[majo123]

OK I think there is definitely something wrong with my T1... It's sounds awful! And I mean awful it's like a driver has blown, bad Distortion etc... If its supposed to sound like the dsd pro and this is how it is then your going to be disappointed.. I'm thinking there is a problem though so I will update it if it needs doing then if problem persists it will go back... Honestly if this is not faulty then stick to dsd pro by a long margin

 

[Merlin-PT]

Did you had time to change the opamps?
I don't know if you consider returning it for replacement, if not you could try that.
All the other models had a paper seal to show they were open by the user.

 

[majo123]

OK further update it is turning itself off and screen freeze now and on rebooting or powering on it has a severely loud pop, so much so I'm worried about it damaging drivers and my ears! Not good... The dsd pro is an awesome player but i genuinely hope that this is faulty as it's just unusable in its present state... I'm gutted as I sing the dsd pro praises but If this is not a faulty T1 and I'm talking about the audio let alone the rest of it, then honestly I can't rec this.

 

[Themilkman46290]

I think you have obviously gotten something faulty.... Sucks, send it back.

 

[majo123]

Did you had time to change the opamps?
I don't know if you consider returning it for replacement, if not you could try that.
All the other models had a paper seal to show they were open by the user.

I haven't touched it other than first use.. I have just contacted the seller

 

[Themilkman46290]

Yeah, I think that's pretty much all you can do, guess I will wait a little bit longer before ordering

 

[Themilkman46290]

Don't open anything, they might not take it back

 

[majo123]

Yeah, I think that's pretty much all you can do, guess I will wait a little bit longer before ordering

Don't open anything, they might not take it back

Don't worry I have no intention of opening it.. I do want to say sometimes these things happen guys, obviously I'm not happy about it but clearly there is some fault... My main concern though is the actual audio because the Distortion is unbearable, on the dsd pro on the very very odd occasion it could sound a little rough but this seemed to be one in a million and on very poor recordings... This T1 was just distorting badly all over the place, on occasion I thought no its ok but no.. It reminded me of a cheap tinny speaker with the volume turned up too much.... Il send it back but I am reluctant to get another just incase

 

[metabenzene]

I am waiting for use it as DAC USB. Please develop new firmware as soon as possible. Thank you

 

[Merlin-PT]

- DSD gets uncomfortably hot and KILLS battery playing 24 bit / 192KHz FLAC. That sucks. Not the end of the world, I can downsample/reencode but why does my smartphone not have this problem while being MUCH thinner with much more stuff crammed inside, so not able to dissipate heat as efficiently? There's an issue with hardware decoding here. A big issue.Thanks for your attention.

It consumes power and heats because of the CPU, DAC model and OPAMPs.
Mine gets warm, but never uncomfortably hot.
Mobile phone don't have this DAC, neither all these opamps, neither this sound.
Usually mobile phone will resample all to 48Khz before it plays (with realtime weaker quality low cpu low batt resampler algorithms), they could use better resamplers at expense of cpu/battery.
Battery and temperature is the price to pay not to use low power DACs and amps, the benefit is without power design constrains they just sound better. They can't do omelet without eggs. The cpu consumes power to decode the formats we use. Sound wise, the way I see it from the DAC to the output, the sound we hear is the electricity from the battery after processed by the circuit.

- The chinese way of ordering folders by latest added on SD card MUST COME TO AN END. We want alphabetical sorting.

They don't sort the file file system, they read with the same order it was written to the SD card.
You can use some PC software to sort the SDcard file system, you'll have to do this every time you add anything to the sdcard.
It could be they don't have enough memory to read it all to memory and sort it, or they just didn't implement it yet.
If they do this, it will take a bit of time to read a lot of files in a big card, they need to read the file/folder names only, if we will notice the delay I can't quantify.

 

[citral23]

That doesn't make a lot of sense.

If anything, resampling consumes CPU cycles.

Opamps don't get warmer because the bitrate of the digital file is higher.

If the device gets hot decoding high bitrate files it's most likely because of poor software optimization rather than supposed superior quality output.

 

[endia]

I listen a lot to jazz, bossa nova and acoustic music (also to some other types) and use earbuds with portable players.

