Yeah I had heard the newest Clips sound worse. Never heard them myself.

I can't wrap my head around the price. $1300?... seriously? Do we now live in an age where an "audiophile" portable device costs 1K+ or bust? Big fan of the design though. Cowon has also mastered battery life in their previous offerings but I would have liked to see this device in the 400-600 range. As for their unconventional choice of chip, I have high hopes for the sonics. Finally a player that strays from the Sabre/Cirrus crap.

I'm waiting for a ~$180 DAP based around the PCM5122, which is basically the PCM5102A with extra software controls and digital volume control. It still accepts 32/384, so marketers will be satisfied, just no DSD. Even though the PCM51XX series is a voltage out chip, uses endogenous PLL, and it does have some minor charge pump noise problems, it does sound pretty good for the features it brings, as long as you do a respectable job of giving it clean power. It won't be yet-another-Sabre, but it brings nearly all of the features as the overused ES9023, plus some extras. It has a built-in IIR apodizing filter too (that's actually what Meridian used in the Explorer, instead of programming their own --- lazy bastards). So basically, if the PCB layout is right, you can get decent sound (not world beating, but decent) for fairly low BOM cost. Since it's a voltage-out chip, you just need a headamp buffer and you're good to go. Go with a dual DAC design, and you could do a differential design, drop in a cheap but powerful headamp IC (e.g. MAX97220A), and you'll get great performance that gets close to the DAC performance bottleneck.