This technological terror arrived late yesterday. It is basically a USB powered portable R2R with sign magnitude ladder DAC with built in headphone amplifier and unbalanced line outputs. In my own perverse and delusional way of thinking, it is the closest thing one can get to a TotalDAC portable, with price way under $1K. It does not use an off the shelf DAC chip, but like the TotalDAC, a custom FPGA controller and a precision resistor array configured as a sign magnitude R2R ladder DAC. This is important, because it means that the sign bit determines when it goes positive or negative, and it is not doing a mid band transition on MSB when crossing zero, which is a problem for the Analog devices R2R ladder DAC chips used in some of the Schiit DACs.
The front panel is very basic, but it does include sample rate and mode indicators (including DSD) and uses a rotary encoder control for the volume control. The FILT light changes color depending on the digital filter used- which include:
The VOL LED varies in brightness the the encoder volume setting; that can vary from -80dB to +10dB in 1 dB steps
Headphone output will drive anything from 16 ohms up, 32 or more is recommended for best results.
The rear panel output is fairly self explanatory, even for a wookie.
A "special" high current USB cable is provided with the unit. Windows drivers are available to download for USB Mode 2. Mode 1, supported directly by Windows, only goes up to 96kHz.
There is a more than a modicum of "stuff is stuff" inside the little box (I did not take mine apart to check this... Force sense is adequate to this, but not reproducible on the forum.)
DFAL Minion expedited the procurement process on this unit, so I must agree he is coming along well in his training (especially if I end up liking the unit as much as I expect to).
This may wind up becoming the recommended solution for esoteric DACs under $500. That is NOT a question category on Jeopardy.
I should have some subjective impressions and some hard data sometime soon- I think there are some tests I can do with the AP using an external generator.
The front panel is very basic, but it does include sample rate and mode indicators (including DSD) and uses a rotary encoder control for the volume control. The FILT light changes color depending on the digital filter used- which include:
- Red: LInear Phase Brick Wall Filter
- Orange: Softer roll off, inbetween Linear and minimum phase filter
- Minimum Phase Butterworth filter, less ringing, less stop band attentiuation
- Off: A softer lower slope Minimum phase filter
The VOL LED varies in brightness the the encoder volume setting; that can vary from -80dB to +10dB in 1 dB steps
Headphone output will drive anything from 16 ohms up, 32 or more is recommended for best results.
The rear panel output is fairly self explanatory, even for a wookie.
- with unbalanced line level on the left
- a switch to select whether the line out or headphones are driven
- a push switch for cycling between filters and saving the setting
- a switch to select between USB mode 1 or 2 for music inputs, mostly an issue for Windows systems and a complete non issue on a Mac
- The USB signal and power connector.
A "special" high current USB cable is provided with the unit. Windows drivers are available to download for USB Mode 2. Mode 1, supported directly by Windows, only goes up to 96kHz.
There is a more than a modicum of "stuff is stuff" inside the little box (I did not take mine apart to check this... Force sense is adequate to this, but not reproducible on the forum.)
DFAL Minion expedited the procurement process on this unit, so I must agree he is coming along well in his training (especially if I end up liking the unit as much as I expect to).
This may wind up becoming the recommended solution for esoteric DACs under $500. That is NOT a question category on Jeopardy.
I should have some subjective impressions and some hard data sometime soon- I think there are some tests I can do with the AP using an external generator.
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