Tech-N-Things

“A new moon signifies a time for fresh starts, setting intentions, and manifesting new beginnings!”

Your life is filled with lessons learned by experience and even by failure. Every time you succeed or fail there are things learned if you pay close attention. And when you do pay close attention, you pick up on things that work for you and against you. So for me going into this new world of DAP’s wasn’t as complicated as the IEM world or headphones but nonetheless, it was a step of learning. Hiby, Ibasso, and now Cayin have been the triple factor for my learning.

The Ibasso brand, remains my favorite brand and number one suggestion for DAPs. But what I discovered is that my suggestion for others and my choice for myself aren’t the same. Let me explain…

• Reference vs Mastery of Sound

Probably the biggest differentiator for my results was found in this understanding, or should I say misunderstanding. For a while now I believed that I was reference guy. I believed the better reference direction, the best sound will come from that and then this brings the most realistic version of the sound which means “best”.

Answer: NO!

Truth was I was looking for something that would make things sound not just accurate and realistic because I wanted to be guiding into the world of the sound. A world that was not my own but a world where things were safe, peaceful, smooth, warm, engaging, and inviting. A place not like real life but a better version of real life, in other words engaging along with natural, and definitely not just clinical. I needed that drum to be the best drum I’ve ever heard and yet be real. I needed that thunderstorm to be the best its ever been and yet be real. I needed her voice not just be the exact sound of her voice but I needed her voice to be right next to me. And this meant that while a DAP could be faithful with the highest resolution and reviling signature, this didn’t make it the best version of that sound I was looking for. So coloration and musicality was needed over digital transparent glass. A smoothness was needed over the edges for me for long sessions.

And so Ibasso dx260mk2 always stood on the outside of things for me ever since I got it. I could never put my finger on it fully, it was just always missing something. It was never better than the dx180 who did take into count those things I listed above. The Dx260mk2 also never lived up to the power it claimed in the watts advantage over the dx180 for my use with iems. I thought it was just a burn-in period needed but that was not it as even with the Cayin N6III, with less watts per channel(700) …it out performed the Dx260mk2 in volume and dynamics with the same settings and source, just like the Dx180 did. In fact the Dx180 would be a better challenge for the Cayin N6III (one it would loose though) than the DX260MK2 at a matching price tag when it comes to sound. Yes, the Dx260mk2 has better quality build and better battery life over the Dx180 but for sound, the Cayin N6III represents what I thought I should have gotten with the Dx260mk2 when i upgraded from the dx180 to the 260mk2.

But with the Cayin N6III, it beats the Dx260mk2 in the build quality too(from the materials, buttons, even the screen is advanced gorilla glass and comes with a glass protector to boot while the ibasso comes with a plastic screen protector on standand glass), sound, and battery life(very nice battery life in fact. I’m sitting at 50% and still have 14 hours left).. It’s the better soundstager, smoother performer, and faster operator thanks to more ram for the OS. This means your use out of it will feel more smoother and snapper, which adds to the overall joy of using it.

Perfection?

Answer: Absolutely not!

This unit is bigger and fatter than the DX260MK2 by far. If this is something you don’t like, nothing else matters about the other stuff. This won’t be the one for you. You also get a pretty warm unit. Once its on for while…it stay warm all the time and takes forever to charge that 9000 watt battery. Yes, the Dx260mk2 gets warm too but this is a little more warmer because it has more mass. I would hope for less warmth especially running in low gain but I guess that’s not happening. Again, I haven’t got it to be actual Hot…but its a slightly bigger consistent warmth you notice more with it than on the Dx260mk2.

And did I say it takes “FOREVER” to charge 100%. YES? Well I’m saying to again. I thought the Dx260mk2 took long but despite the website claiming 2 hours…mine took almost 5 hours. Now granted I was using it the whole time listening to music but it still shouldn’t have taken that long. There was a firmware update after that might have helped with that but the consistent warmth presentation is a concern for me especially being a configuration that doesn’t allow you change out the battery. And there in was my biggest challenge. For me having the ability to change out the battery was my biggest thing about this vs the Dx260mk2. Ibasso gives this to the user while Cayin focuses on sound boards swaps. And for me I would rather have access to the battery than to the board. So no, not perfect but nothing is 98% of time. But then as I thought more about it, when the battery does go out, I can just send it to Cayin….not throw it away(for some reason that’s how I processed this before). So now with a more reasonable conclusion to the battery concern, it weighed less on my mind.

So now it comes down to the weight and heat. Yeah, its not the lightest thing on the block at 350 grams vs 260 grams of the Dx260mk2. It was a little challenging the first switch from the dx180 220 grams to Dx260mk2 260 but now its almost double the weight. Oddly enough though I don’t feel it in my jeans or even jogging pants as much as I thought I would. Its actually pretty hard to tell which of the two I have in the pocket truth be told, even though outside my pocket just holding it you immediately feel the differences.

So what about the heat. Well, nothing to burn you hand on but warm enough to not want to hold for more than a few minutes before it irritating you. This, I don’t believe will go away with firmware. Finally, the only other thing I had to deal with is the Ibasso screen doesn’t respond to me randomly. My friend thought it was the case so I took the case off and it happened again. Then I found other reports about this issue poping up. Not sure how many more times this will happen or if it will get worse or better with firmware but I wanted to at least acknowledge its a possible flaw. But yet everything in gathering from the Cayin side of things is that its warmth is normal and its operations and usage has been flawless. No crashes or hang ups at all. These results could just be isolated to my units. However, I still feel it points out to a better quality on the Cayin overall. So I decided to send back the Ibasso Dx260mk2 and make the Cayin N6III my only DAP.