Enter the modern hifi world. Try this test.

@kirkwallace 

"Does the cable have to be 3.5m? Can’t be shorter?"

"@frank009 i mis-read your first measurement; you were talking about the connector diameter being 3.5 millimeters; I mistakenly thought you were saying one needed a connector cable that was specifically 3.5 meters.  So, to answer my question, presumably a 0.5m, 1m or 1.5mm cable would be fine for conducting this test."

Hi kirkwallace, your first clue should be this guy doesn't even understand the metric system, you asked him twice as I quoted above. He's had since 6:56pm on to Friday to respond to you appropriately. Stupid mistake.

Yeah, and @zlone asked "Have you had a chance to directly compare it with another DAC? What did you use?". Nothing in his profile. Gone!

Like your system!

To each their own even when ridiculous.   Happy listening.

This must be the first time on the Gon $10K hasn't been the suggested outlay needed to make a change worthy of talking about in a digital-sourced system.

I'm sure there are individuals with both a system that resides in the home and also a portable system that may already be taking a punt on this and making a purchase, hence the question about producing a two-channel version. 

@pindac 

Are 2 Units required to create a design to be 2 channel/stereo?

No. Only one unit to produce Stereo sound. And as a bonus, I believe the hiby app allows the user to switch to mono on the fly, for mono recordings and such. 

@sparksgja 

I agree, however... i am not trying  to be condescending to anyone. 

I could say that of most DACs i’ve heard, they all seem to have a different "flavor" or sonic character. I’m talking about solid-state only designs and not tube DACs, although I have no beef with them either. 

While it is true that so many headphone DACs like this, the size of a finger or smaller do not produce stellar sound, this one does. 

I think it has to do with the ecosystem that hiby created with the music app and building the hardware to be compatible. 

This specific one, amazingly, despite being only 20 dollars is as clear and transparent as I’ve ever heard. And it only works if you toggle the settings correctly. After that... it is smooth sailing. I have tried at least 12 or so other headphone DACs to see what all the fuss was about. Turns out many of them don’t perform well. Some of them sound no better than the aux output on a laptop.

The sound is totally uncolored from what I can tell. This is hard to pull off, even on much more costly designs. The soundstage is wide/expansive, and vocals (especially female vocals like Diana Krall and Anne Bisson  are an absolute joy to listen to. With it dialed in right, it sounds very much like the speakers (boxes) aren’t obviously making the sound; it’s just floating in the room organically.

And like I said earlier - many high end DACs are fighting numerous battles internally (at the electrical level) before they even get the output to the speakers or headphones. Most of them are a joy for marketing teams because they can state all kinds of improvements and sound quality upgrades; which may be real or not.

The FC1 ? total simplicity until you can’t reduce the numer of variables anymore. and keep the signal path clean, then go straight to output. A wonderful, delightful DAC that could have been sold for significantly more money. Also pairs really nicely with my AKG K553 MKII headphones. To such an extent that they don’t sound like headphones anymore... not boxy or closed in, just expansive and super wide.