After arriving, without any changes, my Z1 was very musical and my z2 a bit dry.
So Z1 was just perfect for me, it could have a bit more detail, but I was completely happy with it, it sings.
After replacing the opamps and capacitors with better models, it got more detail and I'm still happy with it.

After arriving, without any changes, my Z2 sound was dry and not musical, I didn't like it as it was, it could be my unit, I can't say.
After replacing both opamps for same models and caps for nichicon gold, the sound was just perfect, to me it sounds more detailed than Z1. I also increased the power supply reserve cap. but that only gives a subtle increase in low freq.
We all have some different threshold levels of sound quality to enjoy music.
In a few musics, not all Z2 gives me the wow factor, in a very few other I can detect some minor lack of control in bass, but for the price I can forgive that and for the whole experience I'm always 100% happy with it, but not before I replaced both opamps and caps.

My Z3 ak4493 after arriving was better than Z2 when it arrived, but still sounded just a bit dry, replacing both opamps and caps to better models fixed this.
It sounds good and I'm happy with it, but a bit different from my modified Z2, z3 sounded good and a bit more dark (can't explain better). I also like it's screen, but prefer Z2 volume pot. After the opamps I did some more modifications to the Z3 HW and that also gave a brighter sound. I'm not saying brighter is better, just different.

My DSD pro ak4497 (had a short circuit in the USB socket that I fixed) after better opamps, caps and some other changes, it has more detail than z2, I wasn't expecting this because I'm completely happy with Z2. More detail also reveals some recording problems in a few songs that play well in other HW. It's also more difficult to tune to my liking, I'm also a lot mode demanding and expecting a lot more because it's more expensive and has better specs. I changed the opamps and caps and tried to balance that. It sounds very detailed to me.

This is my personal experience with my units, with _changes_ I did to the original players, to tune to my taste and try to learn a bit about audio circuits (just a hobby), using earbuds and the music type I listen. Other people experience could be different.

thanks a lot for the detailed comparisons for both units..
me too replaced opamp and all caps in z1 and sometimes prefer it over dsd..

 

[Merlin-PT]

That doesn't make a lot of sense.

If anything, resampling consumes CPU cycles.

Opamps don't get warmer because the bitrate of the digital file is higher.

If the device gets hot decoding high bitrate files it's most likely because of poor software optimization rather than supposed superior quality output.

It's true that the smartphone resample consumes power, but they use light cpu, low power resample.
It's the way OS is designed to support all HW.
In smartphones, all is designed to consume less power.
When it needs power, like playing a game it gets hot and batt. goes fast.
There are some android players, like neutron, that let us choose better resamplers, the software says they are better and heavy on the cpu/batt... or even no resample at all and direct connect an external dac.

Smartphones use low power DAC and amps integrated in the chipset, they usually don't have separated DACs or opamps.
It's just they don't use separated opamps like they do here.
You are right when you say opamps don't get warmer because of bit rate, but they consume a bit of power and all adds to heat/batt.

The last thing has to do with CPU cost, the cpu used here is not as powerfull has a smarphone cpu, I think this cpu generates more heat to do the same work.

What I wanted to say, is we can get players with better batt time, low temperature, or even a smartphone, but not with these components choice, I don't think these AK DACs are designed for mobile low power devices, neither these opamps, there are other models designed with that in mind.

I also wish it was like you ask.

 

[citral23]

Yes indeed it's desktop components, I see what you mean.

 

[spbkaizo]

OpAmps get hot, especially if biased into class a. I have no idea of zishan is doing this, but they may be. Regardless, chips get hot. If it wasn't the chips doing the leg work, it'd be transistors. One of my amps transistors hits 120c now and again, but it's not a concern. The microprocessor driving everything may also be getting hot, especially if you're using some of the EQ options (does the CPU or the DAC do this?). Displaying FFTs and spectrographs looks cool, but again requires considerably more CPU power.

For sorting files on an as card, I recommend 'sdsorter'. It allows you to sort by alpha, size and date, as well as a reverse sort of those options. I usually have genre directories, add my usual albums in, sort by alpha and then add new ones in and then sort by date, so the newest are at the top. Every now and again, they either get deleted, or the lucky ones go through an alpha sort and the next iteration begins again when I add new albums.