Is this the world's most diabolically expensive DAC? [iFi Diablo 2]

[@depafeo]

I feel like having a raging drug habit would be cheaper than being an audiophile

[@garymalone547]

Both is a challenge in my experience.

[@anthonyroach7974]

So funny brill 😂😂😂

[@nickmoranis2865]

A pink doorstop. Lovely!

[@rabit818]

My kitty Lou Lou can hear 40 hz. Lou Lou is happy with my older Audio Alchemy.

[@garymalone547]

I had plenty of fun with portable DAC/amps on my headphone journey. Started with the legendary FiiO E07K . Always thought the Diablo was ridiculous.

[@ant1kryst]

oh memories. mine was rubber banded to an ipod click wheel for the longest time. :D

[@elmerjohnston8118]

Great Review as usual, You are the Most entertaining reviewer I've ever come across on KZbin,

[@johnbrentford5513]

Phil can hear 0.0000001% distortion.

[@AudioMasterclass]

Actually he can't hear much better than 0.003% but he hopes that will improve as he works on the resolution of his system.

[@taidee]

@@AudioMasterclass 🤣🤣

[@Lif-999]

No I can't! At my age I would struggle to hear distortion that is orders of magnitudes higher than that. Oh, that Phil! Well, he is the standard that all other Phil's aspire to.

[@diatonicdelirium1743]

@@Lif-999Blasphemy! The fact that you can't hear it doesn't make it OK for manufacturers to distort the signal.

[@Lif-999]

@@diatonicdelirium1743 It's a fair cop but society is to blame!

[@artysanmobile]

I’d love to see the 4 conductor 4.4mm jack become a widely used standard. Just what I’ve wished for many times on pro equipment to improve panel design.

[@TheAlapalooza]

those hand gestures 🤣🤣

[@AudioAssassin]

What's the problem? lol

[@TonicFrank45]

I've been listening to the Diablo 2 for about 2 months now and I'm thrilled with the little red devil. I previously had the ifi iDSD MICRO for over 5 years and it sounds very good, but the Diablo 2 takes it up a notch 👍 my current setup: IFI IDSD DIABLO 2 ASTELL & KERN KANN ALPHA HIFIMAN ANANDA CARDAS AUDIO PARSEC HEADPHONE CABLE 4.4MM TRRS SYMMETRICAL CABLE

[@EricIolo]

Alan Sugar is behind all of this - A mug's eyeful comes to mind!

[@njm1971nyc]

Bit unfair! Amstrad really was *diabolical*, but that's the only similarity! If you want a good example of a modern-day Mugs Eyeful, look no further than PYLE. The cheap audio man (or whatever his channel is called) reviewed one recently..."pro-style" handles on the front (for helping you lift the heft of its couple of pounds of premium-Chinesium build quality). Performance on-par with Amstrad.

[@davidchapman6557]

Concerning a very wide frequency response someone once said, (I forget who unfortunately) “The wider you open the window, the more the muck flies in.”

[@AudioMasterclass]

Yes I heard this back in the 70s or maybe even the 60s and it's not wrong.

[@garymalone547]

Also I prefer eye fi to eye eff eye. Nearly got their hip flask DAC once. Looks cool.

[@Kevinb1821]

1300 dollars ? I just have a topping e30 connected to a battery pack for power and I love the way it sounds. Will this actually give me noticeable sound improvement?

[@AudioMasterclass]

Depends what calibre audiophile you are. But even if you're Olympic standard, at ten times the price will it be ten times better?

[@fiddlix]

I would love to see you do a review of the FiiO Q15. $400 AKM equipped.

[@NoahBershatsky]

Just got one yesterday, and I like it a lot! Worth the $400.

[@fiddlix]

@@NoahBershatsky I have had the FiiO Q15 for over a couple of months now and I couldn’t agree with you more. Definitely worth the $400.

[@guybrushtwood]

I would argue that iem is the correct term when being used by a singer or musician to monitor their audio internally. My argument may also be very incorrect 😅

[@AudioMasterclass]

I'd say you are correct. However neither you nor I get to make the rules.

[@guybrushtwood]

@@AudioMasterclass or do we…

[@artysanmobile]

Best unboxing ever.

[@earthoid]

I don't use lossy Bluetooth for audio. Same for lossy MQA (I loved your finger wagging over the MQA symbol), but manufacturers have to add these "features" to make more sales. For me, I'll stick with my Ares II DAC and separate headphone amp for the rare occasions when I listen through headphones. Meanwhile my iFi hip-dac sits collecting dust.

