This is probably my first year review I ever write. Back then when year’s about to end and I was like “I do this and that yeah this was cool and that was bad”. There’s no sense of achievements or failures for me as I do things I want to do, learn from it and move on, as always.
But in this year, there’s a lot of change happened with Fidelizer project and with myself personally. I learned to realize the impact of my action that affects people around me, positively. And I learned how my actions can influence other people like my clients, my distributors, and so on.
Experience from such events made me felt like I should write a year review (for the first time) to remind myself of things happened in this year and things to do in next year. I’m not really sure how people normally write this so I’ll write on classical do good and do better parts.
What Fidelizer did well in 2017
Nimitra garnered a lot of positive reviews and big awards
I started this project as a turnkey product helping people to enjoy music easily with Fidelizer optimized server. It’s a niche product that I wasn’t sure if it’ll sell but I felt it was needed by someone so I made it.
I’m happy to that Nimitra is in Stereophile’s Recommended Components Class B product. I thought some days I may have products in Stereophile but I never thought it’d be this first product, with good valuation from them and also in AudioStream’s Class Greatest Bits Class A server too.
I’m really thankful for understanding customers, kind reviewers who provided a great aid I’d never dream of for Nimitra to receive myself, passionate and patience distributors who support such special niche product like Nimitra.
Nikola received more positive feedback much better than expectations
In Thailand, we have only sub $200 product for local LPS, no import. I tried asking them to build better ones but they didn’t plan to build it anytime soon so I decided to pair up with my friend who used to be a client whom I built server for him to make affordable LPS.
After finishing the research and development, final design can be sold at around $500 and everyone around me said you can’t sell it well in Thailand. Most people won’t spend more than $300 for LPS (But they can spend much more for power cable).
I asked everyone literally with the same results, even my friend who builds LPS with me said so. I planned to order parts for assembling 50 units first and I decided to take it slower with 10pcs instead just to play safe and I expect it’ll go around 2-3 units per week.
After launching Nikola for a week, I received 13 units and we could hardly catch up with orders for a few months. It’s not even a year passed by yet but we shipped over 60pcs of Nikola now and I’m really happy to see support from everyone involved in this project.
Fidelizer’s Portable Products working unexpectedly great
I’ve been working on headphone projects in spare time for fun. I like doing experiment with hardware/software capabilities and see if it can sound better. There’s a few headphiles in Thailand who sent me devices for modding and everyone is happy with my works.
In this year, I had a clash, strong one with some people in Thailand’s headphone community. I didn’t remember how it all started but when I came to realization, I was gunned by some used to be big shots in certain community and was harassed by them for a few months.
With bad stuff happening, I thought I’d quit modding project in Thailand. But I still love modding so I started Portable Products section in Fidelizer hoping some might take interests in my projects. I didn’t think much except moving on and it’s time to grow up.
Some may think ROM is too costly but there’s a lot to consider like effort, support, cheating and so on. I don’t like over-charging, like some customers buying Fidelizer 8 Upgrade right now, I’d always ask if they want me to refund. It’d be nice if they do that to tip me but I need to be sure.
Fortunately, there’s a lot of headphiles who can appreciate my effort. I made a big update PerfectDynamics recently and its improvements made me feel much closer to live performance. I’m glad everyone likes it and I’m really grateful for their support.
As for incident in Thailand, I ended up not quitting thanks to support from my friends and clients in Thailand. I owe them a lot helping me getting over such childish bullying. I thought such thing wouldn’t affect me but it ate me slowly inside due to massive fatigue I had back then. 🙂
What Fidelizer can do better in 2018
Delegating Fidelizer works
After releasing Fidelizer 8, I’ve been constantly answering email messages all day and night for a while now. Sometimes I spent over 6hrs answering emails and delivering software. For next major upgrade, I may need to think of other solutions.
On another hand, I’d rather deliver updates myself. It felt like I’m really providing them services and doing some real jobs. I used to be so passive relying on web ads, rarely find anything to do and felt miserable without purpose to live. Fidelizer and you guys gave me that purpose now. 🙂
Improve Nimitra’s compatibility and services
When Nimitra was launched, industry mostly used XMOS chipset at the time with DSD64 and 24/192. It worked well when it started but now we start to have more needs for changes and improvements. There’s more demand for 384 and DSD128 andI’m working on solution right now.
Also, most recent DACs and players start to ship with new USB modules. I’ll also need to inspect those drivers, implementing proper support for Nimitra and assist clients and distributors to optimize optimal audio performance better.
Making an open platform supporting both USB and Ethernet has hugh risks of playback instability. I experienced numerous cases this year. Sometimes it’s like some drivers having bug with some software or some DACs need certain configuration to work.
I’m really thankful to patience and understanding distributors. I’m aware they tried very hard and I promise to keep improving products to be more reliable and lessen their burden to get things working in simpler and more cost effective in 2018.
Improving Fidelizer 8
Some of you probably don’t know this but I have a lot of projects to do in 2017 and couldn’t finish everything I want in Fidelizer 8 release. One of them is music player application feature that can be done better with more features.
I’ll continue to improve Fidelizer 8 like I’ve been providing my services with Fidelizer 7 for almost two years. If you like the improvements with Fidelizer 8 and have some budget for better servers, you may consider Nimitra as Fidelizer’s optimized server.
Build more cool products
I have a lot of product designs in store waiting for the right time to release. You can expect seeing something great and cool in this year. It’s a shame that Roon took our cool Nucleus name I planned for this project but we’ll come up with cooler name. Wait for me! (just kidding. :D)
Some people asked me to build products with cool case. I’d love to. No, I madly wanted to. But making good LPS chassis cost at least $100, good server cost at least $300. How can I sell $495 LPS with $100 chassis and $1395 server with $300 chassis?
With right time, I’ll build cool products with cool looks. For now I think it’s better to build a good sounding product that doesn’t look bad. Nimitra and Nikola looks robust, sturdy, maybe not so sexy for looks but I can guarantee they have very sexy sound. 🙂
I’m starting to feel little sentimental now. This might become my dark past exposing myself with some funny stuff. Maybe I shouldn’t write it but it’s too late now. They’re already celebrating 2018 in Thailand so whatever and happy new year 2018. 🙂
