86billionneurons
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- Aug 5, 2023
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I bought the G5 from Apos and thought I'd share my experience with you all.
I'm a beginner audiophile whose initial setup was an AKG K361 paired with a Hidisz S9 Pro. $250 or so. Nice clean sound with vastly more detail than I was getting out of my Bose desktop speakers. I also subscribed to Tidal. Is it better than Apple, who knows, it just sounds really good. I did notice that the K361's seemed a little veiled, a term I've heard used on this forum.
After 9 months with this setup I began to wonder what the next step might be toward budget audiophile nirvana. I gave the K361/S9 to my brother and picked up a nice pair of Elear's on Reverb and bought the G5 based on Amir's review. $550 total.
The combo worked well at first. The veil was lifted and the base seemed thumpier. There was more detail. Too much detail sometimes with poorer recordings. Ennio Morricone's Humanity (Pt. 1) from The Thing soundtrack no longer had a background fuzz that I liked, and there were bumps in the recording that I didn't notice before. I wanted to borrow back the old setup from my brother to compare.
I downloaded a couple of free EQ apps for Mac and fiddled with them before giving up. A few days after that, after perhaps 8 hours of listening time with the new setup, the G5 stopped producing sound and began flashing a red light that means "no signal". Various means of troubleshooting confirmed the problem was the G5 and not the Elears or my internet connection or the USB dongle. I uninstalled the EQ apps in case they were the problem. No dice.
As much as I liked the G5, I decided to explore another DAC/amp (TBD), so I submitted a return/refund request to Apos instead of requesting a replacement. Be advised that the 45-day return advertised by Apos is really only a 15-day return if you don't want to lose 20% of your purchase price to a restocking fee. The customer support rep told me to expect a delay in processing the return due to "short-staffing" which made me wonder why that should be my problem.
I checked the RMA address on Google Maps. I guess this is Apos America headquarters:
This picture and the warning about short-staffing made me imagine the garage stuffed with RMA boxes except for a narrow corridor leading to the washer/dryer/cat litter. However, three days after my G5 arrived at AAHQ, the refund went through. I would buy through Apos again because their customer service rep was very attentive and short-staffing wasn't a problem after all. They're keeping their U.S. overhead low which helps them to remain price-competitive.
I'm a beginner audiophile whose initial setup was an AKG K361 paired with a Hidisz S9 Pro. $250 or so. Nice clean sound with vastly more detail than I was getting out of my Bose desktop speakers. I also subscribed to Tidal. Is it better than Apple, who knows, it just sounds really good. I did notice that the K361's seemed a little veiled, a term I've heard used on this forum.
After 9 months with this setup I began to wonder what the next step might be toward budget audiophile nirvana. I gave the K361/S9 to my brother and picked up a nice pair of Elear's on Reverb and bought the G5 based on Amir's review. $550 total.
The combo worked well at first. The veil was lifted and the base seemed thumpier. There was more detail. Too much detail sometimes with poorer recordings. Ennio Morricone's Humanity (Pt. 1) from The Thing soundtrack no longer had a background fuzz that I liked, and there were bumps in the recording that I didn't notice before. I wanted to borrow back the old setup from my brother to compare.
I downloaded a couple of free EQ apps for Mac and fiddled with them before giving up. A few days after that, after perhaps 8 hours of listening time with the new setup, the G5 stopped producing sound and began flashing a red light that means "no signal". Various means of troubleshooting confirmed the problem was the G5 and not the Elears or my internet connection or the USB dongle. I uninstalled the EQ apps in case they were the problem. No dice.
As much as I liked the G5, I decided to explore another DAC/amp (TBD), so I submitted a return/refund request to Apos instead of requesting a replacement. Be advised that the 45-day return advertised by Apos is really only a 15-day return if you don't want to lose 20% of your purchase price to a restocking fee. The customer support rep told me to expect a delay in processing the return due to "short-staffing" which made me wonder why that should be my problem.
I checked the RMA address on Google Maps. I guess this is Apos America headquarters:
This picture and the warning about short-staffing made me imagine the garage stuffed with RMA boxes except for a narrow corridor leading to the washer/dryer/cat litter. However, three days after my G5 arrived at AAHQ, the refund went through. I would buy through Apos again because their customer service rep was very attentive and short-staffing wasn't a problem after all. They're keeping their U.S. overhead low which helps them to remain price-competitive.
