So I bought this reasonably decent headphone amp dac portable thing and the selling point was that it uses the AKM4490 something. This was back early on when it was released. Its the Xduoo XD05 Basic btw. A fine unit all round.
The s/w recently said that the firmware could be old so maybe check? So I check and to my surprise the have discontinued the AKM version (due to the fire???) and now use ESS. So choose the firmware correctly.
So what is one to make of a situation when they do what is a fairly major change and yet dont make a Version 2.0 let alone make a new model (ie. XD06 basic?) - to me it feels like you buy a car and then half way thru they change the engine to something different... this has precedence... Mercedes changed from inline sixes to V6s but retained the name (eg. Mercedes E320)... so maybe then it seems the companies think the DAC really doesnt matter? its the implementation? Maybe they can *largely* retain the circuit diagram and just resocket the DAC like an Intel CPU? I doubt it though. Would require a completely different board.
I think this isnt common but it does happen a fair bit? Has one ever seen a comparison btw, the same product but with different chipsets?
The s/w recently said that the firmware could be old so maybe check? So I check and to my surprise the have discontinued the AKM version (due to the fire???) and now use ESS. So choose the firmware correctly.
So what is one to make of a situation when they do what is a fairly major change and yet dont make a Version 2.0 let alone make a new model (ie. XD06 basic?) - to me it feels like you buy a car and then half way thru they change the engine to something different... this has precedence... Mercedes changed from inline sixes to V6s but retained the name (eg. Mercedes E320)... so maybe then it seems the companies think the DAC really doesnt matter? its the implementation? Maybe they can *largely* retain the circuit diagram and just resocket the DAC like an Intel CPU? I doubt it though. Would require a completely different board.
I think this isnt common but it does happen a fair bit? Has one ever seen a comparison btw, the same product but with different chipsets?