I’ve ordered a few things from em and being outside the EU they supply it exclusive of VAT, our local NZ GST of 15% is collected at our border by customs and/or the shipping agent on their behalf.

That might have been at my recommendation sorry! I wonder if there is some vendor to vendor variation. Like I say I’ll have to test em again but I’d like to think the improvements in my system weren’t all in my imagination, would be concerning if so! For what it’s worth I measured wirh and...

Thanks for the comments. I need to evaluate the Flux-50s’ effect again, removing and adding them back to see the delta as a lot has changed in my system since I got them, as I don’t recall any negatives. Testing my memory a bit now but IIRC a range of aspects like soundstage depth, length of...

I posted about this upthread. Under EU VAT rules if the annual distance sales from a company located in one EU country to customers in another country exceed the EU threshold of €10k the VAT rate of the destination county must be applied. Audiophonics would be well over 10k for most if not all...

Quite possibly, I don’t have enough experience with a broad range of higher end speakers. What I’ve definitely found is synergy is super important. Including just this week Class A vs Class D amps for example. I should add the ‘ruthlessly revealing’ comment was a not particularly scientific one...

Life would be simpler if this were always true but, my experience was the complete opposite - my super resolving speakers ruthlessly revealed all the short-comings of my modest then-sabre DAC. Was near unlistenable, a shouty thin sound with serious buyers remorse till I got a better DAC. It was...

Cheers, curious indeed. What happens if you switch from EXT to INT mode in the settings whilst ERR is being displayed whilst in EXT mode?

Actually I can go further and say if you want to optimise the sound quality of a streaming audio based system you do need to address noise in the network chain in your house. Whether by FMCs, or additional switches or Ethernet galvanic isolators like the iFi LAN iSilencer, or a combo of all...

You don’t ‘need’ it, but you can most definitely audibly benefit from adding the 100% galvanic isolation of fibre AFTER your modem and router which are typically up there with PCs as the most electrically noisy devices in one’s audio chain.

Excellent work an interesting comparison and takeaways. Thanks very much for taking the trouble to do this and share your findings. I have a Xangsane solid pure silver ‘fuse’ (a solid sluggo) I bought to do the same test against my Masterpiece M1 fuse in my DAC. But only as a time limited test...

Here you go: Discussion of MuMetal composition, alternatives. https://www.head-fi.org/threads/gustard-dac-r26-balanced-decoder-r2r-1bit-dual-native-decoding-music-bridge.963630/post-18077111 Got mine from here, best price I’ve found for this 0.15mm thickness...

Sounds quite odd behaviour frankly if by pitch you mean higher or lower in pitch/frequency etc like slowing down playback of a recording. What I understand happens when the ERR message displays is the K2 clock synthesiser just repoints from the external clock input to the internal oscillator...

Full monty DDC is an easy recommend - Audio-Gd DI-24HE. DI-20HE another class to the U18, DI-24HE another step up over the DI-20HE. Not sure it'd make financial sense though, as would cost almost as much as the Burson Composer DAC. But might if you intend to upgrade the DAC in time? Also...

Hey chaps, I’ve been kindly loaned a PhoenixUSB for the past month. It’s very impressive with the sonic characteristics well described in this thread - in particular a lovely flow, a lush midrange and weighty, musical bass. I've taken the opportunity to try a few basic tweaks with it in case...

There’s a chap with a Chord Dave who’s had one about a week I’ve encouraged to share his impressions when he’s ready to do so.