Funny thing about the DX100 as I remember it.  It played some hi-rez files in a snap but struggled and shut down on another.  Kenny Burrell's "Midnight Blue" come to mind.  I had enough of that and sold it as I need something more stable and portable.  The DX100 was a good do-it-all device but a master of none for me.  It sounds great with my JH13pro but not any better than my home amp.  Due to its size and poor battery life, it fails as my portable solution too.

Yup, pretty sure that's what happened to me.  Agreed on your analysis about being master of none, which applies to most of these devices.  I think the 120 gets closest so far but the price is ludicrous IMHO and it's still only closer. 

Quote from: DaveBSC on October 01, 2013, 04:23:11 PM

Quote from: Analixus on October 01, 2013, 03:37:57 PM

Yes, Sony has awoken a bit.  Fortunately Bluray won as it should have, they learned from Betamax.  If HDDVD won, Sony would have likely died since they were already on life support.  We'll see.

A bit yes, but much of the business is still in the red, and the days when Sony was any sort of tech leader are simply gone. The near term future belongs to the South Korean juggernauts, who will eventually have to contend with China in much the same way that Japan Inc had to deal with those pesky SK upstarts a generation ago.

The smaller Japanese firms are in big, big trouble. Sharp and Toshiba in particular are basically screwed.

And this of course was due to the massive restructured in Japanese Electronic sectors back in 2004.  Most experienced engineers were laid off for younger ones.  They took their knowledge to Korea hence the rise to supremacy of Samsung and Korean Electronic power house.   Check out an interesting article below.

http://kotaku.com/5960411/how-sony-is-turning-into-a-ghost-in-japan-and-around-the-world

Not to mention Japan's economic woes in every aspect.  Samsung et al can always rely on their government to do whatever it takes to support it, same for their autos.  Japan's govt. can no longer offer that kind of support.  I still refuse to buy anything Samsung except their HDD/SSDs since they are outright fraudulent liars as the latest Samsung Note 3 tests show (faking benchmarks using select apps, etc.).  They lied about their TV's HDMI support twice, lied about 3D compatibility, specs on their monitors are often wrong or misleading, the list just goes on and on.  We'll see about Korea whether too much of a good thing proves to be too much for them.  I'm waiting to see if their industrial expansion experiences repercussions from an Asiana Airlines type culture at some point.     

Anyway, you're both right about Sony, they have no resources for RnD and are left to maximize utility with what they have.  Refining the status quo is the name of the game (aka. survival).  If they had applied the same strategy for the PS4 to the PS3, that would have helped a lot to claw back earlier in the game and control that market space (integrated home/PC/online).  Any Japanese manufacturer w/ skin in the TV set game is in serious trouble.  The margins are just too small for their current business models which is why they keep shifting their suppliers and plants.  Sharp has a chance w/ IGZO to stay viable but will likely need to downsize even further or just go OE as happened to FujitsuTen.  Toshiba I have no idea how they are still alive at all apart from their digital storage solutions.

I still refuse to buy anything Samsung except their HDD/SSDs since they are outright fraudulent liars as the latest Samsung Note 3 tests show (faking benchmarks using select apps, etc.).  They lied about their TV's HDMI support twice, lied about 3D compatibility, specs on their monitors are often wrong or misleading, the list just goes on and on.  We'll see about Korea whether too much of a good thing proves to be too much for them.  I'm waiting to see if their industrial expansion experiences repercussions from an Asiana Airlines type culture at some point.     

I won't buy Samsung platter drives, I had six of them and lost more than 50% within a year. The SSDs are fast and seem to be holding up well, but I'm probably still more likely to buy Marvell based Plextors. Samsung's platter drive business is basically gone now anyway, they were swallowed up by Seagate.

Benchmark fudging or not, I will almost surely be going from a Note to Note 3. I was also looking closely at the upcoming HTC One Max, but their decision to use the same Snapdragon 600 as the standard One and GS4 instead of the new 800 is an epic bag of fail. When I bought my Samsung LCD TV about six years ago, I made sure to buy one just after launch so I could get an "S" panel (SK made) instead of an "A" or "C" panel (China). If you look around on AVS forum and the like, you'll find that there's a big difference between S panels and the other two, not just in reliability but in picture quality. At least back then, Samsung would start production of a new model in SK first, and then move to China. I don't know if it's any different now.

Sony's Xperia Z has probably the worst display of any high-end phone, it's just embarrassing how bad the colors and viewing angles are. The Z Ultra is at least competitive if still not as good as an HTC display, but it's too big for its own good. It's like they looked at the Note and said "just make it way bigger!" without bothering to see if their monster was in any way usable. I love huge phones (had a Dell Streak when everybody else was carrying 3.5" phones) but the Z Ultra is too big even for me, and the irritating on-screen buttons mean it has a giant bezel on the bottom that does absolutely nothing. I love the waterproofing, but otherwise the industrial design is really bad.

Hifiman makes stuff in Vietnam?

Samsung is doing very well, they're just monopolistic cheats and liars is all.  Still largely on the cheap side for the most part too IMHO.  I actually like LG as a company but only their monitors shine, better than any Samsung monitor.  LG is making strides in TVs though and doing well w/ certain appliances.  A friend still has an old LG upscaling DVD player that still works great.

My Samsung spinners are old high TB Spinpoints that were solid performers before there revisons and the hand off to Toshiba.  They are eco drives so they stay suspended until queued, then the platters spool up.  I won't get anymore since the recent revisions and takeover.  Guess its back to WD when the time comes.

I think Sony is awaken now.  With the released Sony NWZ-F887 & ZX1...we are going be in for a treat.  I own the F807 (current model with no hi-rez playback) and it is a great sounding player with very polished UI.  I run on Andriod 4.1 and hardly ever crash on me.  It an excellent match to my JH13pro.  The new amp module is said to be beefier so it should help with difficult to drive phones.  The iBasso DX100 runs on Andriod 2.3...a crappy 2.3 at that with no access to Google Play.  Sony is releasing a new ES Line of hi-rez player w/ 1TB onboard memory as well.

Excuse my ignorance but what 1 TB player? Could you post a link to that 1 TB player because that's news to me.