Headphone Amp/DAC Reviews

Just don't make sense to me @ all; performance is less than satisfactory (3.5 stars) and yet the value is excellent (5 stars)!

See what I mean.

In our rating system (as explained by editor-in-chief Rob Sabin) three stars mean "good" and four stars mean "excellent." So 3.5 stars means slightly better than good, or somewhere between good and excellent. Not less than satisfactory. The value rating was high because this was the least expensive product in this category that I've reviewed so far. I'm about to do the Audioengine D3 which sells for $10 less, and there are others that sell for less than that, but I haven't reviewed them yet.

But I got you now, thx for the explain.

Thin line between overall performance and value? ...You bet, and that line is different for each individual. This one is your own line. :-)

Mark,

ASIO is really not the best format for any Class 1 or Class 2 USB Audio device. In my experience some of the ASIO's we have tested are not even bit true. For Windows 7/8 WASAPI event style is the best sounding interface. WASAPI is available for Foobar, but not event style. You would have to go to J River for that option.

We are writing a white paper in regards to reviewing these little critters. One thing to note is evaluation of cold units (i.e. just plugged in) will not function nearly as well as one that is warmed up for a few hours. Phase noise and jitter can vary widely during this time. So critical listening and evaluation should be done with the unit plugged in for at least 24 hours.

Thanks,
Gordon

I read with interest your review of the Cambridge Audio DacMagic XS USB DAC, and had a couple of thoughts. I would have guessed that a DAC for a PC would totally bypass the PC's sound card, and access the FLAC file directly. It would have its own buffer and its driver would include its own user interface (player). The fact that one uses a separate player (such as iTunes or Foobar), even at full volume, might possibly manipulate the digital stream before getting to the DAC. Plus, if the stream passes through the PC's sound card ("Cambridge says they max out the soundcard and take over the gain function ..."), the quality could be limited by the ability of that sound card. Perhaps one could assume that at full volume, the bit stream remains intact passing through the sound card; I don't know. What if the sound card isn't capable of passing 192-kHz?

Secondly, I found it strange that Mr. Fleischmann would use a FLAC rip from a CD (44.1-kHz) to evaluate a DAC capable of converting 192-kHz sampling rates. If the quality of the audio output is "... more refined ..." and "... more realistic ..." than the PC's analog output, is that because the DAC upconverted it to a higher sampling rate before converting to analog, or the ripping software upconverted it, or did the DAC convert a 44.1-kHz FLAC file to analog better than the PC's sound card otherwise might have?