Ed Selley
Hi-Fi Editor
- Joined
- Jun 26, 2003
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- 12,046
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- Age
- 43
Thank you Ed. Do you know if it does Tidal Masters decoding for MQA?
It is £900 to generate press hype. If it was only £99, people would not even bother reviewing it.£900 box with a £10 cd player attached? hmmm.
Genuinely intrigued by the discussion as I've no idea if £900 is taking the pee or amazing value for this. As one (of many) measures, anyone have any idea of the BOM and integration/software dev effort? If, for example, those Japanese doodads are 50 quid a pop just by themselves then that's one thing. If they're 10p and they're the star attraction, that's another. How about the clever timing stuff? Expensive and really hard, or dirt cheap and trivial?
Rip-off Britain is alive & well...Hi,
£135 cheaper if you buy it in Europe.
895 Euros as opposed to £895 in the U.K.
Gregory
OK, let's put another way. If someone can build me the same device- same spec, format handling, software, licenses (and yes, I would like that not inconsequentially expensive Roon license retained please) and then build it in the EU using well paid people who know what they're doing- for significantly less, I'll buy one (more specifically I'd have a Bridge because I have some great decoding hardware already but the point stands).
Purely on sound quality does this device better the NAD M10 as a front end Streaming comparison? Or is that a comparison too difficult to do since NAD M10 is obviously an AMPLIFIER aswell as DAC, Streamer.
The penny starts to drop. The AKM hardware isn't that expensive- about £30-35 for the bits once import and tax have been paid but that's still about five times the cost of a basic ESS Sabre. The clock is also pricey and none of the board components are low rent either. Software development, I have no idea for this specific product but based on some experience in the field, isn't cheap and neither are those licenses.
Then to add a significant cost, it isn't made in the Far East. If that doesn't matter to you, that's fair enough but if I had a pound for every time I'd watched someone on this site complain about jobs being lost abroad and then, apparently without a trace of irony, complain how much UK built stuff costs, I could probably buy one of these.
@Ed Selley I admire your justification towards UK and EU made products but you can't apply that logic in this era of technology. I could go on about it but to start with for a £900 product like this not providing digital out is what I would consider as a crime.
Let me ask you something, how many others gadgets and products you use everyday are made in the UK/EU?
In no particular order my;
Watch*
Glasses
Coffee maker
Most of my kitchen hardware
Toaster
Car
75% of my Hi-Fi
Hoover
And one of my camera lenses were made in the UK/EU. All see use every day or few days. This ignores non technical stuff like clothes etc too.
*EEA but the concept stands.
Made in the UK, seriously. I didn't know that we could buy such stuff which is still being made in the UK. Thanks for the insight, I shall read upon it when making future purchases.
Correction: Hoover is American by the way, isn't it? Unless you are referring to vacuum ;-)
On a different note, I am an audiophile with an engineer's mindset so unless an audio product hits all the basic metrics I consider the presentation to be coloured which about 90% of the audiophiles prefer and I am OK with that. I said the same thing to Phil and Steve. Audio needs the same amount of focus as TVs and needs measurements as well.
Purely on sound quality would you say it is superior to the Streamer/DAC section of the NAD M10?
Hi Ed - great article which I have been looking forward to ever since you teased about the product on the podcast. I currently have a a mojo/poly looped into a Denon AVR x220W and Monitor Audio Bronze 5.1. I am very happy with the sound particularly when using Roon. However I want something that can flip between Roon and Spotify (where the family has all their playlists) a bit easier - and to reclaim the mojo/poly as a poratable dac/amp combo.
Do you consider the Limtree to be a) better than the mojo/poly and b) would the Denon do it justice?