of DAP in order to run themselves to the ground - that makes total sense.

 
Seriously, I talked to James @ FiiO (he is the CEO) all the time and he had to change the company's focus from making portable amps to DAP because the demand is well above their initial expectation and they can't fill the order fast enough (for example, they are making more X3 each quarter than they even planned for the whole product's life cycle). Same trend can be observed with iBasso as they are dedicating much more energy to DAP now than they do with making amps. These are the people who are making money right now from the higher end DAP boom and I don't think anyone of them is stupid enough to ship products that don't make money. Now I am not saying every company in this new tide of high end DAP boom will make money or survive the process - but some do and apparently they are actually doing pretty good. Because of that, some other companies want to join the game and share part of the success. I would imagine many of them will fail at the end - however, that is pretty much the definition of a growing market, isn't it?
 

---

 
Anyway, as interesting as the topic of DAP is, this is still a thread for Stoner Acoustics' DAC. We can continue the DAP talk somewhere else.

 

[hanakogurl]

hey guys, just got my ud120 today, but i got a problem here,
 
cant install the driver to my pc, im using win7 os
 
is there any1 can help me out?
 
http://s6.postimg.org/br8d5dxup/Capture.jpg

 

[ClieOS]

  hey guys, just got my ud120 today, but i got a problem here,
 
cant install the driver to my pc, im using win7 os
 
is there any1 can help me out?
 
http://s6.postimg.org/br8d5dxup/Capture.jpg

 
If you have older Bravo driver, you need to uninstall them first. Also try to install the driver with admin's right.

 

[hanakogurl]

hmmm i dont think i have it before, but i do have another usb dac connected with at the same time when try to installing the driver
 
do i have to plug it off?

 

[ClieOS]

  hmmm i dont think i have it before, but i do have another usb dac connected with at the same time when try to installing the driver
 
do i have to plug it off?

 
Yes, try again with only UD120 is plugged in.

 

[hanakogurl]

still cannot, it always stuck  at halfway..