Outstanding, deep review.  Personally, I'm struck on how this Moon improved my Fostex TH-X00 (mahogany) so much - it was surprisingly better on those 'phones than other DAC/amps.  Very good on 2 other phones I tried with the Moon, but the Fostex really came alive.

Great review!

Excellent review, hope to hear it for myself soon!

So @sheldaze - overall how would you rate the 230HAD vs the Codex?

Codex is great for balanced. But if you need to go single-ended, the Moon is still noticeably better. As Bill said above, I too listened to the Fostex TH-X00 at a meet. The TH-X00, which does not require a lot of power, still does not sound as alive as through the Codex as it did through the Moon. And the headphone output of the Moon, even with my balanced headphones and an adaptor, still sounded great. Perhaps if I still had an Arcam irDAC or something inexpensive like the Emotiva Stealth, these could be inexpensive DAC options? The DAC in the Moon is still very good. It is just not Hugo, Codex, and Yggdrasil good.

Yeah see my 230HAD review(http://www.head-fi.org/products/simaudio-230had/reviews/15743) for my views on the 230HAD vs the Codex.

This is well done and I enjoyed reading your review!!

Good information and a good read as well.

Thanks all for your kind comments! And I keep forgetting to thank Todd for the initial loaner. I certainly enjoyed the listen, and hope that came across in the review. But I also wanted to be brutally honest, because I've seen some poor reviews, not necessarily on Head-Fi, but elsewhere. The Moon was good enough for me to want to buy, so I wanted to include enough detail to express the why? Again thanks!

Great job! Thanks for writing it.