General Headphone Audio

Things change I've changed said:
Another person having "volume surges" on their X9 on head-fi, I think this is an issue with the relay volume mechanism, they are from my experience more prone to issues, and I'm not just critiquing Luxin here, I've had three amps with relay controlled volume and they were all a bit 'finicky'.
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OK, tell me this.

What would you think are acceptable failure rates for a piece of audio gear, once it's out of the factory?

You are seeing an absolute number, but without the context of the total number of units sold, you shouldn't be drawing a conclusion, as you don't know what the scale of the "problem" is. I'd argue that if there was a real problem, then there'd be many many more reports.

Of course the company will be keeping all the relevant data in house, so there's no way of knowing
 
Would be interesting to know how many units they've sold total, its an expensive product from a new vendor in a niche market so I can't imagine the sales volumes for it are high to begin with. When you look at reddit for example the vast majority of gear talked about and recommended is around or below 200 quid(hd6xx/editionxs/sundara/topping/smsl/fiio k7/k11 etc), above 300 and discussion drops off rapidly so launching your first product at nearly a grand must surely limit the audience and interest.
 
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Starvald said:
OK, tell me this.

What would you think are acceptable failure rates for a piece of audio gear, once it's out of the factory?

You are seeing an absolute number, but without the context of the total number of units sold, you shouldn't be drawing a conclusion, as you don't know what the scale of the "problem" is. I'd argue that if there was a real problem, then there'd be many many more reports.

Of course the company will be keeping all the relevant data in house, so there's no way of knowing
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I'm not here to get into a protracted debate about it, I've just stated the facts that there have been an increasing number of people having issues with the volume of the X9, we shouldn't be defending it by getting to into 'acceptable failure rates', when a product that I love has an issue I don't make excuses for it, I investigate and give critique and feedback to the manufactures, I believe based on my personal experience that relay volume control causes more problems than they solve due to a larger number of points of failure in a relay circuit, this is where my interest and experience comes in, but the problem is many people take it personally, they attach emotion to their purchasing decisions, MRK is a classic case on this forum that hates to hear any criticism of his favourite products, I am very different, people can criticise my product choices all day long, if there is an issue I'm on board with them.

I've observed many popular headphone amps be released over the years and this amp in particular I feel has an issue with its volume compared to most, as an example I have been highly critical of Violectric's Reed Relay volume on their amps even though I'm a big fan of theirs and have owned a number of their amps, tbh I think they should ditch it altogether, and interestingly on their most recent amp the HPA V324 they haven't included relay volume (kudos them).
 
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Failure rate depends on number of units sold.

1% of a limited 100 pieces is easily rectified for that 1 person.

1% of iPhones sold is going to be a massive problem.

Without knowing how many sold, it will be hard to tell.
 
Jenz said:
It’s not a new vendor actually. It’s the Zidoo / Eversolo group creating a new Brand. So established behind the scenes but definitely niche.

I love mine.
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Fair, but how many people know this without being on forums etc doing lots of research? Most people shopping for a new thing, doing cursory research, will just not recognise the name of the brand. Not having a dig at them, it looks like a good product its just how I see it going in regards to the lack of name recognition for an expensive product. My view is that if the brand was launched with a cheaper product first, more people would take a risk on it and its name would get out there more, at which point more people would be aware of them and more willing to take a risk on a 1k product from them.
 
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People unaware of the brand won't be out buying stuff like the X9 anyway at this sort of price as to them it's an unknown, those in the know will be buying it instead having taken part in discussions within the online community to know about it, so will almost certainly have knowledge of the Eversolo/Zidoo roots. Those folks will then have direct channel of comms to Luxsin's owner and engineering members through both head-fi and the Zidoo forums as we have been seeing where things get addressed if they arise.

The report of volume surge is just 1, which brings the grand total to 2 people on head-fi. I also searched on the official Zidoo forum and found one failure from July reported, but it was not actually a failure, some cables inside were knocked loose during transit and the user was able to reconnect them back up.

No product is 100% problem-free, how a brand deals with issues and updates matters more, because everything launched has problems for at least some people. I think Luxsin has shown a benchmark on how to deal with those situations so far.
 
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Including yourself there has been 5 people with volume related issues on Head-fi. (2 Surge and 3 balance), the other surge issue was back in July with Terr0rSandmannLuxx

"Once I turn the volume over -52db, I get a huge volume bump on the right channel which starts at -51db."

Anyway as mentioned previously my issue is less about Luxsin and more about my experience with relay volume circuits.
 
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mrk said:
People unaware of the brand won't be out buying stuff like the X9 anyway at this sort of price as to them it's an unknown, those in the know will be buying it instead having taken part in discussions within the online community to know about it
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Yea that was exactly my thoughts really when musing about sales numbers.
 
