iBasso DX90

[PaulyT]

Well, this is kind of a source component and DAC and not just a headphone amp per se... but it seems to fit in better in this section since it's used for headphones so here goes:

Just scored a brand new iBasso DX90 on head-fi for $300; on amazon they go for $380. I've been thinking about getting one of these for a while now.

For years I've been using a Sansa Clip 8GB - that I bought from GreatDane, actually. While it's SQ is adequate, there is a noticeable hiss if you're in a quiet room with decent IEMs (I currently use a vSonic GR07 which I'm very happy with). Plus it's fixed at 8GB, no expansion capability. Battery life isn't great, only about 4 hrs. Lastly, it has an annoying "feature" of putting a small gap of silence between tracks, which for pop/rock isn't a big deal, but many classical works flow continuously from one track to the next, so the interruption is noticeable. A bit of a pet peeve with me.

Been looking at iBasso for some time, because both models - DX50 and DX90 - have a microSD slot for extra storage. Plus an optical output if I want to connect it to other components (receiver or desktop headphone amp). They seem to be relatively well regarded as players. I probably would've been perfectly happy with the DX50, but the DX90 has a high end dual-mono DAC, actually based on the same sabre 32 DAC chip in the desktop DAC - Yulong DA8 - that I use with my full-size headphone rig. Probably not a huge deal since I generally will use this when commuting on metro/train anyway, a noisy environment, but hey... for ~$100 extra (what I paid vs new DX50), why not? At least then I won't worry about whether I'm sacrificing SQ. (and no this is one case where I'm not going to buy both of them and compare them myself. :snooty: )

Should arrive sometime next week, will post impressions.

:text-link:

 

[Flint]

That is outstanding!

I have also been looking at the iBasso and the Fiio high-end players. However, ever since moving to my Samsung Galaxy S5 for WMA VBR playback, I cannot imagine carrying a second (or third when I have my portable headphone amp) portable device anymore (like I did with my Zune). That said, I would likely never need a headphone amp if I were using something like the iBasso, but do I need more high dollar portable electronics in my carry-on bag?


Why doesn't Fiio get any respect on Head-Fi?

 

[PaulyT]

From what I've seen, Fiio has a good reputation on head-fi, too. But I haven't paid as much attention to mobile devices in general... I admit, I was attracted to the DX90 largely because of the DAC, since I've done some DAC comparisons recently with my main headphones.

 

[PaulyT]

Wow there's a whole thread on DX90 vs Fiio X5... if you want to read 21 pages of posts! :scared-eek:

http://www.head-fi.org/t/708989/fiio-x5-vs-ibasso-dx90

 

[Flint]

Because of built quality and exceeding expectations, I have become a huge fan of Fiio over most of the other brands.

The X5 is very sexy to me and uses what the audio EEs at my company consider to be the best low-power DAC on the market, the TI PCM1792A.

That isn't to say the iBasso isn't a killer product. I've never held one nor seen one in person, so my ignorance makes me nervous.

 

[PaulyT]

So buy an X5 and send it to me for a bit. I'll do a comparison.

Yeah from what I can tell the DX90 and X5 are pretty nearly equivalent products and close competitors... agreed the X5 looks cool.

 

[Flint]

I'd love to... but I'd hate to fall into carrying more devices. I already have to wait forever for the TSA X-Ray tech at the Airport security line to scan through all the wires, batteries, devices, and headphones I carry in my bag. Removing the Zune from my bag was refreshing.

 

[Deleted member 133]

Just read the product descriptions for both devices and a number of user reviews.

If I were in the market I'd probably buy the X5. But that's a far from firm "probably."

What has me leaning to the X5 is that it supports DSD, something that apparently no other device at even twice the price does. However, and unfortunately, it apparently does not do so when used in DAC mode. My most likely use of such a device would be as a DAC, while working in my office and accessing music files off my computer. With the exception of perhaps in-car use, I'm not a big portable music listener anymore. (And I have no fond memories of TSA agents pillorying my electronics travel bag when I used to travel a lot on business.)

