Khadas Tea - New smartphone dac and amplifier

[CedarX]

Lightning to USB-C cable is included… but why do they have this note on the tech. Spec?

 

[staticV3]

View attachment 177572Lightning to USB-C cable is included… but why do they have this note on the tech. Spec?

Apple made it so that you need a Lightning cable with a special MFi chip to enable the iPhone to supply power and talk to USB accessories.
The note is there to clarify that customers cannot just use the normal Lightning to Type-C cable that came with their iPhones for the Tea.

 

[CedarX]

Apple made it so that you need a Lightning cable with a special MFi chip to enable the iPhone to supply power and talk to USB accessories.
The note is there to clarify that customers cannot just use the normal Lightning to Type-C cable that came with their iPhones for the Tea.

All right, that’s better! But still, $159 launch price ($199 regular) is pretty steep for what you get IMO. It looks like like Khadas is moving away from engineering excellence (KTB) to become more marketing-driven (Tea). But let see how Tea actually performs & measures

 

[jhaider]

it's honestly such a shame that it's doesn't have PEQ support.

It’s sad that companies haven’t decided to make useful products, and instead keep churning out stuff with irrelevant “hi-rez” “bit perfect” bullshit.

This with iOS or better still webUI controlled PEQ, crossfeed, and loudness compensation would be a market disrupter. As is I struggle to see the point. Maybe if they or someone can release an iOS software with global PEQ, crossfeed, and ideally loudness it would have a point.

 

[julian_hughes]

It’s sad that companies haven’t decided to make useful products, and instead keep churning out stuff with irrelevant “hi-rez” “bit perfect” bullshit.

This with iOS or better still webUI controlled PEQ, crossfeed, and loudness compensation would be a market disrupter. As is I struggle to see the point. Maybe if they or someone can release an iOS software with global PEQ, crossfeed, and ideally loudness it would have a point.

Hi res may or may not be bs, but bit perfect is a perfectly sensible design goal. And while you might not find the product useful there are lots of others who will. That's called demand, it's a market, that's why companies exist.

 

[jhaider]

And while you might not find the product useful there are lots of others who will. That's called demand, it's a market, that's why companies exist.

My hope is demand for function-failure products wanes and consumers learn to expect useful functionality as a baseline.

That can be hastened by publicly calling our new releases that fail to meet baseline functionality standards. For a headphone DAC-amp product, the baseline is IMO useful PEQ, with crossfeed and loudness being secondary distinguishing features.

A good example of this process at work is the Buchardt streamer amp, which started out as a functional failure but evolved into a useful integrated stereo product after the designers took feedback seriously and added bass management.

 

[TK750]

It’s sad that companies haven’t decided to make useful products, and instead keep churning out stuff with irrelevant “hi-rez” “bit perfect” bullshit.

This with iOS or better still webUI controlled PEQ, crossfeed, and loudness compensation would be a market disrupter. As is I struggle to see the point. Maybe if they or someone can release an iOS software with global PEQ, crossfeed, and ideally loudness it would have a point.

You'd be disrupting a miniscule market though. Even within the niche audiophile hobby, the amount of people that use those features on their headphones is tiny (I'm not saying they aren't useful or good).

 

[julian_hughes]

function-failure products

What does this even mean, and why would it apply to the Khadas amp? Making up pejorative sounding buzzwords does not indicate insight, nor does it constitute valid criticism. The Khadas product clearly isn't for you, but that doesn't make it a failure and it doesn't mean there is anything wrong with it. To me just the form factor and method of attaching to a phone looks like an excellent idea. Rubber bands be damned! It offers bit-perfect playback. Good! It offers Hi-Rez. Well, maybe they want to actually sell a few of these units to people who bought or stream Hi-Rez and believe it offers them something? Because if they don't offer Hi-Rez playback in today's market then their sales are going to be somewhere between zero and next to nothing. They're not evangelists, they're an enterprise offering really well engineered products and trying to make a living.

 

[CedarX]

Maybe one generation too early…. If rumors are true that the next iPhones are going to be portless with MagSafe expanded to include a form of wireless data communication protocol (e.g. enabling lossless audio), the Tea concept would make more sense! Not there yet…

 

[jhaider]

You'd be disrupting a miniscule market though. Even within the niche audiophile hobby, the amount of people that use those features on their headphones is tiny (I'm not saying they aren't useful or good).

