I shot the tariff…

Well, I gambled. I placed an order for a GMKtec K10 to be a new Roon core + plex + SongKong server + everything else in my home. $579 for a 1TB ssd + 64gb ddr5 ram. 13900HK. I was so psyched to get a 13i9 beast for that price. I got greedy. Instead of buying the 32gb ddr4 config from Amazon, I paid barely more and from China. About 10 days ago. I thought… I’ll definitely get it before the de minimis exemption expires. It’s still technically in the air - it’s spent five days without an update. Definitely not across the border before 12:01 AM today. We will see. Seems like perhaps I’ll get it, perhaps I’ll pay me some duties, perhaps something else will happen. If you takes your chances…

As a UK resident, this is one of the few occaisions that I have not been envious of the US pricing situation.

I have just purchased (and received) a new Intel N150 based mini PC (with 16GBytes DDR5 DRAM and 2 2.5GBe and 2 10GBe capable SFP+ ports) from China with absolutely zero import duties to pay :grinning:

The Mini PC was bought and installed as a new router running OPNSense (most definitely not recommended for those with little networking knowledge) and is now working fine. This was done for interest rather than necessity - although it does offer many more possibilities than my ASUS router.

Unfortunately, after I installed it as my router, I realized that I should have tried installing ROCK and/or DietPi on it in order to see how it performed as a Roon server (not that I need a different Roon server - but experimenting is always fun).

Having said that, I thought that, in the US, there was an exemption from the exceptionally high import tarifs for technology items (including smart phones - but also, I thought IT gear) so, hopefully, even if you do have to pay import duties, it won’t be too bad :crossed_fingers:

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I’m running OPNSense on a fanless N100 (with 6 NICs) from Aliexpress. Initial setup was a little complex but since I got it up and running it has been rock solid. I repurposed my old Linksys wifi router as a wifi bridge and was able to use Roon ARC after setting up the Upnp plugin. Definitely recommended for those with large networks with many devices, that often start to trip up commercially available ARM based routers.

I do need to remind myself that I am very lucky in many regards. Heck, I have gotten some darn near free items in the past from AliExpress and GMKtec, and i have scratched my head how that was possible.

I just think it’s funny that I hemmed and hawed about placing this order until it was basically too late, then I convinced myself it’d just maybe be the fastest order through customs in history.

It just “landed” officially in tracking. I’m sure customs is in disarray - and so it may be days until I know what’s up with it. The number of different possibilities for the amount of tariff I pay are amazing. Play along here.

Umm, did my k10 sneak through? I’m sure it is chaos in import hubs right now. Tracking data seems to show up a day after the fact. Never watched a single shipment with amusement and bated breath quite like this before…

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At the risk of straying off the original topic:

I after a whole week of running with opnsense, I agree with this on all points. However, I cannot recommend it to everyone reading because the required degree of networking knowledge is much higher than that required with a typical consumer oriented router.

However, I do have it set up to to manage my PPPoE ISP connection (on the WAN side) and a OpenVPN TAP (layer 2 bridged) connection to my LAN for when I am away from home.

I have also set up traffic shaping in order to manage bufferbloat. The results from the waveform test site are very good on my 900Mbps down, 115Mbps up service:

With my ASUS router running Merlin firmware and using CAKE QOS, I could get the same A+ buffer bloat rating but the maximum download rate that could be achieved when doing so was much lower.

Before anyone asks, the use of a higher powered and higher performing router makes absolutely no difference to the sound quality of Roon - either when streaming from Tidal/Qobuz or playing files from the local library. As I said above, this was not the reason I undertook to set it up.

I have done the same with my ASUS router. It is now acting as a switch and Wifi access point. However, I did not install the uPnP plugin for Opnsense. I have set up manual port forwarding instead.

The Opnsense Port Forawarding and Firewall management is very much more powerful than that of my old router - for example, should I need it (I don’t because I use IPv6 for VOIP which is much more reliable), the Port forwarding for my VOIP Phone on IPv4 required 4 rules on the ASUS but would only only require one rule on Opnsense.

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Well it looks like it did. Has the small package exemption revocation actually activated yet. I know it is going to at some point but, until it is activated, wasn’t there a $600 limit for small packages to individuals? Maybe you crept in just under that limit and just in time from that point of view :grinning:

How can it be otherwise? They don’t know from one second to the next what it is that they are supposed to be doing!

Well it looks like the fun will shortly come to an end with a good result for yourself :smiley:

I’m in a similar situation with an order I placed for the new FiiO FT7 headphones. I placed the order on April 21st with HiFiGo and I’ve been watching the tracking for the past few weeks. At present the package has made it to the US from China and is now out for delivery with the local carrier. Hopefully the package will be delivered within a day or two. I will post an update once the headphones are on my head. :rofl:

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Getting closer, “ingested” in New Jersey!

(I’m not that excited about getting a new core / plex / everything box, so much as that I am very psyched I got away without it getting stuck in customs!)

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Update:

The FiiO FT7 headphones arrived today. Verified as authentic by FiiO. Managed to not get hit by the mad king’s tariffs. Once I’ve had a chance to put the FT7s through their paces, I will post a review in the FiiO section.

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Due to the tariffs I have read that some companies are putting up their prices world-wide to offset the lack of sales in the USA, so we will all be paying one way or another.

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I’m afraid that that is inevitable for any product for which the US is a large share of the market.

It does not change the fact, however, that for affected products, US importers will be paying those tariffs and, one way or another, passing the costs onto US consumers (and the rest of us for US exports that include affected imports).

Will be fascinating to see where this hobby goes - especially on the head-fi / budget end if things. Schiit already manufactures in the US, but FiiO, xduoo, Wu, SMSL, Shenzhen / Holo, and on and on… they will likely have to adjust global prices. But I’m willing to bet that there is some divergence in strategies in high end and low end chi-fi.