On a side note, anyone else notice that decent portable amplifiers are getting more difficult to find? The PHA-2A went up in price and the iFi Hip Dac is already sold out. First when my SU-AX01 broke after one too many falls, I was able to purchase a Japanese PHA-3 in new condition. A new SU-AX01 was out of the question.
Well, now the PHA-3 has been giving me issues lately: it's been shutting off after a few minutes of listening time. Over the course of two days, my listening time got shorter and shorter until I couldn't really use them. I figured that the battery might have been degraded after I allowed it to completely drain a few times (enjoying my FW10000 too much
).
Sure, it was an old product from over 5 years ago, batteries have a certain amount of charging cycles, and it was no doubt impacted by the heat that the amp produces, but this was
surprising. What to do? I want to listen to my FW10000.
I had a portable battery in my backpack that I originally bought for my iPhone XS. Hooked it up to the PHA-3 and it was working fine again, until it died after little over an hour of listening, even with the external battery attached. Plug it in and the charging indicator is blinking. Oh well.I doubt that Sony USA will give me a battery replacement for something I bought from Amazon Japan.
Eventually though, I want to replace the PHA-3 with a Walkman NW-WM1Z, and use the 4.4mm balanced cable with the FW10000. The difference in power between the Walkman and the PHA-3 is only 50mW; the Walkman is actually more powerful than the SU-AX01 in high intensity mode. I remember that JVC was working on 4.4mm cables a while back when they were showing off some
prototypes, but so far they haven't announced anything.
