So this is currently one of my worst user experiences ever. Talk about Chinese crap, god damn!
Got the device, plug it in. Nothing. Completely dead display. Ok, get the charging cable, even though I didn't want to use it. Plug that in, device turns on... for a few seconds and then dies. Ok. Install the drivers... which requires me to first install some sort of ******* "Customization Kit" thing, not even properly branded! And then manually go to some obscure folder and install again, a seemingly unbranded driver... and THAT is named "eval kit"... did they honestly use off-the-shelf evaluation software to ship drivers for this thing??? It then tells asks me if I want to quit a wizard... but there is no option to continue even if you reconnect the device. Jesus, what a god damn complete amateur hour! Anyway, so I disconnect the device as told and reconnect and a Windows driver starts installing. But now my device dies again, so one of the two drivers fails to installs. And the device is nowhere to be found in the device manager, it doesn't matter if I reinstall the drivers, and it doesn't matter if I unplug and reconnect the device again. Complete cluster****.
Anyone experienced something similar? I wonder if my computer's USB ports are too weak to power it, which would be a disaster... anyone which have the device running and can post its entry in the Device Manager to help me locate it?
On the bright side, I got it from Gearbest, which took a whole month to deliver, but when they did, they wrote a hilariously low price on the package, and shipped it from Europe, so I avoided the import taxes! I suspect this was a much better deal than the Massdrop one, which has very expensive shipping.
I had trouble with a DoA Aune T1 before, so this is the last time I ever buy a Chinese product.
EDIT: Suspicions almost confirmed... the driver shipping with the device seems to be this one... and they have a demo version if you contact them... and I can see their horribly ugly red "T" in my system tray... I wonder if the XD-05 is shipping with that exact demo version...
http://www.thesycon.de/eng/usb_audiodriver.shtml#demo
Talk about absolute minimal effort. It's almost enough to plug in my Meridian Explorer 2 again, but we'll see if I can get any help here first.
EDIT 2: Ok, got it working... uninstalling and reinstalling a couple of times... I'm going to contact both that german company and XDUOO and ask what the hell is going on with these drivers. First 5 min impressions... I don't hear any difference compared to my Meridian Explorer 2... although the bass boost is nice so that's something.
Only question left now is, people here can run this from a PC without plugging in the charging cable, right? So I have to try the thing in another PC and see if this one has very weak USB ports.