Gustard X16 Owners feedback...

[Morla]

How is the long-term reliability of Gustard products in general?

The 400 Dollar question . Honestly I personally think it will last but who knows?

 

[BHazard]

Looks solidly built to me. I bought from Apos Audio (which is Shenzhen Audio but US based?). Always have gotten great service from both stores, and Apos offers a 2 year warranty on their products.

 

[curiouspeter]

Looks solidly built to me. I bought from Apos Audio (which is Shenzhen Audio but US based?). Always have gotten great service from both stores, and Apos offers a 2 year warranty on their products.

How is the experience of buying from Apps? I think it is shipped directly from China. Do you have to deal with Customs?

 

[BHazard]

How is the experience of buying from Apps? I think it is shipped directly from China. Do you have to deal with Customs?

Was great. Shipped free via DHL from China but arrived to me in 5 days (would have been 3 but we had a snow storm). No issue with Customs.

 

[axxixihaha]

How is the long-term reliability of Gustard products in general? I rather not have to deal with warranty at all.

Are there quirks or is the X16 pretty straight-forward? $499 is such a great price.

I bought the Gustard X9 about 10 years ago and it still works normally.

 

[curiouspeter]

I bought the Gustard X9 about 10 years ago and it still works normally.

Impressive! It is significantly cheaper than the Topping D70s too. Not that I care for MQA, but it seems many new DACs have it. After the demise of Xiami Music, I wonder if MQA will have staying power.

I can see some competition coming from the new Cambridge Audio DacMagic 200M. It has a headphone amp included for the same $499. "Only" ES9028Q2M's though, but it will likely be good enough.

 

[BHazard]

Impressive! It is significantly cheaper than the Topping D70s too. Not that I care for MQA, but it seems many new DACs have it. After the demise of Xiami Music, I wonder if MQA will have staying power.

I can see some competition coming from the new Cambridge Audio DacMagic 200M. It has a headphone amp included for the same $499. "Only" ES9028Q2M's though, but it will likely be good enough.

My Topping DX7s had dual ES9038Q2M's, a generation newer than the ES9028Q2M, along with a headphone amp included. I also ran my Monoprice THX-887 with the DX7s as the 887 was a big improvement. The X16's ES9068AS's and 887 sound noticeably better. I can't see the 200M performing anywhere near the X16 and a decent amp.

 

[curiouspeter]

My Topping DX7s had dual ES9038Q2M's, a generation newer than the ES9028Q2M, along with a headphone amp included. I also ran my Monoprice THX-887 with the DX7s as the 887 was a big improvement. The X16's ES9068AS's and 887 sound noticeably better. I can't see the 200M performing anywhere near the X16 and a decent amp.

LOL, my NEO iDSD has a Burr Brown chip which is probably ancient. However, it has a stand for vertical placement, which is a great space-saving feature for desktop uses. The sound quality is actually quite good.

I think a lot of people shop by features.

Now I need a DAC for my speakers. The X16 is the front-runner. The Matrix Mini-i Pro 3 is also tempting. (That screen looks awesome for Roon.) My Inner Devil is whispering Schiit Bifrost 2. I hope I will not end up with an Audio GD.

 

[curiouspeter]

Just ordered the X16 from Apos Audio. Even without considering the measurements, a quality DSD-capable, full-balanced DAC at $499 is simply incredible.

 

[dahuky]

can someone please explain about the NOS mode and different PCM filters?

 

[raif71]

can someone please explain about the NOS mode and different PCM filters?

 

[Morla]

can someone please explain about the NOS mode and different PCM filters?

https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...x16-balanced-mqa-dac-review.17419/post-665418

 

[dahuky]

https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...x16-balanced-mqa-dac-review.17419/post-665418

tried, can't hear anything, same for the filters.

 

[Morla]

tried, can't hear anything, same for the filters.

And that is probably a good thing. Just keep it set to off.

 

[dahuky]

And that is probably a good thing. Just keep it set to off.

iv'e noticed something very wierd, when playing qobuz, after like 20 secs +- into a hi res song, the quality drops to 44 on the gustard pannel, and you can hear a short cut, and the app shows 192 all the time. does anybody else experience the same?

 

[Dannemand]

can someone please explain about the NOS mode and different PCM filters?

Oversampling and filtering are critical stages in reconstructing a quality waveform from the sparse samples of PCM files. As such you generally want to avoid NOS (No-Oversampling) unless you happen to like the effect it creates.

This blog post illustrates it well with the following capture from a 16/44 file played by a TEAC UD-501 DAC in NOS mode (left), the same DAC using oversampling and Sharp filter (middle), and an old DAC (right). I recommend reading that post and others on that blog.



Some users prefer oversampling in software such as HQPlayer to oversampling done by the DAC chip. And that's fine, but it takes a lot of CPU to do it well.

 

[lizhuoyin]

can someone please explain about the NOS mode and different PCM filters?

Check out this topic. Talking about another brand DAC, but some general ideas.

 

[frankh]

I received my X16 a week ago and after installing the latest v5 driver from Shenzhen Audio, it was good to go on my Windows 10 PC but unfortunately I've been getting sporadic audio glitches and dropouts no matter what bit rate (16, 24 or 32) or sampling rate (44.1kHz, 48kHz etc.) playback I set it to on the Gustard USB audio device control panel. I even tried changing the buffer settings (1024, 512, 256 etc) but I still can't solve this issue. Don't get me wrong, I love the sound of the X16 when it works but the glitchy issue is really annoying.

I tried to disable all Windows 10 startup programs except Gustard USB audio device control panel and that doesn't help either. I even checked my PC with LatencyMon and my PC passed the digital audio playback latency test with flying colours. I've run out of ways to solve this sporadic glitchy audio issue on my WIndows 10 PC. It glitches even playing back simple YouTube videos and Spotify (paid account) songs. I wonder if anybody is having the same issue as me and if you have found a solution to this. Please do share. Thank you.

 

[Nationalizer]

@frankh can you try a different computer and USB cable?

 

[dahuky]

the device makes a lot of noise.
when i plug it in to my amp, i can hear a high freq sound on high volumes, when i switch to the normal stereo output of my pc, the noise is gone, even at same volume.