[Notes] Custom Cute Hands-On (Successor to the "Love Taiwan" DAC)
The listening-impression parts come down to personal taste, so please bear with me,
and discussion is very welcome.
=======================================================================
M a i n T e x t B e g i n s =======================================================================
I’ve always loved Firestone gear, especially the Fire Cute series—
those little brick-sized gadgets we so often see.
I think it’s genuinely impressive to produce such good sound in something so small.
Even friends of mine who aren’t into audio, when they see my Firestone army, say:
“I never realized audio gear isn’t always some huge box!”
Of course, with size constrained, the sound quality may take a bit of a hit, but for ordinary listening I think
it’s already more than enough.
If possible, I’d love to see Firestone make a higher-end Fire Cute series,
targeting people with a budget of around 30K after moving up a level, so that those who don’t want big boxes
but want better sound have a better option!
Firestone’s best-known classic models, I’d say, must be the FUBAR and SPITFIRE series!
I’ve been lucky enough to use the Fubar 4 Plus (modded with AD827AQ OP) + Supplier (with upgrade cables for the connections),
which I currently use as my second system. Honestly, for a beginner it’s already plenty—
if I hadn’t upgraded to the Philips X1 and then gone to JiaWei to mess around with all sorts of amps/DACs,
I’d never have known… that my ears had accidentally leveled up too. Being tin-eared really is a blessing, =_=
Comparing the Fubar HD and Fubar 4 Plus, which I’ve heard, you can clearly tell that
Firestone’s direction is slowly shifting from neutral-slightly-warm and musical —> neutral-slightly-cool and analytical.
Personally I still prefer the source/DAC to be as neutral as possible,
even slightly cool or analytical is fine, because you can still tune the character you want afterward with an amp/headphones.
If the source is warm from the start, and the amp/headphones are warm too…
then personally I feel a lot of the “sense” of detail (there’s still plenty of detail if you really listen closely) gets eaten away,
and it may become too fatiguing to listen to (personally I feel that plain, unseasoned “water” can be listened to the longest)… orz
This may have to do with the fact that when I used to listen to music on portable CDPs, my CDPs were mostly SONY and Panasonic,
whose sound signatures were neutral-cool and analytical at the time, so pairing them with a warm-sounding headphone sounded great, XD
I’ve drifted a bit off topic… In short, I quite like Firestone’s current direction,
and I also think that for sources/DACs, this really is the direction to go. I’ll give Firestone a thumbs-up here, XD
Okay, back to the Custom Cute. The Custom Cute is the successor to the “Love Taiwan” DAC,
but calling it merely a successor might be underselling it. Let me explain point by point:
- The “Love Taiwan” DAC uses the TE8802; the Custom Cute uses an XMOS solution.
Although both support asynchronous 192K, if you search around online you’ll find
the “Love Taiwan” DAC’s driver isn’t easy to install, whereas installing the Custom Cute’s driver was simple:
power on the unit, plug in USB, download and install the driver, done~
Also, I personally think the XMOS solution is more stable—not to mention that
XMOS basically works directly on LINUX/MAC, which means a Raspberry Pi can drive it directly, nice, XD
- The “Love Taiwan” DAC can’t use the latest Supplier HD.
Some may feel this doesn’t matter, but I think it matters a lot.
Everyone should understand the principle that power is the mother of audio, right!
A good power supply affects the sound! Not to mention the original power supply was frankly a disaster, @@
At least after I added the Supplier HD, the background got much cleaner.
And there’s one more key point… the Supplier for the “Love Taiwan” DAC is super hard to find now!
Even used ones are hard to come by, =_=
- The “Love Taiwan” DAC has I2S and various sample-rate displays… but personally I don’t find them very useful.
I2S is actually very powerful; it’s just a shame there’s no common standard (not entirely sure, so please correct me),
so everyone does their own thing, and mismatched pinouts are a hassle—you have to remake the cable yourself. And there don’t
seem to be that many machines doing I2S these days…
As for sample rate, it’s useful, sure, but if your PC signal source is only 44K and you deliberately force it to 192K,
personally I find that meaningless…
Okay, that covers the main appearance and features; now let me talk about the sound quality.
Object of comparison: Fubar 4 Plus (modded with AD827AQ OP) + Supplier (with upgrade cables for the connections)
Using the same source PC + Foobar2000 factory settings + Xiaomin 3:
Basically the Custom Cute blows the Fubar 4 Plus out of the water…
Which, come to think of it, is only to be expected, =_=
Asynchronous isn’t just for show; the sound quality is much better, all the detail is there, and the high/low extension is much better too.
And the key point… there’s a very smooth, glossy sheen—the highs go up but aren’t too harsh, the lows go down
but aren’t a big soft blob…
From lows to highs, it feels like there’s no dip anywhere; it just “turns” up smoothly the whole way,
especially when I listen to Jay Chou’s “Adorable Woman”—there’s a low-to-high passage in the middle that’s super smooth,
and it makes your ears light up…
The Fubar 4 Plus, meanwhile, is just middle-of-the-road…
Using the same source PC + tweaked Foobar2000 settings + Xiaomin 3:
For the settings I used the ones from anyss:
anyss: For playback-software review, try the following foobar2k settings~ 04/10 01:22
→ anyss: output wasapi event mode 04/10 01:22
→ anyss: hardware buffer in MS=10 04/10 01:22
→ anyss: full file buff 262144 04/10 01:22
→ anyss: high worker process priority 04/10 01:22
→ anyss: thread priority 7 04/10 01:22
→ anyss: use MMCSS mode Pro Audio 04/10 01:22
→ anyss: These are my current settings, XD
After applying them, the Fubar 4 Plus’s sound quality clearly improved, and the gap with the Custom Cute narrowed noticeably.
Overall, the tweaked Fubar 4 Plus felt like it had more detail, coming within less than 10% of the Custom Cute.
Only the high/low extension and glossy sheen still went to the Custom Cute, and after the tweak, if the PC is under heavy load
it easily distorts, whereas the Custom Cute makes no difference at all.
Also, these settings can only be done on more advanced players—KKBOX and Spotify don’t have them, so forget it there…
So the Custom Cute still has its advantages!
=======================================================================
F o r T h o s e W h o J u s t H i t E N D
=======================================================================
In short, I think that among USB DACs around the 5K mark, the Custom Cute is genuinely worth buying.
And with the Supplier HD and Beyond HD added, I doubt even an all-in-one around 15K could beat it.
If you haven’t bought a USB DAC yet, or you’re looking to upgrade, I think the Custom Cute is worth considering. No tweaking needed—
just install the driver and you’ll easily have good sound.
And if you’re on no budget, you can tune Foobar2000 with the settings in my post,
and I’m sure you’ll notice a substantial improvement!
Feel free to discuss with me if you have any questions or doubts, XD