Starting a new string so I don't hijack the one about balanced vs. unbalanced sound quality.

OK, so, for what it's worth.

I went into my archive of wait lists. There are just over 140 Decware black boxes (Steve's term) on order on the 7/15 list, well under 10% of the total backlog (ZBIT, ZSTAGE, ZROCK, ZMC, ZBOX, ZSB).

I chose a ZBIT order at random to compare to my UFO25 x 2 order (the term "finanancial infidelity" comes to mind here, but no matter).

From 3/11 and over the next 18 weeks, the ZBIT order moved up 197 places. My amp order moved up 200 places.

A major amp investment, OK. If you have to wait a long time for delivery, that's reality. You're rolling the dice on your longevity, that's all. No biggie.

With the black boxes, we're talking about accessing important functionality or taking a deeper dive into what your system is capable of.

To have some degree of interactivity with your own system (changes/improvements that don't take forever) I would consider max reasonable wait time for black boxes to be 6 months. Half a year is a long time but it is psychologically manageable (no radom attacks of anguish, becoming convinced you'll never take possession of your order; Steve's access to parts will be cut off as the Chinese take over Taiwan, etc.)

(BTW, as far as I can tell from older comments on the forum, the wait time for DW AMPS in 2017 was under two months.)

With 140 boxes and a max 6 month (26 week) throughput, that's just over 5 units needing to be shipped per week.

I would suggest that mixing black box and amp orders does not really make sense, any more than it would to put cable/interconnect orders in the general queue just to treat everyone equally.

That is good news, although I think from parts pulled to ship can be many weeks in some cases.

I placed an order for 4 items, including a zrock a couple of months ago. I thought the same thing regarding arrival times of the amp vs zrock. Then out of nowhere, an email that the phono stage preamp is done! So I called to make sure it wasn’t a mistake. The woman explained that orders get cancelled and if you happen to have the same mods, you get it. Wonderful!
She also explained that they have new techs working on specific equipment. I believe someone also mentioned that Steve opened up another facility(don’t quote me). So, who knows what order we will receive or equipment in. Hard to wait but it is what it is. Exciting times!

I don't, but would guess Steve would tell us not to stack components.  That said, I agree it would probably look cleaner even if you didn't stack them if they had consistent dimensions.

ChrisC

Steve,

Are the feet movable or is the location fixed during assembly?

Thx

ChrisC