Before Tyll founded HeadRoom nobody had heard of headphone amps either. It’s time to move on from products even less capable than HeadRoom’s original lineup.

What does this even mean, and why would it apply to the Khadas amp?

It means that full range filterless speakers all suck, though at least the on-ear variant is spared the bass and directivity problems that the room sized variants cannot overcome and EQ can resolve the biggest issues as long as the drive units have enough headroom. Any integrated product that does not include the tools to remediate such inherent problems fails at its core function of improving fidelity. Thus, a function-failure product.

 

[TK750]

Before Tyll founded HeadRoom nobody had heard of headphone amps either. It’s time to move on from products even less capable than HeadRoom’s original lineup.

Maybe, I think it would be difficult for a relatively small company like Khadas to have much of an impact on this, you need some of the bigger players to get involved to show/convince the majority it is something they want. I think the current offering probably has more desirable aspects to the majority (rightly or wrongly) than those you suggested. Of course ideally who says they need to be mutually exclusive! I feel like we are perhaps looking at different things though and you are talking on a more grand general scale.

 

[juliangst]

For that price I’d rather get a NX7, connect it via a lightning 3,5mm dongle and glue a MagSafe magnet to the topping and I basically have the same thing.

 

[KosherButcher]

For that price I’d rather get a NX7, connect it via a lightning 3,5mm dongle and glue a MagSafe magnet to the topping and I basically have the same thing.

I'm sure the NX7 is far better as purely an amp (it's certainly far more powerful), but that is only an amplifier. The Khadas is a DAC and Amp, with the addition of bluetooth. I don't know that they are directly comparable.

 

[Gouwa]

The Khadas Tea is available on Indiegogo

Have fun!

 

[orb2k]

For that price I’d rather get a NX7, connect it via a lightning 3,5mm dongle and glue a MagSafe magnet to the topping and I basically have the same thing.

did you mean the NX4?

 

[brandall10]

You'd be disrupting a miniscule market though. Even within the niche audiophile hobby, the amount of people that use those features on their headphones is tiny (I'm not saying they aren't useful or good).

PEQ is possibly the core defining feature of the Qudelix 5k, and it's quite a successful product.

Same w/ Roon in its early days, the DSP functionality was almost like the 'killer app' of it. The fact that you could apply a convolution filter w/ REW was a pretty big deal. It freed you from needing to get a receiver w/ Dirac/Audessey, and with headphones it was an early PEQ solution.

I'd say the subset of audiophiles who made Khadas a name brand (ie. value measurements), the venn intersection of those who like PEQ is pretty high.

That said, arguably this product deviates from that initial core audience into more of the head-fi set who think EQ is a tone suck and tuning w/ cables and eartips are viable solutions. *That said*, the market that values measurements (including proper FR curves) is also growing, in general.

 

[Jungstar]

All right, that’s better! But still, $159 launch price ($199 regular) is pretty steep for what you get IMO. It looks like like Khadas is moving away from engineering excellence (KTB) to become more marketing-driven (Tea). But let see how Tea actually performs & measures

Why do you assume it is not just a just upgraded "Tone board" + Amp inside a slim cover with a mic?
I think it is a steal when you compare with others... the Tea is much slimmer and IMHO looks much better.
FiiO BTR5 is $129
iFi Go Blue is $199
Qudelix 5K is $130 + shipping/tax international
$155-200 seems like they are pricing in line with peers and are delivering great quality + great looks. And if you want a sustainable business outside niche DIY builders, you need to deliver a finalized product.

To me it looks like I want to carry it around

this not so much

 

[Jungstar]

Holy shit, a Magsafe DAC by Khadas. Take my money.

Edit: no balanced out means no thanks

you can send any voltage through unbalanced, and it is unrealistic you get much noise into your headphones through 3-4 feet of cable....

 

[Querkle]

you can send any voltage through unbalanced, and it is unrealistic you get much noise into your headphones through 3-4 feet of cable....

in my case my powered monitors only have balanced input, so this is also a no go for me, yes you can send any voltage through unbalanced but its much easier to get upto 4V with balanced aswell for power hungry headphones

 

[anon2k2]

Mine just arrived in the post today. We will see (or hear) what it's like shortly.