[sts9fan]

Nice review Tyson. Yep, system synergy is interesting isn't it? One set of upgrades may not be optimal when a system is tuned one way or another. That said, the important take away is either unit is excellent and depending on your personal preferences and system setup you might pick one over the other. If you love BASS then you'd better get a black label. If you love DYNAMICS again, black label is the way to go. Personally on my Meze headphone setup (which I will post impressions of sometime in the future)  tonality is one of the strongest attributes. That said, I don't have a standard mDSD sitting around to directly compare.

Oh, if you haven't already, go enter the iSilencer 3.0 contest here: http://www.audiocircle.com/index.php?topic=147447.msg1580369#msg1580369

You should have an Industry Participant label. 

[brj]

Quick side note...the soon to be released Roon 1.3 will do upsamplimg and my eliminate the need to use HQ Player.

I'm sure you will, but for those not familiar with the products being discussed... I'd certainly carefully audition the upcoming Roon upsampler options vs. the HQPlayer upsampler options before blindly ditching HQPlayer.  I consider Roon to be one of the best software purchases that I've ever made and respect the team tremendously, but Jussi's algorithms in HQPlayer are pretty special and will be hard to beat.  Keep in mind also that the HQPlayer convolution based approach to EQ is the only one of which I'm aware that will work with DSD.  (Something upon which I rely in my system.)

Having said that, if I wasn't able to hide the day-to-day use of HQPlayer behind that spectacular Roon interface... I suspect that I'd have looked at other options.

In the meantime, I'll keep hoping for that ultimate solution in which Jussi licenses his upsampling and convolution intellectual property to Roon for direct integration.  (Though everything I've read to date seems to indicate that's unlikely.)


Shoot... forgot to grab the iDSD and bring it home from work to test in the main rig.  Tomorrow, certainly!

[Tyson]

Yeah, as a DAC alone it really shines, especially if you put a good USB filter/reclocker in front of it.  For the Silver I mean.  OTOH, the Black is much, much better than the Silver as a headphone amp.

[sonicxtc]

Tyson

OTOH, the Black is much, much better than the Silver as a headphone amp.

Thank you for your forthright and detailed review.
Please elaborate regarding the virtues of the Black vs Silver as a headphone amp.
Also, what were the sonic differences using the battery vs AC power?

Thank you.

[jtwrace]

I'll probably be selling my Silver should anyone want one.  Latest firmware installed as shown below too. 


 

[Pez]

You should have an Industry Participant label.

I agree! I'll look into it.