Not nearly as profitable, especially as many audiophiles own multiple headphones.
For example, if someone owns the HD 6XX and 99 Classics and wants the Signature treatment, they will need to buy two DAC-amps at $300 each. That’s $600 for iFi.
Meanwhile, even if a jack-of-all-presets model was released for $400 or $500, that still would be $100-$200 less profit for iFi.
iFi can get away with this, for two reasons. One, it makes good products, with good support. Two, it’s “special sauce” features such as IEMatch and Bass Boost work really well on other products, so people tend to trust that “badazing!” features like the Signature customization will work well in these products.
I really love the Alva aesthetic, but I have to imagine what they added for an extra $800. At this price you can already get a good TT, a decent Phono pre-amp, and a BTA-30 if you want to connect wireless (and probably some left yet). Of course, it does not have the convenience of an all-in-one solution but damn 2k is expensive.
it is nice looking TT, but is costly. article says the TT v2 will go for $1.999 while the v1 will drop to $1,199 (still showing $2500 CAD north of the 49th).
for the Alva TT v2, the biggest differences are a new type of tonearm with removable headshell, a switchable phono stage and the Bt can be disabled to create ‘a shortened signal path for improved energy efficiency and better sonics.’
Cambridge also debut a TT at a still quite high, but much friendlier $999, that they’re calling the Alva ST.
this one is belt driven rather than direct drive like the other Alva TT but it is upgraded from the TT v1 as it also has the open headshell and switchable Bt like the v2.
the price is very close to the TT v1’s $1,199, so the big things to consider between which is best for you is belt driven vs direct drive, weight and whether you need / want the ability to turn off the Bt when you’re running analog.
Thanks to @FBizzle I have some unblurred photos of the PCB and some of the components, and, the CAN has an insane level of smarts built in.
I am not certain since I don’t have hands-on time with the original CAN or any of the editions, so pile of salt: To me, the CAN looks like digitally controlled analog amplification, as such, it should be possible to keep the same physical unit but change its behaviour in software.
While I dislike licensing done using hardware keys, retuning and adjusting an amp to match a certain headphone and then selling a plug&play “hardware key” (more of a configuration) so the user does not have to rip apart their chain would have been nice.
This, I think it would be really cool if they could do a model that was maybe a bit more expensive, but you could download profiles (for lack of a better word) to it where it would have the dap button match your headphones like a profile for the 6xx and then you can switch to one for the dt880 or something.
tea drops tomorrow for $160 early bird, bluetooth + magsafe + ultrathin makes it the most convenient amp besides a dongle dac so far, 165mw 2.3vrms 32ohm
Yeah bt with apple devices is hit or miss. My Fiio q5s will connect to my iPad using bt but not to my iPhone (wired only). I keep my Galaxy S8 around for this reason mostly
I have not tried any other Bluetooth DAC/ amp on the iPhone in the year I have had it, so not sure exactly if it’s Fiio specific, q5s specific or other.