[@stevengagnon4777]

You are right...I can not afford it.

[@barlow2976]

Colours, I like colours. I bought my used Mojo because it had colours. They're nice, I just don't remember what they mean. What's Betty's favourite colour?

[@AudioMasterclass]

Betty's favourite colour is #cc294d Surely everyone knows that.

[@barlow2976]

@@AudioMasterclass Only those who have glimpsed her lingerie that is. Excuse me, I'm going to have to go and check my frequency responses..

[@oijans]

For that price I'd also take a look at the FiiO K19

[@tam8197]

if youre spending that kind of money, go for the k9 essor akm version. half the price for nearly all the sound quality, spend the rest on dancing girls, lol. an incremental improvement for double the price is nuts, and typically hifi world. the latest thing though, got to have that latest thing 😂

[@hartyewh1]

It's output power claims are essentially false unless they've updated them on the site and it's essentially the same as the old Diablo.

[@davidforeman1]

it matches your glasses, too...

[@AudioMasterclass]

Audiophiles appreciate the importance of pairing one's DAC with one's spectacles.

[@billhunt7862]

Mr Mellor, This is off- topic and may not be appropriate in this reply area. Please consider exploring an HDMI to I²S converter. Source attributed to @anadialog “How to send high-res audio from a Bluray /SACD/DVD player to a DAC via HDMI“, at or near the 6:52 mark. My use is with the Apple TV HDMI output for conversion to digital audio coax, meanwhile allowing the HDMI to pass through to the television. The audio coax is connected to an external DAC and continues with RCA cables to a 7-band tone control to finally join with the AVR aux in. Thank you for all the cold spectrograph to spectrogram analysis warmed with charming wit.

[@AudioMasterclass]

I'm probably underappreciating the significance and complexity of this. All I know at the moment is that I have a rough-and-ready spare-room system sourced from an Amazon Fire stick going to a splitter box that passes HDMI to a computer monitor and separates out the audio to the amp. $19.99, or am I missing the point? amzn.to/3VSUJxP

[@billhunt7862]

Mr Mellor, you seldom if ever miss the point. My point was off mark. The fool meets Sir George Henry Martin CBE. The foolishness displayed forever on the Internet. I had stumbled upon a blurred copy of a bad sketch written on a cocktail napkin with unclear directions. Your reply was that of a true gentleman.

[@EricIolo]

Hang on a sec! I just checked out the web page - TDK C0G (Class 1 ceramic) capacitors "They are pricey but are a perfect addition to our products." What's that's about? And this too. Panasonic OS-CON caps "They are not often found in products costing

[@SomberShroud]

review the KPH40's

[@dragonfire61]

I can't afford it? I beg to differ 😂

[@dizzle1119]

I have $1,200, too...but that doesn't change the fact that this thing is stupidly overpriced and looks like crap from an aesthetic viewpoint.

[@paulmcdonough9595]

I’m sure it’s fine enough, but I can’t get past the appearance or the price for that matter. Ifi, “turbo” and “nitro” please!

[@NoahBershatsky]

It’s garbage. I bought one from Bloom Audio, it had all sorts of interference from nearby RF in Bluetooth mode that it was unusable. Bloom Audio even charged me a restocking fee for the defective unit. My advice? Get a FiiO Q15 instead.

[@ianorigbo7617]

Looks nice😊

[@Douglas_Blake_579]

$1200 for a DAC? They've got to be kidding!!

[@scottlowell493]

Back in the late 90's, a Bel Canto DAC cost that much. $2,319.30 in 2024 dollars. And you know something: a $199 DAC is just as good now.

[@hartyewh1]

It's and amp as well.

[@Douglas_Blake_579]

@@hartyewh1 $1200 for a DAC/AMP? They've got to be kidding! Don't be a sucker for a high price tag. Given the way companies prey upon Audiophiles with their overpriced junk, price is no longer any indication of quality.

[@Douglas_Blake_579]

@@scottlowell493 Yep ... only a fool pays more.

[@diatonicdelirium1743]

There are some nice features... I'd buy a Topping EX5 instead and get the same for about $300 except for the MEMS thingy.

