DAC under 200€ for new newbies

[antcollinet]

Okay, that one of that question that I'm demanding, I see some SMSL and TOPPING have the same chip ( ES9038Q2M, AK4493S, ... ) and what's the difference between them ? And is there a real difference between one chip and two ?

The chip doesn't matter. The only thing you need to know is if the performance is good on the analogue output. Anything reccomended has good performance. And by good, I mean audibly perfect. Any inaccuracies are down way lower than you can hear.

 

[Charvel]

Any of these options will serve your setup well:

Option 1 - if you do not need bluetooth, remote control or XLR outputs: SMSL SU-1 DAC (85€ in France).

Option 2 - if you need bluetooth, remote control and XLR outputs: SMSL D-6S DAC (199€ in France).

If you choose the SMSL SU-1 DAC, you can spend the extra money and have a lot more fun building an inexpensive but very good Raspberry Pi-based audio player. We have several of these players in our workplace and they run reliably 24/7 (with tweaked /boot/ config file to keep the Pi's electronics cooler).

The DAC connects to the Raspberry Pi via a USB cable (power and audio). You can easily control the player from your computer, phone or tablet. The player gives you access not only to your audio files (on your computer, external USB drive, etc.) but also to a wide range of free internet radio stations (a growing number of which offer high quality lossless audio).

For the Raspberry Pi based player:
1x Raspberry Pi 5 4GB, ~ 70€ (other Raspberry's like the Pi 5 2GB, Pi 4 4GB or Pi 4 2GB will also do the job).
1x Raspberry Pi aluminium box, ~ 15€.
1x Power supply, type USB C, 5V, 3A (a good, newer smart phone power supply will do).
1x SD card (this will hold the player's Volumio operating system, 16GB is more than enough, but you can use a larger one).
1x Volumio Music Player, free / open source software: https://volumio.com/get-started.

Yes, before the DAC option, I thinking about the RPI DAC but the first DAC cardboard that accept the DSD is at 100€, so the DAC + raspberry + alim + case is not the best option at my eye if a receive a free pc that can run Foobar2000 ( with additional feature to control it with my phone ) and a ~100€ DAC. But it's not a problem to have fun with RPI but my student budget prefer the lowest option and if I also spend in speaker my wallet gonna do a suicide ...

 

[Charvel]

The chip doesn't matter. The only thing you need to know is if the performance is good on the analogue output. Anything reccomended has good performance. And by good, I mean audibly perfect. Any inaccuracies are down way lower than you can hear.

Okay, this morning, I see a video about someone who says any of this DAC is a piece of crap. He vented the capacity of the Motu M2 and says this is all week need, but this things don't do DSD and it cost more. He comparate it to the topping E30II and says the remote is unpractical and the power is meh. So I don't know what think. Of course better exist but at this price it's gonna be complicated to find better.

 

[Charvel]

Option 1 - if you do not need bluetooth, remote control or XLR outputs: SMSL SU-1 DAC (85€ in France).

If you choose the SMSL SU-1 DAC, you can spend the extra money and have a lot more fun building an inexpensive but very good Raspberry Pi-based audio player. We have several of these players in our workplace and they run reliably 24/7 (with tweaked /boot/ config file to keep the Pi's electronics cooler).

Why the SU-1 ? Why not a E30II or other SMSL ?

 

[Charvel]

Why the SU-1 ? Why not a E30II or other SMSL ?

After read the description by Amirm and Audiophonics, it's sound good form me, USB input and also do the alimentation of the DAC, I can turn off when I turn off the PC, it's affordable, do DSD, not ugly, no remote, what else ? If nobody find something better I think that's the one.

 

[fredoamigo]

Okay, this morning, I see a video about someone who says any of this DAC is a piece of crap. He vented the capacity of the Motu M2 and says this is all week need, but this things don't do DSD and it cost more. He comparate it to the topping E30II and says the remote is unpractical and the power is meh. So I don't know what think. Of course better exist but at this price it's gonna be complicated to find better.

Hello dear compatriot, you should avoid as much as possible taking the opinions of YouTube influencers at face value, the measurements are there to confirm that the design engineering is good. if there are no measurements and only subjective comments, do not buy (this is valid for all elements of your system) you have a pletoric choice of good DACs at low prices with good measurements.

 

[Charvel]

Hello dear compatriot, you should avoid as much as possible taking the opinions of YouTube influencers at face value, the measurements are there to confirm that the design engineering is good. if there are no measurements and only subjective comments, do not buy (this is valid for all elements of your system) you have a pletoric choice of good DACs at low prices with good measurements.

I see that on this video :

I no have other choice anyway.
Sometime my brain thinks why some big brand sell is DAC for thousand dollar and other brand say her DAC have twice of best in her DAC and he sells it at hundreds of dollars ... That reminds me how the world try to take our money ....

 

[antcollinet]

Okay, this morning, I see a video about someone who says any of this DAC is a piece of crap. He vented the capacity of the Motu M2 and says this is all week need, but this things don't do DSD and it cost more. He comparate it to the topping E30II and says the remote is unpractical and the power is meh. So I don't know what think. Of course better exist but at this price it's gonna be complicated to find better.

