Note that in this case, you are getting what you pay for: I had a FIIO DAC that sounded amazing but was really bad about full-scale turn-on, sync and desync pops to the extent that it damaged my speakers. Yes, perfect power sequence hygiene would have prevented the problem, but one can't always be ready with the amplifier volume knob when their playback system crashes.

ah good to know. Outside of having a very basic dac for my cans on my desktop, I wouldn't think of any serious equipment failures could happen. Probably wrong to assume that these things are engineered to be safe/redundant.

This is going to be my first DAP in like 15 years, zune being the last one I had. Pretty excited to rock it out for a bit.

There's a current fad out there to move to more single-service type of devices rather than using a phone for everything. Want to try it out myself to be more intentional with my digital actions and ween myself away from corporate social media.