![]() ![]() The $350 price tag of the Compass set a standard, which eventually lead to the NFB-11 with an ESS DAC, and the R2R-11, which along with the Schiit Modi Multibit and Magni, allowed entry-level access to R2R DACs, which many people find more pleasing to listen with than they do the cheap and readily available AKM or ESS-based DACs in that price range. ![]() Thus, with the creation of the Audio-gd Compass, a trend began as other manufacturers considered making combined units. Up until then, there were headphone amplifiers with small, bitstream DACs built in, but nothing which was both a fully fledged DAC, with a fully fledged amplifier. I had already taken a chance on an amplifier from Audio-gd (the old C2-C) so I thought to ask Kingwa, Audio-gd’s owner, why someone didn’t make a more reasonably priced combined DAC/amp that did both - something better than the dodgy $99 thing we’d been using until then, yet not as expensive as the Benchmark DAC 1 or Lavry DA11. Upon choosing a pair of headphones, I was told I needed an amplifier, and, subsequently, that I also needed a DAC. When I first joined Head-Fi, back in 2007, my aim was to find a nice pair of headphones to replace the warn-out pair of MB Quarts that I had owned for a decade and a half.
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