E
Must have features, poor quality and reliability
It was meant to be great. It's got all the features I need, especially that easily accessible separate balance knob. Mute, dim, mono, pad, phase buttons, separate knobs for everything, even two separate headphone outs - all that is great. It's even placed in some kind of a promising pricing bracket, where you expect it to be a quality item. BUT: It's very problematic, and there are more and more annoying bugs appearing and different things breaking.
First, I had some troubles even at the initial start. It just kept restarting itself after plugging it into the computer. Somehow managed to fix that with a couple of reconnects.
Second, It can randomly go robo-mode and either your output or input will start crackling horribly. I've found that it tends to happen more often if you turn it off for the night (via long-pressing the "A" button). Also turning on the Safe and Low Power modes helped a bit, but not completely eliminated the issues, and they still appear regularly.
Third, the main knob is digital. It has its advantages, BUT:
a) It has a built-in acceleration that can't be turned off. It means, that if you rotate the knob faster, the volume will change in bigger increments.
b) It has a very low quality encoder.
Combining both of these points, we get a really annoying malfunction when your volume level can start jumping randomly in very big increments when trying to adjust it even very slightly. The first read errors began to appear within the first month, and now, after it's been 4, it has become horrible. I don't want to damage my monitors or ears, so I'm going to RMA it soon.
Fourth, it sometimes makes my monitors go quietly whining in a "take-off" manner (don't really know how else to put it, hope you got that). The only way to fix it is to disconnect it completely from the computer and its power supply.
And fifth, its output amps are not great for this price. I always find myself stuck to 2 o'clock using my fairly easy to drive headphones or IEMs, or sometimes even further, but I've still kind of expected that. Could have been better.
I have no idea why no one mentioned at least some of the first 4 of these issues anywhere on the Internet. Let's hope that it's just one unique case and the replacement item will be fine.
First, I had some troubles even at the initial start. It just kept restarting itself after plugging it into the computer. Somehow managed to fix that with a couple of reconnects.
Second, It can randomly go robo-mode and either your output or input will start crackling horribly. I've found that it tends to happen more often if you turn it off for the night (via long-pressing the "A" button). Also turning on the Safe and Low Power modes helped a bit, but not completely eliminated the issues, and they still appear regularly.
Third, the main knob is digital. It has its advantages, BUT:
a) It has a built-in acceleration that can't be turned off. It means, that if you rotate the knob faster, the volume will change in bigger increments.
b) It has a very low quality encoder.
Combining both of these points, we get a really annoying malfunction when your volume level can start jumping randomly in very big increments when trying to adjust it even very slightly. The first read errors began to appear within the first month, and now, after it's been 4, it has become horrible. I don't want to damage my monitors or ears, so I'm going to RMA it soon.
Fourth, it sometimes makes my monitors go quietly whining in a "take-off" manner (don't really know how else to put it, hope you got that). The only way to fix it is to disconnect it completely from the computer and its power supply.
And fifth, its output amps are not great for this price. I always find myself stuck to 2 o'clock using my fairly easy to drive headphones or IEMs, or sometimes even further, but I've still kind of expected that. Could have been better.
I have no idea why no one mentioned at least some of the first 4 of these issues anywhere on the Internet. Let's hope that it's just one unique case and the replacement item will be fine.
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