Everyone, sorry we are late on the Vi DAC. LH and team have been working very hard on the Vi DAC production. Here are the facts:
We had originally stated 10-15 or so per month would be shipped. As you are aware, the production of the chassis itself has been plagued with issues:
(1) Corner damped. (Factory internal QC will reject that automatically)
(2) Top Chassis got scratches while ananodizing (this cannot be buffed out)
(3) Silkscreen is not accurate for the back panel. (Also sometimes the color of top and bottom are not 100% matched)
I have attached a picture/screenshot of the conversation between the LH office staff and the factory for your perusal. They were finishing up 5 bottoms and only 3 were good in this instance. You should be able to zoom in when you click the attachments. If you can't, let me know via the Freshdesk forums.
We have a 60% success rate on a good day at the factory. We were told by the factory (and we relayed to you) that these issues were stabilized and would not be a problem, so we could hit that 10-15 or so. This turned out not to be the case - the factory was wrong on its expected ability to produce these. We've actually been producing 8-12 a month, and for the past few months we have been contacting and working with the manufacturer, but they cannot get it right. This is a great embarrassment for us, so we are working on fixing the issue again. We are looking at a different manufacturer, and we are working to finalize the new chassis, which we are much more confident about. The numbers have generally been within the target we expected, but not as high as we wanted or had been led to believe.
PLEASE NOTE: We have never stopped shipping these, and they're shipping all over the place. When I get more information from the head office, I'll make a soft announcement around Freshdesk/Head-Fi/Facebook/ forums as to where/when these pieces actually shipped (countries, months, etc.).
The new vendor will receive a PO of 20 pieces so we can investigate and test their ability to produce these to satisfactory standards. (No exact date yet. We will get it this week)
We have included pictures of the new chassis. Currently we are working on finishing the internal structure of the chassis. (Internal is more complex than the outside. It needs to hold the main PCB, power PCB, display board, have good connectors, shielding, feet....etc.). We hope to have this done by end of March. Below are included pictures of the initial design. We took feedback from various members of the community over the exterior design, and we will make another update with those changes when finalized/ready.
I will update you again when we have more information over the production of the Vi DAC.
- Jarek
