I think it is neither right nor fair to say the Topping D90se and the Okto Dac8 sell at a premium price. Both made a big breakthrough in specs and have a lot of features. 'Premium price', even only a few years ago and still now, for a DAC is something like a few thousand dollars and beyond. The fact that there are SOTA devices available for a hundred dollars is amazing and should not be taken for granted. If only the best measuring speakers and headphones were that cheap!
What is missing, is the bass a bit muddy, the midrange not lush and not enough air in the treble?
Don't you think it's ok with that? Nobody will change his mind and the guy does not deserve the electric chair. He has his point of view and it's not too much compatible with ASR, that's all.
I find it inexplicable that Chord would put so much store in mega-tap filters to achieve such a steep cut-off and *still* fail to reach full suppression by 22.05 kHz.Yes, but there is this, to put it mildly, controversal guy, who did some (although apparently a bit flawed) measurements of both:
https://goldensound.audio/2022/03/14/chord-dave-measurements-with-mscaler/
dCS Bartok (with headphone amp) Measurements - GoldenSound
The dCS Bartok is a 'summit fi' level DAC with a hefty pricetag of £12,500. But whilst the performance is great in many areas, others leave some questions unanswered.goldensound.audio
And, surprise surprise, although not terrible, theses dacs are nothing special and for sure do not justify their ridiculously exaggerated prices.
Well, unjustified "claims", vulgo BS, should be exposed for what they are, I think.
They don't have 30% failure rate, have continous high quality support, impeccable build and finish quality... many other things you won't find in budget products.
Perhaps they hate the stupid rack handles?
With all due respect John, it's nice for you to show up and post when you want to brag on a product or get a good test review from Amir.
I think all those things are worth paying a bit more for, but these are insane prices.
Exactly, if we agree that there is no (audible) difference, one can choose between design, features and built quality options and one may be willing to pay maybe even two times the price. But 10, 20 or even 50 times? That´s ludicrous.
Do they really? Have you ever owned a Chord or dCS product or are you just assuming this? The Chord build quality looks nothing special to me and the design is just outrageously ugly. I have heard not great things about costumer service as well.
Made in Germany has changed its meaning from bad to good over the last hundred years. Maybe one day the same will happen to Made in China. Made in Germany does not mean that every chip or every transistor was made in Germany, so it's all relative. I wouldn't put much stock in it. The fact is that quality problems are reported from time to time with e.g. Topping devices (this is also my experience). But I have also read that for devices from Schiit (Made in USA).
Yes, though after emails they set me up a an offer page on thehificat. Shipped straight from China to me, took about 10 days to get to the UK which was good as it included a four day weekend. That order was for the Sabaj A20d 2022, so pretty close to what you're looking at.
Slow shipping. But tax was included and everything was fine. No experience with customer support.