[@Sound-Traveller]

My cheap Loxjie D40 Pro has much better specs and sounds so much better than my Schiit Yggdrasil top of the range R2R, and yes it's maybe not as nice as this one but being smart is not always related to esthetics ;-)

[@phpn99]

Overpriced for its specs, for sure. Now, when it comes to ADC and DAC, in a perfect circuit (therefore, in theory) you should be able to perform the perfect encoding and reconstruction of a 22.05 kHz sine wave at Red Book spec CD Audio sample rate and word length. But reconstruction filters aren't perfect and they have a transition band that can be problematic, even if - indeed - we are talking of distortion phenomena at the very threshold or beyond the hearing abilities of most listeners. For this reason, and to alleviate the burden on having to realise near-perfect reconstruction filters, it's been deemed a good compromise (in terms of storage cost) to do ADC with an additional octave worth of wiggle room devoted to the transition band of the reconstruction filter. This compromise is 96 kHz ADC, and for good measure, extending the word length to 24 bits makes better accommodation of the human hearing's propensity to notice with more acuity, amplitude variations in quiet audio passages, than in loud passages. This non-linear perception is called mu-law and it is used in telephony systems as a companding mechanism that fits a better signal in a lower number of bits. It is often misunderstood that the intention of 24/96 digital audio is to reproduce ultrasonic (!) audio frequencies ; whereas in fact 24/96 is intended to provide a better signal processing margin for the audible range, which extends to 20 kHz in the best cases (most listeners can't hear a thing above 16 kHz). 24/96 also improves the recording and reproduction of low-frequency square waves, or wave shapes that have a lot of high-order harmonics. The ears (and loudspeakers !) will do their own low-pass filtering, but having a wee bit sharper impulse response is never a bad thing. The paradox is that, as long as you're not doing anything stupid, 24/96 is actually a cheaper way (save for storage) to achieve great audio reconstruction, than doing Red Book (16/44). As for the pipe dream of going all the way to 768 kHz, just because AKM, ESS and Burr-Brown chips can handle it ; we're well past the law of diminishing returns. Audiofools who claim they can hear this sort of stuff need counselling. Very high data rates in DAC chips were engineered to support DSD audio, but that's another story.

[@bengeorgeschannel6568]

This is an excellent review of a product that may well be of interest to me once both of my ears are working properly. And you should consider releasing an album of your increasingly **rad** unboxing music on vinyl!!

[@AudioMasterclass]

Don't worry, an album is in the works.

[@Lif-999]

Over spec'ed, over hyped, overpriced and no doubt overlooked in double blind tests!

[@ppanzer7243]

A long time ago I Radio/TV Technician and i hat alot of costumers in HIFI audio. Mostely stupid guys who are paying alot of money for esoteric technology. It's looking pretty much tha same today. This was the reason for me to give up my job and looking für better chances with more salary. I'm still laughing about all those stupid poeple. Once one guy told me that vinyl records have a frequency response of up to 75 KHz and so it is far better than tape wich is mostely limited to about 20 KHz. Thanks for this video and go on!

[@joshmartin8174]

Isn’t this DAC being used by folks for their Hifi systems? (Not headphones)

[@njm1971nyc]

In a word, No. It's a portable, rechargeable DAC/headphone amp. There are no outputs for anything besides headphones.

[@vvsousa]

Most things in hifi are not worth what they cost, to be good you just need to raise the price!

[@Douglas_Blake_579]

Cute story for you... I used to work for a very large electronics company, in their fledgling computers division. One day we got a shipment of "solar powered calculators" ... the first of their kind. They were advertising them as light activated with no batteries to worry about and selling them at $29.95 each. ... Nobody wanted them... litereally nobody! Finally, after a gilding mistake that died one of the case backs gold during a spill, they hit on the idea to "up the game". The multiple skids of calculators were shipped out, the backs were removed and electroplated with a gold finish and they were repackaged in a flashy new box. When we got them back they advertised them as "Executive Pocket Computers" and sold them for $249.99 each.... They sold out in 2 weeks. Some people are such easy marks....

[@barlow2976]

@@Douglas_Blake_579 Jackanory,Jackanory,Jackanory.... (Americans will need to Google that reference)

[@atoptip6193]

Isn’t a real IEM a custom made earphone, made first by pouring a putty into your ear canal then molding a hard plastic version of it, that fits exactly? Many costing $1K and up? In any case that is what musicians use. Since when did simple earbuds with a variety of rubber tips come to be called IEMs also? Those provide poor isolation and often fall out of the ear. Real IEMs never do. In fact you have to pry them out.

