Exogal drops the other shoe . . .

[jhaagenstad]

The Ion is a true Power DAC and doesn't use PWM. Way back when in the Wadia 27 days, they couldn't get a Power DAC to work reliably because the technology didn't exist. It does now and we were able to bring it to market.

[jhaagenstad]

Oh, and the Wadia 121 wasn't designed by any of us. While we all met at the end of Wadia as a separate operating company within Fine Sounds, the 121 had been designed by the prior group of engineers...

[jhaagenstad]

Well, Jim's been working on that for 25 years and how we do it is kind of a key trade secret!

[jhaagenstad]

@jhaagenstad

 

Jeff, you may want to start a thread here at Computer Audiophile on your Exogal Comet-Ion products. It will allow you to have more control (for obvious business reasons) and focus (for product and end-user/customer specific reasons).

 

Let us in the community know how we might be able to help.

It's an interesting idea... although sometimes moderating a forum can be a full-time job! Mostly we try to stay out of the conversation because, well the Internet can become a mud pit pretty fast!

 

I do want to thank you for giving both the Comet and the Ion a chance and we all hope you enjoy them!

 

Jeff

[jhaagenstad]

When it comes to updating the firmware, it's really about whether you want to use an Ion or not. When we first introduced the Comet in Europe in 2014, we had a few updates that worked out the bugs in the DSP core and we added DSD capability. But once we got it all working we really haven't touched the core code.

 

The 2.xx releases really only activate the EXONET interfaces and make it possible to connect the Ion and... whoops... may have said too much... If you have a Comet and are using a non-EXOGAL amp, you would get literally nothing new by upgrading to a 2.xx release.

 

And don't worry about feeling stupid leaving off the antenna... I can't tell you how many people don't attach that antenna. We've thought about inserting a springy hand gizmo in the box that slaps you as you open the box and hands you the antenna. But that seems overly harsh...

[jhaagenstad]

We've seen the words "over the top review' a whole bunch of times and I would have to say that we were all blown away by Mr. Schroeder's comments. All that stuff came out of his brain except for the answers we gave to the questions he asked.

 

Regarding the Wadia PowerDAC I referred to in my snarky moment on the Dagogo forum, I was referring to Wadia's earlier effort at creating a true PowerDAC. Only 8 were sold and they all came back to the factory. The 151 isn't technically a PowerDAC and neither is the Intuition (and we had NOTHING to do with the Intuition, the 121 or the 151!) The ability to handle high power in the digital domain isn't something that comes from our Audio backgrounds. Jim and Jan and I have had wide-ranging careers and have done a lot of sophisticated DSP work, and power-handling work. By combining what we knew we were able to bring an actual PowerDAC to market but it was a lot harder than we suspected. Internally, we've been listening to it for over a year, getting it right and we were amazed at how quiet and fast the technology is.

 

And as for having our own forum, we kind of want to stay out of that fray. We're happy that you guys are talking about our stuff and we read every word written in anything from around the world and we do discuss it and use it when we plan what we do but frankly if we stick our noses in too much then it A) gets to be too much to manage and B) tends to stifle the conversation.

 

I will say that we all laugh a lot when someone complains that the Comet can't hold up against something 10x - 30x the price. The fact that we're even in that conversation proves our street cred. So keep that stuff coming!

 

And yes, we know that we could have charged a lot more for our stuff but we're trying to build products that deliver extremely high performance for people who may struggle to save up $10K for a system. Don't worry, we're making money. We're not greedheads and we're not making fancy looking watches with Timex innards either. We're trying to bring in the customer who may have been scared off by the price tag.

 

And yes, we are well aware that the Comet's silver on silver display sucks, big-time. It was an experiment. Mixed results. Live and learn.

 

OK. Back to my lurking! Have a good night!

Sent from my Linux 8-Core Speed Demon using Computer Audiophile

[jhaagenstad]

FYI: when it came out, the 151 was a great product but over time there was enough price erosion that even though lots were sold nobody bought a Ferrari on the profits. And we definitely learned that price / performance were key variables in the business!!!

[jhaagenstad]

Yeah... he wasn't very happy with me. We'd be fairly stupid to reveal how we do what we do. They didn't like that answer...