I just got the EITR 2 today and this is my first impression:
Very nice packaging experience. Surprisingly nice. Nothing crazy fancy, but the fitted box and insert is something I didn't expect. The Forkbeard module is wrapped very well. The manual is useless.
The included C cable is extremely short for a connector. 1m. They don't say what USB version they prefer, but since all my other DACs and equipment use 2.0 B, a random (Ducky branded) 2.0 C cable ran directly from my mobo works just fine.
I don't know what I expected from a DDC (other than more outputs, which is exactly what I wanted), but this doesn't help buffer errors (overflows, underflows, etc.) This also doesn't reclock, or at least not aggressively enough to fix a stream that is at least 0.000059% - 0.000601% out of clock (this is the range I tested).
Testing with a -68dB digital preamp in EQ APO (compensated with physical amplification), A/B testing between the EITR 2 and my current DAC (e70v) results in slightly better jitter performance to my ears. But this could be bias. I also hear no noise in the same situation, despite the source being a noisy PC with a powerful GPU.
This is my first time using Forkbeard as well, so here are my thoughts:
No remote is very disappointing. Especially considering part of their marketing talk for this product was to.... add a remote to any DAC. I understand they mean digital remote, but still it's disappointing. I'm assuming the forkbeard remote you can buy on their website only works with IR and not directly with the forkbeard receiver, so I am assuming that it wouldn't work with this.
Their app is not great, I'm not sure why it gets so much praise. To actually attenuate the digital volume you need to tap or hold the up or down buttons. You cannot swipe the volume bar to change the volume, you also cannot tap to set the volume at a certain point. You are limited to the very slow up/down buttons.
The actual DSP functionality is mediocre at best. The loudness function is a pretty cool feature that you don't often see, but can't be used in addition to EQ. Balance is balance, I have nothing to say about it, it works. The parametric EQ only having 3 bands is an absolute joke. It should have just been 3 tone control sliders, there is practically nothing a 3 band parametric EQ can do except some very, very basic tone control stuff. At least if it was 5 band, you could use gimped auto EQ or use this for basic room correction (I mean, a $150 room correction box with a remote control would be killer!).
In addition, the controls are hard to use precisely, there's no reset (e.g. double click the point to reset to 0) like you would expect, you cannot manually enter the frequency, gain, and Q values (you have to use touch), and half the time, the Q slider pinch doesn't register for me. The whole control system is so janky that I can never see myself using it through the app. If I had a remote to more easily control forkbeard and use the EQ as basic tone control, I could just ignore the app all together.
Functionality that I assumed would be there (but admittedly was never advertised) was more integrated stats/status reports. E.g. incoming level, bitrate and sampling rate of the USB signal, as well as bitrate and sampling rate of the output. Which outputs are being used. Something like Qudelix 5k's stats.
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Overall, a fairly disappointing purchase. I also purchased directly from Schiit to help support them, so I can't return without a 15% restocking fee (absolute insanity, I will be purchasing from Amazon next time). I suppose it does what I want (extends my outputs from one input), but I'm kind of thinking I just wasted almost $200 here.
Are there any improvements planned to forkbeard? Why are there not more than 3 bands?
