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So much unfulfilled potential
It's an attractive device and is very well built. kudos to the design team
Sound wise, it's really good. I bought it to supplement my class A Accuphase that draws a lot of juice and which I don't always feel like using for casual listening. Honestly, the Icepower module plays on par with the big japanese amp. The RCA output on an amp is a rare but very useful feature as it allows me to listen to the Accuphase while using the CA80 as a preamp. I can think of Audiolab amps having it and a few others but it's pretty rare. The headphone amp works well.
What disappointed me before the purchase was the absence of at least another analog input or digital input. It would have been great, but that's a compromise I made willingly as it had BT as a fallback solution for my bluray player. Except, that eventhough the bluetooth works flawlessly with a phone if connected to a transmitting dongle, the CA80 BT implementation is buggy. It requires the user to resort to some idiotic procedure to get the sound...and if you switch to another input and back, you will have to do this all over again
For the other negatives, there is - the barebone CD implementation: No resume functionality. you will have to restart the cd from the start each time you switch inputs...
- the god awful remote which has less than 3 meters of range
- the slow response from the the remote and other universal remotes. It's unacceptable and makes using the device beyond a desk use, frustrating. The buttons on the other hand are perfectly responsive. Maybe it can be improved through a firmware update?
- the cd spinning is kind of noisy. Not a problem but I expected better
I will keep it as I can live with the drawbacks but what a shame of what could have been. It'd be a killer device with a couple extra inputs, cd resume functionality and a better remote control and BT implementations
This review has been posted for SHANLING CA80 Amplifier Class D ICEPower 100AS2 CD Player DAC ES9219MQ Bluetooth 5.0 100W 4 Ohm Black It's an attractive device and is very well built. kudos to the design team
Sound wise, it's really good. I bought it to supplement my class A Accuphase that draws a lot of juice and which I don't always feel like using for casual listening. Honestly, the Icepower module plays on par with the big japanese amp. The RCA output on an amp is a rare but very useful feature as it allows me to listen to the Accuphase while using the CA80 as a preamp. I can think of Audiolab amps having it and a few others but it's pretty rare. The headphone amp works well.
What disappointed me before the purchase was the absence of at least another analog input or digital input. It would have been great, but that's a compromise I made willingly as it had BT as a fallback solution for my bluray player. Except, that eventhough the bluetooth works flawlessly with a phone if connected to a transmitting dongle, the CA80 BT implementation is buggy. It requires the user to resort to some idiotic procedure to get the sound...and if you switch to another input and back, you will have to do this all over again
For the other negatives, there is - the barebone CD implementation: No resume functionality. you will have to restart the cd from the start each time you switch inputs...
- the god awful remote which has less than 3 meters of range
- the slow response from the the remote and other universal remotes. It's unacceptable and makes using the device beyond a desk use, frustrating. The buttons on the other hand are perfectly responsive. Maybe it can be improved through a firmware update?
- the cd spinning is kind of noisy. Not a problem but I expected better
I will keep it as I can live with the drawbacks but what a shame of what could have been. It'd be a killer device with a couple extra inputs, cd resume functionality and a better remote control and BT implementations
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