I tried to create a new thread under DACs for this, but it wouldn't let me do so. Anyway, here are my first impressions of the Loxjie D60, which arrived yesterday.
TWO STEPS FORWARD, ONE STEP BACK
First, the good news ...
What I immediately noticed when I plugged in the D60 and played a track on Amazon Music Unlimited was the obvious improvement over the same track being played back on my old DAC (the original Loxjie D40 with the latest firmware update). To me, it sounded like the D60 increased the ambiance and added SLIGHTLY more depth and width. I was able to better pick out individual instruments in the mix.
What it did not do is make tinny or hard-to-hear movie dialog sound any clearer or compensate for badly mixed or badly recorded music as you might try to do with eq. (Though Amazon Prime Video's "Audio Boost" seems to be getting better these days.) As for the filters and sound colors ... well, as always, I suppose some people will say that they can't hear differences between them. I actually was able distinguish some very subtle differences. I just didn't find any of them useful for fixing subpar audio.
Now, the bad ...
I really hate the new UI and display. My D40 has a much smaller screen, but it is easier to read. I have the D60 and my powered speakers on top of my dresser, next to my Roku Ultra, under a wall-mounted TV. With the D40, I could see everything in nice, bright, white letters and control just about every function with the Loxjie remote. The D40 also has a small green LED that illuminates when the device is on and a red LED when it's off. The D60 has only the red LED for when it is off if you have set the display to dim after changing settings. The Normal mode has far too much information on it to be visible from a comfortable TV viewing distance. They are too small for me to see on many of the D60 screens unless I walk right up to them and put on my reading glasses. The Simple mode is hard to read because all the text is in these big blocky characters reminiscent of the cheapest pocket calculators from the early 1970s -- which might look cool to some people, but are actually hard to distinguish because the characters and numerals look so much alike. Furthermore, all but the lowest brightness levels seem to cause a distracting amount of background light to spill through the screen when viewed in a dark room.
I'm not saying that some won't like this style. I'm just saying that, if Loxjie wanted to make a bold aesthetic choice (or trick users into thinking they were using a Topping product) they should have at least included an alternative look for those that don't like it (or who have visual impairments). There should be at least one font that was picked for its clarity and visibility. (I used to see this kind of thinking a lot in my sideline of software development, when a developer would not allow for a reasonable amount of flexibility with the user interface. People have different personal preferences and ways of working. If you force them to use only one UI, you are just limiting your potential customer base. Not a good approach to take in a crowded DAC market, IMHO.)
Finally, I would like to ask for suggestions on how to fix a nagging problem that none of my Loxjie DACs (the D30, D40, and D60) were able to address ...
There are a few recent albums that have distortion on nearly every track when streaming through Amazon Music Unlimited (though the amount of the distortion differs from track-to-track). For example Robyn Adele Anderson "Just Play the Right Notes" and "Expensive Background Music". To me it sounds like the cheapest portable transistor radio from the 1960s playing the same track simultaneously with the hq digital feed. Both my systems play most other songs and albums without distortion. I am assuming that either the issue exists in the recordings themselves or somewhere else in my systems, but don't know what to change. (Different DAC filters and sound colors in the DACs don't help. It seems like increasing the DPLL value does to some extent -- but I am NOT going to get into another argument about that becasue so many people are convinced that it's impossible and no one has suggested an alternative.) Any ideas? Thanks.
The signal paths on my systems are as follows:
- LAN cable to Roku Ultra - Roku Ultra to TV via HDMI - TV to D60 via optical cable (at 480) - output to 3.1 Genelec powered speakers
- Wi-fi signal to iPad mini - iPad mini to D40 via USB (at 192) - output to 2 Genelec powered speakers
All suggestions are welcome. Thank you.
