This is off topic, but this is nothing unique for Chinese brands, Samsung for instance also has the tactic of flooding the market with tons of products
Samsung ? Much less than SMSL, Topping or other chinese brands. Their smartphones range is rather extended, but not that huge. Their TVs and soundbars too. And anyway the smartphone and Tv market is much more important than the Dacs and amps market.
Like Vintage Flanker, I don't think SMSL, Topping and Co aim first at inner chinese market, more than 400€ or 500€ for some devices are not that much for many westerners (anyway, it's starting to be rather important for others like me and many), but this is much money for a lot of chinese or south-east asian people. So my guess is that they deliberately flood the western market -north america and europe- surfing on the growing reputation of high quality not too expensive chinese electronics.
This kind of flooding strategy, at such an astonishing degree, is something specific of some chinese brands specialized on Dacs, small amplifiers, IEMs with a rather good value for money (for the moment). More high end chinese firms like Matrix Audio, Auralic, keep a more conservative and reasonable approach in the building and the renewal of their products range.
The issue is that the prices of SMSL, Topping and Co. are slowly getting higher while their reliability seems getting lower, and the overall performances of their devices can't be audibly and technically much improved,
So, I hope that these brands will soon become aware that their reputation in the western world could be seriously affected if they pursuie such a non sense strategy too long.
I was wondering if I'll buy a replacement for my Topping DX7s by a new Topping or SMSL and maybe also buy a new amp from those companies, but frankly I abandoned this idea, I prefer to save money and wait for a good second hand or discounted RME or Neumann interface and a european class D amp (Audiophonics, Boxem, others...), or a pair of good compact active speakers.
