My first Fidelizer Mod project started from AK240 era when my friend in community sent me iBasso DX90 to apply firmware modification for better sound quality. He saw my research projects on attempt to make audiophile Android tablet/phone from devices with Wolfson audio chipset.

At that time I was bored with portable products and stopped seeking for DAPs, which is normal occurrence for audiophiles who started building serious highend systems. I was so serious to the point that I both Esoteric P-03/D-03 and Emm Labs CDSD/DCC2 SE at the same time for over a year.

Given that seriousness, I found portable DAPs sounding unacceptable due to many limitations and limited experience of designer so I stopped my pursuit after iRiver P20 (best DAP before iRiver was rebranded to Astell and Kern).

 

Since I also modified my own highend digital sources too, my friend decided that it’s OK if I can modify DX90 hardware too if it can help improve sound quality. So I look onto this DAP and realized I could implement Emm Labs’ design into this DAP and maybe it can be my dream DAP I’m searching.

The result blew me away. It’s like having Emm Labs DAP in my hand as portable device. At that time modding was around $200 and that alone was enough to outperform AK240 and others in the market. My friends asked me if I can improve further so I started doing research for Ultimate Mod.

As a result, I ended up creating $500 mod for iBasso DX90 with all opamps upgraded from the best selected and tested in market, caps are upgraded with finest quality including my signature orange caps, and clock modules are all replaced with best one I can find for this iBasso DX90.

 

At that time everyone was OK to pay for $500 modding iBasso DX90 that they can buy at cheaper price because they heard my works and sound quality is good enough to have tens of $500 mod in Thailand market where modding above $100 is too expensive for most people.

However, people who live outside Thailand can’t get to hear my works before making a decision so it’s really hard to make a decision for Fidelizer Ultimate Mod that costs around the same price of device without listening experience.

Also, I later realized it’s not very practical for most people to buy $250-400 DAPs new or used and spend like $500 on modding like Fiio X5iii even though it’s worth purchasing for my clients but it just doesn’t make sense for most people to spend money on modding more than product itself.

 

These thoughts have been lingering in my mind for a long while and you can see that I haven’t updated anything about Fidelizer Mod at all despite modding almost all highend DAPs in market including AK380/WM1Z recently. I’ve been thinking deeply about the future of Fidelizer Mod in next year.

When I finished making the best mod of AMP8 with all capacitors upgraded and tuned with different values and brands including opamps and stuff, my friend who have DX200 Ultimate Mod device said it’s too expensive for $200 amp card which costed me about the same of modding DX200 body.

So making Ultimate Mod might be the best thing I can do and it maybe worthy of its high price. However, can it really help product owners enjoying under $1k DAP with Ultimate Mod? Maybe it’s time to change the approach about delivering affordable highend sound to portable products.