Shanling announced the UP5 USB and bt dac-amp with OLED screen, an additional 4.4mm bal output along with 2.5mm and 3.5mm outputs.
What the hell is this batman cyberpunk thing 
1 Like
SMSL released the SU8s, equipped with ESS9068AS dac, and the design is similar to their recently released dacs with a colorful display.
They also released a Headphone amp accompanying the SU-8S, the SH8s. It’s equipped with a specialy designed precision linear feedback circuit to keep the ultra low even at high gain. There are balanced+se outputs with 2 gain levels. The output power is rated 3W/32ohm.
Here’s the product page:
https://gizaudio.com/shanling-announces-up5-latest-portable-bluetoothusb-dac-amp/
$179 looks like, I have and enjoy the UP4 but wondered about missing the screen from the BTR5. Decided on the Shanling since I would use the volume knob more than the screen on a device in my pocket. Seems the best of both worlds but at an 80$ premium. Adds MQA but I don’t care about that.
Exciting!!!
We’ll see… I’ve watched Sean on zero fidelity and he had a tremendous amount of industry experience. We talked about Thomas trying to do the same thing before. That many people fail to cost out all aspects of the and end up with something 200-300% higher cost than what they planned going in.
3 Likes
Yes IME, when you talk about competing with product 10x your target price, unless you have some revolutionary new tech that will massively disrupt the market, your probably missing something.
It’s $5000 Canadian, so something along the lines of $1250 American right? Or €683 right?
1 Like
Is he canadian? He probably meant USD, though.
LoL! I just multiply USD by 1.5x to get a CAD figure…though currently it’s been as good as 1.33x.
According to Google right now 5000 CAD is 4115,85$ USD 
(Man it’s going up – it was 0.74 in June last year and now it’s 0.82).
Topping just announced D90SE. Just a D90 with ES9038.
$5000 “giant killers”…
That’s beyond my price range for a car, let alone speakers, but something’s funny with that.
The thing about speakers is, like @Polygonhell said, you’re either bringing something new to market, or blowing smoke.
The thing is speakers are a weird market. Tuning is key. Headphones and IEMs can be tuned relatively easily compared to speakers. Cabinet size, interior, materials, drivers, driver arrangement, and the biggest hurdle is the crossover (or refinement of cabinet design for full-range drivers). Drivers, wood, and components in high-end speakers can be rather cheap if you start pricing things out. Some multi thousand dollar speakers have $100-400 worth of components in them. But it all comes down to tuning.
This is what made Andrew Jones x Pioneer stuff so amazing. Cheap, but tuning was on point despite the cheaper materials. And then ELAC with AJ again. The profit margins are slim (especially counting astronomical storage, manufacturing, and shipping costs), but these speakers can rock with cheaper components.
When I hear of a influencer/indie-designer producing their own speakers… even with partnership with a smaller brand, and they’re saying “my speakers will sound X-better than…” smells fishy. The big brands know what they’re doing, the boutique brands do their amazing shit… so what small fish could rock the industry so much? I wonder.
1 Like
I have never in my life heard any 5k speaker that could even dream to compete with anything I’ve heard that’s 50k+, so yeah I would just ignore that. Cool if he makes a nice sounding speaker for the price point, but don’t expect anything near what he is claiming as I could almost guarantee you will not be getting that (goes for any manufacturer that would make that claim, not just NBT), but I’m sure most reasonable people already figured that lol
And an extra price increase too, thanks topping
5 Likes
Back during the turn of the century, when details about the Segway were being hinted at, one of the things I recall they were saying as part of the hype was… you ready for this?
“It’s going to fundamentally change the way cities are designed” 
I’m sure there would have been a Kickstarter for it as well, but hell, it was the turn of the century, the internet as we know it was just starting to come into its own. And cities still look the same.
1 Like