Jeff

 

[Towen7]

I stumbled on GeekWave a few days ago...

Their site makes the claim that Geek Wave is the only 32 bit / 384 kHz PCM capable, native DSD player in the world and that you can feed it anything. From MP3's all the way up to DSD128 files.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_N6xYQvOSM[/youtube]

 

[Botch]

I stumbled on GeekWave a few days ago...

Their site makes the claim that Geek Wave is the only 32 bit / 384 kHz PCM capable...

You should probably get onto Dr. AIX's blog for a few weeks. Nobody is recording music at those rates, some are copying, and selling at high price, copies of the "best available master" of classic albums, which in many cases are recorded on analog tape.

 

[Botch]

Looks like that will be hitting the market about the same time as Neil Young's "ponomusic"; I doubt that either product will make much of a splash or success. We'll see.

 

[PaulyT]

My DA8 can do these high-rate DSDs but as Botch points out, it's kinda pointless as nothing is (or very very few things are) really recorded at such extreme sampling. So while I can do these "high res" playbacks, and I occasionally do listen to a (AIX) dvd-a on my headphones through it, 99.99% of my listening and all my critical evaluation are done with normal CDs (usually FLAC ripped from CD).

 

[PaulyT]

Plus DSD rips are rare and hard to do. I looked into figuring that out at one point, and it required some old-model PS3 with a specific firmware revision for it to work.

 

[Towen7]

I stumbled on GeekWave a few days ago...

Their site makes the claim that Geek Wave is the only 32 bit / 384 kHz PCM capable...

You should probably get onto Dr. AIX's blog for a few weeks. Nobody is recording music at those rates, some are copying, and selling at high price, copies of the "best available master" of classic albums, which in many cases are recorded on analog tape.

I didn't mean to imply that I was interested in buying this player for it's high res abilities. In fact I'm not interested in a portable player at all. My phone will suffice for the foreseeable future.

 

[Botch]

Gotcha.

 

[Flint]

Considering that the analog circuitry in all devices is limited to about 18bit of signal to noise ratio, I am not convinced there is any benefit to all these super-high resolution formats. 24/96 is higher than we should ever need (assuming something magical doesn't happen with resistor design).

While I completely understand archivists using super high data rate DSD to archive old analog recordings, I cannot for the life of my understand why anyone would need to have that format for real use.

 

[PaulyT]

Tracking says it should be delivered today! :banana-rock: Not bad considering it came from Hawaii.

 

[Flint]

I am excited to read your review!

 

[PaulyT]

It's here!

Sorry for the crappy picture, my photography skills are very rusty (esp. w/ nikon + external flash as used here)...

These are the DX90 on the right, my old Sansa Clip on the left, and the vSonic GR07 IEMs.

 

[PaulyT]

First impressions of the DX90: It's a nice solid little player. Build quality seems very good on the outside anyway, clear touch screen, actual brushed metal front and rear panels. Buttons are responsive. The interface is quite straightforward. It's cool to see the album art, and to have the ability to seek to different points in the song with a simple touch - handy for longer tracks in my demo that I don't necessarily want to listen all the way through.

It came with the latest firmware already on it. But it is flashable.

With drivers installed on the PC, I can use it as an outboard USB DAC as well - meaning, I can set it up as a playback device and feed it digital music from foobar or whatever on Windows, up to 32bit / 192kHz. I tried playing a couple DVD-A tracks (24/96), worked fine.

Only minor irritation so far is playlists from MediaMonkey don't work. The first thing I wanted to do was push out the playlist of demo tracks I've been using for all my headphone evaluations lately (here). It put the songs on there just fine, but the DX90 wouldn't recognize the playlist. I futzed around with hand-editing the playlist file to put in the right directories for the DX90's filesystem (rather than the windows drive letter), and it kinda worked, although the ordering was messed up. I was able to manually select tracks off the library and add them to an internal playlist directly on the DX90, though that was kinda tedious, but it worked and the ordering was preserved in this case. Oh well, this isn't a big deal, I rarely use playlists except for this demo track list.