Totally agree on the price even though I paid EUR 444,44 for mine from Amazon (including delivery and 25 % VAT). Still feels like good value.Considering the price, I think these choices could have been some cost cutting measures to get the price where it is.... unless it's not supposed to be this way and a firmware upgrade comes along and magically fixes things (USB-C, not the amp). One can dream.
I'm all for an OLED, Fully Balanced, True USB-C premium model for 2023.
It would have been great with a OLED as well so you get a pitch black screen, but I wouldn’t mention that earlier as I felt I was a bit harsh e
already considering I’m happy with it so far, excepts for the cons mentioned. I’ve only had it for a couple of days and I already knew from this forum that it wasn’t fully balanced, but that it wasn’t USB-C compatible surprised me since it has a USB-Input. I took that for granted.
I must admit that the reason I bought this DAC and not one of the other clean and well performing Chinese DAC’s in these tests was the design as they all sound very similar from what I understand. It really looks cool in addition to sounding great, which of course is the most important. I like the retro vibe and the silver look makes it go along nicely with the MacBook on my desktop compared to your usual black boxes