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YONGSE Y01 Balanced Headphone Adapter Review

Rate this DAC & HP Amp

  • 1. Poor (headless panther)

    Votes: 12 9.6%
  • 2. Not terrible (postman panther)

    Votes: 46 36.8%
  • 3. Fine (happy panther)

    Votes: 56 44.8%
  • 4. Great (golfing panther)

    Votes: 11 8.8%

  • Total voters
    125
This isn't correct, when I set the currency to EUR I get charged in EUR.
You are partly right. I just put something for € 106.56 in my basket and started the paypal payment process. In the past, the charge would appear in USD and Paypal would helpfully offer to charge my card in €. When doing the math, it was about 4% higher than the interbank rate (my CC company only charges 0.1% on top of the interbank rate). Now they changed the optics, so the Paypal charge is really in €.

Now comes the catch: Those € 106.56 are $ 114.99 as of right now. When I change the currency in my Aliexpress account, the article drops to $110.14, so Aliexpress was taking $ 4.85 or 4.2% for these pretty optics. Of course, they are paying most of this to Paypal.

So you are really better off paying in USD. Most CC charge 1.5 to 2% for foreign currency conversion (so still less than 4.2%), but there are some out there that charge next to nothing.
 
You are partly right. I just put something for € 106.56 in my basket and started the paypal payment process. In the past, the charge would appear in USD and Paypal would helpfully offer to charge my card in €. When doing the math, it was about 4% higher than the interbank rate (my CC company only charges 0.1% on top of the interbank rate). Now they changed the optics, so the Paypal charge is really in €.

Now comes the catch: Those € 106.56 are $ 114.99 as of right now. When I change the currency in my Aliexpress account, the article drops to $110.14, so Aliexpress was taking $ 4.85 or 4.2% for these pretty optics. Of course, they are paying most of this to Paypal.

So you are really better off paying in USD. Most CC charge 1.5 to 2% for foreign currency conversion (so still less than 4.2%), but there are some out there that charge next to nothing.

Yeah it seems to depend on the seller? But I only looked briefly. The most expensive item I’ve bought is the 7hz IEMs for 10 eur so I’ve not been massively done I suppose.

But defo best to buy in USD with Revolut or similar. A lesson learnt.
 
it is discussed (more or less) here https://audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/incredible-micro-dacs.49274/

not much technical info abut the CS46L41 codec, only available from a Cirrus pdf product summary guide:

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Are you confused? I just made a try to search on Aliexpress. It is sold for ~$10 on Aliexpress from the Yongse Offical Store. With $10, is its performance notable? Apple dongle has power output better than a few mW, but SINAD is worse than a few dB.
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Pretty sure Amir must have checked his facts, cos he knows lots of eyes are watching. Is it possible that the vendor discovered increased interest in the product, and jacked up the price.

I have not done an exhaustive analysis, but my gut feeling is that well reviewed products with good reviews on ASR, receive a boost in their sales, and prices. They should be paying Amir, for the privilege. "free marketing". And products with not so good reviews seem are discontinued. Gut feeling.
 
Pretty sure Amir must have checked his facts, cos he knows lots of eyes are watching. Is it possible that the vendor discovered increased interest in the product, and jacked up the price.

I have not done an exhaustive analysis, but my gut feeling is that well reviewed products with good reviews on ASR, receive a boost in their sales, and prices. They should be paying Amir, for the privilege. "free marketing". And products with not so good reviews seem are discontinued. Gut feeling.

You can get very good deals on Aliexpress when you are a new user, at least in some countries. This only happens on low price products though, so you are not going to get a 60$ product for, say 20$, but you can get a 15$ product for 5$.
 
FWIW I just got a welcome deal price of $1.49 ($2.19 after tax) when I followed the link Amir posted earlier.

Edit - This was for an existing aliexpress account. My last purchase was 04/2019 so more of a 'welcome back' price.
 

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Thanks for this! It would probably be useful with low-Z headphones, but very strange to see that we only get 1V RMS output

If we used a rail-to-rail output IC running single-ended off 5V USB rails, we could expect at least 1.7V RMS, so for balanced, we could expect 3.4V - so we're looking at over 11 times more power available than what we see here.

Perhaps this was done to limit power dissipation, as we don't have much surface area to work with, by the looks of things here? In any case, this represents very good value for money on account of the low price, but I'd be happy to pay 11 times the price for 11 times the output power.

YONGSE y01

Did you measure it by connecting an iPhone?

iPhone has power limitations.

Test the balanced output on your PC or Android phone.

#amirm
 
Or maybe it checks your background to see if you have been good to everyone and if so, gives you a larger discount!!!


YONGSE y01

Did you measure it by connecting an iPhone?

iPhone has power limitations.

Test the balanced output on your PC or Android phone.
 
Well, I bought the Yongse Y-01 for the hell of it. Just to see how it compares to my other dongles (Abigail, CX-Pro, etc. etc.). It's a decent dongle for IEM's. I wanted the convenience of a 4.4 connector for my balanced cables, even if it lacks the benefit of a true balanced output. Works fine with my HEXA, T3+, MP145, S12, Rhapsody, Hydro, ARTTI T10, ARTTI R1...
Is it worth USD$13, the price I paid for it on AliEx...I suppose it's within the ballpark of similarly priced dongles carrying the same DAC chip. Frankly, I prefer alternatives carrying the same DAC CX31993 with the additional amplifying MAX97220, for just $1 dollar more.

To be safe, in my humble opinion, best to just go with a decent budget dongle that's been properly vetted by Andyaudiovault:
 
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