My unit arrived last Friday. I have been listening to it for almost 3 days (on and off) and I couldn't stop. (You guys can imaging, I am listening to it as I am writing this post.) This is not just because how it sounds but also the way that I operate it, like my favorite toy. Sense of ritual is a very important aspect when playing with CDs nowadays.
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Design:
First impression, the package and box are upgraded which look way better than the cheap one with the M400.
The size is a bit smaller than it looks in the pictures which is better. With this size, it looks more premium when placed on top of the SP400.
The mechanic keys feel exactly as my keyboard. It is so satisfying to hear the crisp click sound when you press the keys down. The tactile feel of mechanical keys is much better than the microswitches which most devices use. A bit loose which is expected. Imaging that how the keys on your keyboard feel when you place your finger on them and wiggle.
The disc pressure weight block is secured by magnetic force, not by gravity. With a metal shell and plastic holding the magnet inside, it is not heavy and feels cheap. When placed on top of the CD, while playing, you can tell it is not perfectly concentric and wobbles a bit. This bugs me. I tried to play CDs without placing it on and it worked fine. This is something that I wish they nailed it further before releasing the product. Maybe just a piece of solid metal without a magnet does the job? Not sure. Maybe they have tested this solution and for some reason they did not adopt it.
The opening space by the edge of the disc is a bit narrow. It can be a bit tricky to take the disc out if you have thick fingers.
As for the lid, it is a solid one-piece metal and feels premium. I do wish the lid could be somehow transparent or at least left a window on it so that we can see the spinning disc while playing. The diameter of the lid is 5.5inch. I even looked for a glass lid with this size on Amazon and found the the following one. It is $39 made in France which looks very premium. It will immediately turn this thing into a wok or a pan. Just kidding. Anyway, I hope they can release a transparent lid as an accessory and I will order it without a doubt.
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Given that this thing is so beautiful, I can bear with those issues.
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Functionality:
This thing can replace my M400 for my purposes. I connect M400 to my MBP and to serve my JBL 308P monitors. In terms of this function, it somewhat covers it and plus, it plays CDs. As for BT, I don't use this function at all. For the opt out, I am not sure if I will use this function since the best DAC I have is the M400 and they are using the same chip, so there is no point to do so.
I saw other folks wish it had other means of digital inputs, I totally agree. I have a PS4 and it is currently connected to my M400 via opt in. However, I have two separate setups, one is in my garage with the PS4 and the JBL monitors; the other is in my office room with a some PCDPs and headphones. Plus, I don't play video games anymore. So this is not an issue to me.
For obvious reasons, some of the CDs are not readable by my old PCDPs and this thing reads it without any issue.
I also saw other folks wish it had SACD function, I do agree. But I do not have any SACDs so this is not an issue to me either.
Firmware:
Two weird things:
1. It only uses 4 characters or less to show the status. For example, Play, CD, USB, BT. However, when you pause it, it shows "Paus" ... This is so funny.
2. When you keep clicking the NEXT button and when you reach the end of the list, a typical CD player will stay at the last song. This one returns to the first song.
3. The loudness is displayed as dB which is different from the 0-80 digital range in the M400.
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Price:
I ordered it from China directly and shipped it oversea to the US. It was during the 11.11 time (similar to the Black Friday event in the US) and there was a discount around $100. So its definitely a good price to me. I paid similar for my M400 and this thing does more than it.
Sound quality:
I am very satisfied with the sound it renders. However, I do think I need more time to listen to it and run a systematic comparison between my other devices. This can be very time consuming which is beyond my capacity now. I will find a time for it and update my findings here. My first impression is it has less bass than the Sony D-303 thus sounds cooler and thinner than it. I use ATH-A1000 with D-303 and use HD6XX with PL200. Seems a perfect match.
