Thanks! HC3 is soon. Please check my primary #donglemadness site for progress of incoming dongles

🔥🔥🔥 Yeah!!!

King Kong, lol

It is in my wish list, but no promise when, Kensei cost a fortune just for me to test. Thanks

Thanks, if you look at the overall ranking order on my site, you will know which one is superior. DC04Pro I must admit will have slight advantages over iFi GO Bar in terms of resolution and imaging. Otherwise they are both 5 Stars

@@donglemadness thanks Andy👍😀

That's my plan too. Stay tuned!

I think it is best not to put it that way that you want to hear Cirrus Logic sound. You see, any DAC can have native sound signature but when it has been implemented by different manufacturer, the tuning itself may sound different. Even Cirrus Logic has two distinctive streams of sound tuning of which it can be analytical, slightly colored Hi-Fi sort of sound, or truthfully neutral flat which is more transparent. In this case, the tuning for iFi GO Bar is favors a more neutral alignment which has organic touch to it. So it would in fact appear not as Hi-Fi sounding as Questyle M15, but it also means that GO Bar will be a bit smoother with timbre temperament as opposed to M15 focus on crisp edges. Ultimately the deciding factor is what will you be using them with?, a DAC/Amp can only be judged with what you connect them to, as they cannot output a sound without a listening device of course, and the end state of a sound is largely controlled by the listening device itself. Synergy plays huge role here, I don't have KA5 yet so I cannot compare. With Q11, GO Bar has a bit more or organic touch to it while Q11 is denser with note weight

Thanks Rob. I never had that issues on Tidal MQA be in on my Sony Xperia 1 iV or Xiaomi Mi9T, or even on my laptop. You should try your Go Bar on another host to see if the issue is consistent, if yes then you should file a replacement

@AndyAudioVault I really appreciate the reply. I tested it on my samsung tablet and wife's a52 with same results. Windows pc is OK. I'm sending it back for a replacement. Thank again.

Within the limit of my own listening ability, I cannot differentiate between 16 or 24bit lossless FLAC, I can't speak for others as they may have better sensitivity to sonic resonances. IMO, it also depends on the source, the majority of my music was designated for CD 44/16 format and encoding it to anything higher than 16bit wouldn't make any difference. However I admit that Audiophile specific mastered records which were intended for Hi-Fi listening may contain more micro dynamics which could benefit from higher resolution. That's my 2 cents

@@donglemadness i got it. I just read an article about MQA files: "Rather than being a new file type to sit alongside FLAC, WAV et al, MQA files can instead be packaged inside any lossless container such as FLAC, WAV or Apple Lossless.". So i just downloaded some Master labelled music from Tidal, i guess the files are packaged with MQA codec inside, altough the format name still seen as FLAC. My question is, what will i lose if i play it with DAC non-MQA support such as iBasso DC-03 pro? will it become pure flac format sound or maybe ends up like playing ordinary lossy mp3 file or even worse?

@@roleasahuman I have played Tidal MQA Masters many times with non MQA dongles, they are played as would be expected of FLAC level of quality, which means the decoding is still dependent on how competent the DAC renders the source. I believe the true benefit of MQA Masters, to contain any micro dynamics that could exist in the original Master sources which would normally be limited by CD format. My point is, you would still find a basic FLAC will sound as good as most MQA tracks, especially if they were originally mastered for CD format. MQA will truly be superior if it is used as a vessel to ship anything extra in the recordings that consumer CD resolution can't

@@roleasahuman I do not think this article description is correct and seems to be marketing type. MQA is a lossy format. Unless you subscribe to Tidal there is no reason to listen to lossy formats today. Goldensound video 480k views: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/priapthqkrzenpc.html

@@iamgrootreal not marketing at all. he said that even a basic FLAC format will sound as good as the so called MQA files. This alone already answered my question as i also didn't expecting him to bashing MQA capability here. Now i already have some good flac files of my fav musics & decent iem, now i'm searching for a decent DAC to deliver good, smooth and clean signal to my earphone. No, i'm not expecting it to delivers the sound that i've never heard before lol, but i expecting it to give me a lovely sound that give us emotional impact when listening to the song, If there's any budget DAC for this. As we know, android phone audio chip is just..

Yes, and a bit more because depending on what sort of IEMs or Earbuds we talking about, it could also improve the sense of surround spatial imaging

Perhaps what I can do, is to enable a more accurate subtitle to my videos which can help with KZfaq translation to other languages. But I will consider your suggestions, I wish to make my contents easy to understand by anyone from anywhere

@@donglemadness Thank you so much.

Yes. It will be in January 2023. You can keep updated with the incoming dongles progress from my primary #donglemadness site

Moving from M15 to GO Bar is like a lateral move, not up nor down. They are both 5 stars rated dongles and the one that separates them would be the extra features GO Bar offers, do you need them? M15 already have the ability to drive very stubborn Fostex T40RP MK3, I can't imagine Closed X to be harder. On the other hand, for most usage I will also recommend iBasso DC04Pro as it offers the most value out of them all at such insane low price

@@donglemadness Thank you so much for the quick reply. Trying not to spend too much as my older TempoTec Sonata HD PRO doesn't get to the volume I desire. The DC04Pro may just be the answer at half the price. May look pre-owned for the GO Bar, would like the features you've pointed out and not look back, is it significantly superior?

@@kontrolenthusiast1099 Feature wise, yes iFi Go Bar is the king, the ability to tune the sound can be really useful. Significantly superior? no. At this level of quality, for the most part the differences between top dongles are marginal at best, we are talking about the rule of diminishing returns here, just like many other hobbies

Yes. What it need is in fact a stable USB3.0. And I actually use Go Bar mostly on my Android phone with USB 3.0 running USB Exclusive mode. On PC definitely not an issue at all

​@@donglemadness I had another question in my mind. I do enjoy listening to Rock and metal music sometimes. Is IFI GO BAR the appropriate dongle for it?

@@mohammadratul7921 Yes absolutely. I listens to Metal music 80% of the time

iFi Go Bar has denser note weight and resolution compared against JM10, but really close. If you looking for punch, iBasso DC03Pro and Tempotec E44 has them in spades, even more with A&K PEE51

@@donglemadness Thanks The DCO3Pro is tempting

Thanks, I forgot about it since I use M15 all the time with HiBy FLAC local files

I would not know how they compare as I haven't tried Hip DAC 3 yet