[@AudioMasterclass]

You raise a good point here, or rather build on mine. I suspect that nothing that either of us says will make any difference and whatever is called an IEM will be an IEM.

[@GenjoKoan75]

Sound is “good”? Most important quality warrants one word in the review?

[@AudioMasterclass]

Congratulations. You’ve got it.

[@gracenotes5379]

As a self-proclaimed objectivist we should not expect David Mellor's review to extol the virtues of the Diabolo 2's "inner tone texture," etc. Hence, "the sound is good, objectively good." I mean, didn't you read the spec sheet?

[@AudioMasterclass]

Maybe I should change the name of my channel to 'The Objective Audiophile'. But would that be an oxymoron?

[@ian-nz-2000]

​@@AudioMasterclassdefinitely!

[@Synthematix]

I wouldnt pay £1300 for a new kidney never mind a dac, my educated guess is that dacs in the £300 range would be on par.

[@nickmoranis2865]

Most of us can afford it. Most of us are not stupid enough to buy it. Cheap Chinese nonsense.

[@ChiefExecutiveOrbiter]

Engineered in UK

[@ChiefExecutiveOrbiter]

Nice autechre song

[@andywrollo2915]

Ffs. So it's good sounding. For £1300 f that

[@thexfile.]

Maybe your dog needs to hear the audio. 😄

[@ronaldmcdonald2456]

No headphones here. Hate 'em. But your review was THOROUGHLY entertaining! Thanks, again😄

[@pgdh]

What a cheap and nasty power supply!

[@kurt120032002]

what a nasty imbecile you are. that is not the power supply , that is the charger. Power supply is battery powered. You can use 5000 Euro linear PSU and will sound exactly the same, but you and other 13 idiots, being dumber then a monkey can't seem the grasp the vast end extremele complex implications of "BATTERY POWERED".

[@Mattje8]

£1299…. Someone show this guy dCS. His head will explode.

[@AudioMasterclass]

C'mon, as DAC prices go, dCS is midrange.

[@matyi1656]

I like this DAC very much, it's awesome, so I decided not to buy it

[@JingoLoBa57]

I don’t think Americans understand British humor. The jokes on you…

[@copperheadviper7904]

No they don't understand. I'm Canadian and half Brit.. took me awhile... Now I watch UK tv mostly for the crack me up sarcastic humour.

[@vaughanrix7610]

terrible unboxing music, but your'e very likable, so forgiven for your bad choice😂😂

[@AudioMasterclass]

Thank you for complimenting my music. The album will be coming out later this year.

[@kalijasin]

$130,000 for a dac? Sounds like a scam!

[@AudioMasterclass]

msbtechnology.com/dacs/select-features/

[@AudioAssassin]

I have respect for 'iFi' because one of their devices solved a noise issue for me... but why in the sweet name of f**k would they not think to include a MIDI input ( including old-skool MIDI inputs)

[@obsprisma]

Tempting device. 🤔

[@AudioMasterclass]

If you have a spare £1299 that you don't otherwise need.

[@dizzle1119]

...and they didn't even bother to make it look decent. ugh

[@Pierre-Leloup]

A marketting product with a dreadful staging, sorry Sir.

[@kurt120032002]

what a waste of time this video is. 15 min of spec sheet reading. just go on the webside and look at the product, you will save yourrself 10 min of your life. Maybe we will have a review on this product instead of spec story time, but I won't hold my breath.

[@AudioMasterclass]

Oh, you missed my interpretations of the specs. Oh dear, your loss.

[@kurt120032002]

@@AudioMasterclass no, I didn't missed it, that was the story time. Most of us are in the hobby for a decent period of time got other gear, we can interpret numbers on a spec sheet. What we did not know looking at the spec sheet is how this device actually sound, and 15 min later viewers still have no clue.

[@AudioMasterclass]

@@kurt120032002 It seems then that my style of video doesn't suit your requirements. I have no plans on changing my style so I suggest that you avoid my channel. There, everyone's happy.

[@keithwan4028]

Not worth it..

[@AudioMasterclass]

For someone struggling with rent, food, heating etc then not worth it. For someone with plenty of money to spend, they'll hardly notice the cost.

[@anthonyroach7974]

Most powerful thing is the brain witch you can train to separate musical parts I can get a fabulously sound just with my apple iPad with the Spotify built in graphic maybe that’s because I’m a musician difference what musicians want all needed when we discovered distortion 😂😂😂😂😂😂