sebaz
Head-Fier
- Joined
- Mar 3, 2011
- Posts
- 57
- Likes
- 18
The Fiio A3 and A5 still show on their website, but they're nowhere to be found except hugely overpriced on eBay of course. I recently got an A3 and I love it, it's a great little device for just one function and it does it well. No bells and whistles, just plain 3.5mm input and output.
I was just wondering if someone here has any insight as to why Fiio discontinued those, especially when they have nothing to replace them. The Q3 is nice, but they made the asinine decision to put the two sizes for balanced headphones and use a third jack as a 3.5 mm input or output. I don't buy into the whole balanced fad, I have excellent Audio Technica headphones that are balanced and because part of their use makes a 3.5 mm connector necessary, I don't use them as balanced. When spent time trying to tell apart the difference between balanced and unbalanced with my Qudelix 5K, I just couldn't. Both sound excellent, and the unbalanced doesn't have more noise than the balanced one. That's the whole point of balanced. I connected mics to the same mixer and audio interface using balanced and unbalanced connectors, and I could tell the difference right away. But in this, the quality of the amp is much more important than balanced or unbalanced.
But regardless of that, let's be honest. The balanced headphones thing is a thing only for a small number of people. Most people don't even know what a balanced headphone is. So why release a model with two separate balanced jacks, and leave only one for unbalanced audio when you need two?
I was very surprised when I got the A3 and heard how good it sounds, with only two switches, gain and bass. I keep the gain in low and the bass turned on. It just sucks that Fiio has all they need to keep making it for the people who don't need or can't afford their more expensive amps, and they just decide to retire it without anything to really replace it, when millions of people still need it.
I was just wondering if someone here has any insight as to why Fiio discontinued those, especially when they have nothing to replace them. The Q3 is nice, but they made the asinine decision to put the two sizes for balanced headphones and use a third jack as a 3.5 mm input or output. I don't buy into the whole balanced fad, I have excellent Audio Technica headphones that are balanced and because part of their use makes a 3.5 mm connector necessary, I don't use them as balanced. When spent time trying to tell apart the difference between balanced and unbalanced with my Qudelix 5K, I just couldn't. Both sound excellent, and the unbalanced doesn't have more noise than the balanced one. That's the whole point of balanced. I connected mics to the same mixer and audio interface using balanced and unbalanced connectors, and I could tell the difference right away. But in this, the quality of the amp is much more important than balanced or unbalanced.
But regardless of that, let's be honest. The balanced headphones thing is a thing only for a small number of people. Most people don't even know what a balanced headphone is. So why release a model with two separate balanced jacks, and leave only one for unbalanced audio when you need two?
I was very surprised when I got the A3 and heard how good it sounds, with only two switches, gain and bass. I keep the gain in low and the bass turned on. It just sucks that Fiio has all they need to keep making it for the people who don't need or can't afford their more expensive amps, and they just decide to retire it without anything to really replace it, when millions of people still need it.
