A lot more attractive than half dozen black boxes.
It certainly looks rather vulgar, compared to the Gentlemanly tweedy looks of Naim and other British brands.
But I guess its target audience will love its looks.
But as Cocktail Audio and Auralic found, moving up from economic DAC’s and Streamers into the high end does not always end well, due to buyer prejudice.
I was surprised to learn they are a British company, playing with some success in that part of the market where the Chinese dominate.
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Well they are a British company with their gear all manufactured in China. There are a few such brands though and some have bridged the entry level to higher end rather well doing that, like Qacoustics.
with Ifi though, nearly every product has a completely different design. A few products are losely grouped to have similar case shapes but still little fascia consistency. Design-wise it is clear from their massive changes in direction from one product to the next they have no idea what they want to be aesthetically.
I just took a look at their launch post on Head Fi.
The Head Fi populace have torn into this product with a vengeance. A tech savvy user base have questioned the components used. This is pretty typical:
A quick bit of Googling reveals that the Burr-Brown DSD1793 is shared with the $229 Zen DAC. That hardly inspires confidence, no matter how often one mutters “but implementation matters” under one’s breath.
It seems you can build an excellent DAC/Streamer quite cheaply. Putting this stuff in a pretty box and charging a lot more, is becoming more difficult. dCS found this out the hard way too, with the Bartok, which descended into threats of legal action, after a tech savvy independent reviewer called them out.
Well using a low cost COTS DAC chip in a high end component isn’t that rare. Naim do it and make secret of it. The component cost of a ND555 is not that high. Implementation is generally as important. A great chef can whip up something from whatever is left in the fridge. A bad chef can have the world’s finest ingredients and still their meal will be inedible. You charge what the market will bear for the performance and for the knowledge and R&D that went into something more than component cost.
I’m always somewhat wary of what armchair engineers think. It’s pretty common for people to rip into things from a technical perspective and tell the world all the things that were done wrong and how they know better. It’s always tempting to ask them, “*Okay then, what was the last DAC you made and how many thousands of them did you sell? Oh, you’re a supply chain manager for Spanx? Well then they should definitely hire you to design the next one.*”
Then again, there are actual dedicated publications that claim to take a science based approach out there that are also getting basic details wrong and educating the next generation with alternative facts.
As for that dCS debacle, let’s face it, no one came off well there. The reviewer came off just as bad as the company.
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Also it wasn’t even dCS that was behind it, they certainly sorted it out very quickly once they got the real story. But unfortunately if a dealer with a grudge about a guy goes off on his own on something like this and tries to say the company is backing him on this, it’s bound to go wrong for you and it did for him as he lost. All the correct information about this is openly out there as dCS themselves put up all the emails from it and were very transparent on it all.
But most dacs all use the same chips, etc. But that’s just the start and it how you integrate it all and the software that runs on. Some design their own like dCS with the ring dac. Many ways to go about it, but more especially the cheap ones are just using the same dac, output stage, etc and that’s why they are all sounding very much the same
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HI Dunc, I realise the internet can be misleading but it was reported the person with the grudge was a John Giolas, vice president DCS America ?
I just went and read some of these user questions around the launched products, fascinating. Any “technical” questions (around chipset etc.) get responses such as this on their official iFi FAQs…
Our expertise lies in an in-depth understanding of the chipsets we utilize, surpassing that of other manufacturers. This unique insight allows us to tap into the latent capabilities of these chipsets effectively, exemplified by the Burr-Brown DSD1793’s ability to achieve DSD512/PCM768. However, due to proprietary reasons, we cannot disclose the specifics of how we achieve this. It’s essential to note that datasheets are typically created by the Marketing Department and may not fully represent the capabilities discovered by our Research and Development team.
I think I prefer naim answers around why TI DAC in NSS333, where they actually give technical detail - using only part of chip, SHARC for DSP, listening tests etc.
The iFi blurb is much more marketing speak.
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I can’t remember the exact details without looking, but he lost his job and it was all his doing and no one else’s
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But the sales literature included things that were not correct. This is the big problem, not how the row became a damaging public spat.
It seems to be a general problem in the HiFi world, as I lifted this out of an article about how publishing technical data that is not true can kill a company, now that there is an army of nerds on the web who expose this stuff on forums and YouTube channels.
From a post above it seems Naim are smarter and more transparent in this respect.
I thought it was more he couldn’t get to grips with all the different maps, filter options. As he came over to Cambridge to dCS and got the tour/explained, etc. They even have him a lina dac to demo and then give to charity.
Not much more they could have done and like I said they felt with very quickly, didn’t hide anything and was completely honest about it and transparent.
Shame others don’t fo the same
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I agree they ended things honourably, and probably leant a good lesson.