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Personally I don't concur, the X9 is all over youtube, they've sent it out to most of the main headphone reviewers and even some lessor known channels, if you've ever looked at headphone amps on YouTube this will be in your feed, or if you subscribe to one of the many popular headphone reviewers then you know about it already, it's also for sale at most of the mainstream online UK hifi retailer's, i imagine the Eversole brand name has helped there, we're not living in the 90s anymore dossing about on IRC.

Anyway, I genuinely hope that it is only limited to a few devices and the relays last a long time on those that are currently working, I'm personally dubious but time will tell.
 
The relays are OMRON components, and they are rather expensive per unit! And the X9 has 27 of them So not some no name relay, in fact all of the components inside appear to be high-end parts with the exception of the TI OpAmps which are standard grade, but Luxsin confirmed this week that the OpAmps used don't follow TI's recommended design as Luxsin opted for a custom approach to mitigate the downside to TI's design which would otherwise result in impacted sound performance. Usually brands stick to the chip maker's recommended design as it's safe and cheap, so the fact that Luxsin made their own design instead to keep performance high is impressive. I reference that recent story that was all over forums and youtube where a British audio brand was making a power amp that cost 5 figures but simply used off the shelf components and the chip maker's recommended design instead of a custom one, all sandwiched in a ropey looking interior and acrylic housing.

I think the above is still balanced, that regardless of who makes something or its class tier, there will always be some that leave the factory dodgy. There are amps costing +£20,000 on the higher end forums that people have problems with etc.
 
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I hope your are right, time will tell, Violectric uses Reed Relay switches on some of their amps, some of the best in the industry but they were still problematic imo and I gave them a lot of criticism over them, like I've said I've done plenty of critiquing of even my own product choices, mainly because I'd like them to ditch the reed relays altogether, but that being said at least they do offer two versions of their amps (with and without the relays).

If the relays stand the test of time in the X9 then I'll be happy to grab one for the office in the future as it's so cheap.
 
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I'm interested in the KL13 R2R as I read it too uses relay controlled volume as well, which is a bit odd given the K15 is normal digital volume as is the K17, but maybe this is because the K13 is R2R anyway, or maybe the rumour was wrong online entirely.

Nobody online who has seen the K13 R2R has commented on this or confirmed anything to date which is a bit annoying, though with less than a couple of weeks before one lands on my doorstep, it's not long to wait to find out.

And as of today the more I see of the K15 the more I like its aesthetics, looks almost military in styling, but looks professional at the same time, the new Soundnews review of it has some great b-roll highlighting what I mean:

3k2acaV.png


It is still a fairly big unit though, which is where the K13 R2R might slot in nicely being more compact but still having a PEQ for those that want to use that etc, but the other thing is the PEQ might benefit those who disliked the K11 R2R's warmth, since you can now just add sparkle up top with a PEQ adjustment if desired, best of both worlds then maybe, R2R DAC, R2R volume (maybe...), and a PEQ in a compact fully balanced unit.
 
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“Military aesthetic”!!!! That’s the word.

It reminds one of an army radio, I was wondering what that was when I only seen it in silver.
 
mrk said:
I'm interested in the KL13 R2R as I read it too uses relay controlled volume as well, which is a bit odd given the K15 is normal digital volume as is the K17, but maybe this is because the K13 is R2R anyway, or maybe the rumour was wrong online entirely.

Nobody online who has seen the K13 R2R has commented on this or confirmed anything to date which is a bit annoying, though with less than a couple of weeks before one lands on my doorstep, it's not long to wait to find out.

And as of today the more I see of the K15 the more I like its aesthetics, looks almost military in styling, but looks professional at the same time, the new Soundnews review of it has some great b-roll highlighting what I mean:

3k2acaV.png


It is still a fairly big unit though, which is where the K13 R2R might slot in nicely being more compact but still having a PEQ for those that want to use that etc, but the other thing is the PEQ might benefit those who disliked the K11 R2R's warmth, since you can now just add sparkle up top with a PEQ adjustment if desired, best of both worlds then maybe, R2R DAC, R2R volume (maybe...), and a PEQ in a compact fully balanced unit.
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The k13 r2r really isnt that much smaller, if you cant fit the k17/15 then I don't the k13 will fit on your desk, its not as tall as the k15 but width and depth arent too far off I don't think.

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Not sure what you mean by maybe it uses relay volume control because its an r2r dac anyway? Thsese are completely separate sets of components doing different things. Not even sure there is any benefit anymore for analogue volume control over digital.
 
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ok that picture shows how massive the K13 is lol, it's not as big as the X9, but it's considerably bigger than the K11 R2R.

About the volume control, I know, I meant as in it might have been rumoured to use relay based volume control since it's already using R2R for the main amp, and the display window would display the array nicely too.
 
Fiio have nailed the looks on both. If aesthetics mattered then they win at these price points. Again for me the K15 (& K17) has this 80's-90's/MIDI box (Roland Sound Canvas) look, although I get the military comparison.
 
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