You don't need to worry about DSD - it doesn't give you any audible benefit.

Once you select from the set of recommended devices, that is sound quality solved. You can safely ignore anything youtube reviewers say about sound quality - it is all subjective nonsense.

After that you only need to consider the features you want, and the price.

 

[Charvel]

great, I'm gonna do some research to see if I find something else that correspond to my demande and thanks for your help.

 

[fredoamigo]

I see that on this video :

I no have other choice anyway.
Sometime my brain thinks why some big brand sell is DAC for thousand dollar and other brand say her DAC have twice of best in her DAC and he sells it at hundreds of dollars ... That reminds me how the world try to take our money ....

Thanks to your curiosity, you have the chance to put your foot in the right place so stay there and you will learn many exciting things in all fields ... I did not have this chance 25 years ago and I wasted a lot of time and money.

 

[Charvel]

Thanks to your curiosity, you have the chance to put your foot in the right place so stay there and you will learn many exciting things in all fields ... I did not have this chance 25 years ago and I wasted a lot of time and money.

I love this forum ! We have a french forum for the HI-FI but sometime nobody respond to the message and it fell a little bit uncomfortable. This forum have every type of though and some people are a little bit toxic ... Here everybody talk in the joy and when people are not agreeing, we explained our though and talk about it, no rage, no bad thing's .... On this forum, I've posted a threads were I talk about how I want to make a filter for a speaker and a person who want to send me a pair of Dayton tweeter see how high I wanna cut the frequency says le that I don't want to help me and go see somewhere else ... No very good idea to try to explained me how can I do otherwise.
As a student I don't have a lot of money I don't want to lose it madly. Perfect I love research ! It's not a problem for me to spend hour and hour to search and understand why and how. It's so cool to have the help of other that have tested and learn a lot about the subject, I love discover the point of view of everybody. I'm a newborn in this world. A little bit les than one year. So il glad to hear your opinion !

 

[Charvel]

You don't need to worry about DSD - it doesn't give you any audible benefit.

No benefit in the conversion ? So only FLAC matter if I correctly understand ? MQA and DSD is just a format that give more money to the people that sell it ?

 

[antcollinet]

MQA and DSD is just a format that give more money to the people that sell it ?

Exactly.

In fact CD quality (16/44.1) is already audibly perfect in real world listening. I would not spend money on anything higher resolution than that. The only proviso is sometimes higher resolution recordings are made with better mastering (less dynamic range compression), so can sound better. But if the same mastering were put onto CD it would sound the same.

 

[Charvel]

Exactly.

In fact CD quality (16/44.1) is already audibly perfect in real world listening. I would not spend money on anything higher resolution than that. The only proviso is sometimes higher resolution recordings are made with better mastering (less dynamic range compression), so can sound better. But if the same mastering were put onto CD it would sound the same.

Interesting, personally ( probably because my hears are little babies ) I can hear a little difference between 16/44.1 and 16/96. And also between 16 and 24 bits. I can't tel about DSD because I don't have a DAC to read it correctly.

 

[DVDdoug]

Actually I only use a USB key into my HT amp ( Yamaha RX-V673 ) and it sound pretty bad comparted to my CD player ( JVC XL-E34 ).

What's wrong with the sound? You are probably fooling yourself. Most DACs sound fine. And, I'm always suspicious when someone doesn't say exactly what's wrong (a buzz in the background, or weak bass, etc.)

If one is a little louder we have a tendency to think it "sounds better" so listening tests should be level matched. And to avoid bias or "placebo effect" the test should be blind.

What is a blind ABX test?
Audiophoolery

In one month I'm gonna get an old pc for free ( windows 7, 4Go ram and 320Go of stockage ( AMD graphique card )).

The DAC built into the soundcard/soundship is probably fine. (I did have a soundcard once that made noise when the hard drive was accessed.)

and asio.

Not all DACs support ASIO. You can use ASIO4ALL, but it's not true ASIO... It's an adapter or interpreter so you can use an ASIO application with hardware that doesn't come with ASIO drivers.

The main advantage of ASIO is that it was designed for low latency (low delay). A few milliseconds of delay isn't noticeable for everyday playback. It's mostly for recording where it's hard to perform with a delay while monitoring yourself with headphones.

It also doesn't resample which might make you "feel better" but it doesn't normally affect the sound. (Windows will resample without telling you. The advantage of the automatic resampling is you can play a high-resolution file on any-old soundcard, just as you can print a high-resolution photo on any-old printer.)

I can hear a little difference between 16/44.1 and 16/96. And also between 16 and 24 bits. I can't tel about DSD because I don't have a DAC to read it correctly.

MAYBE, but I doubt you've done a proper blind ABX test, with the exact same recording downsampled from 16/96 or 24/96.

...You'd probably be surprised how hard is to hear the difference between a high-bitrate MP3 and the high-resolution original in a proper blind ABX test. The differences often seem obvious until you start listening blind... Then you usually have to listen very carefully, if you can hear a difference at all.

 

[antcollinet]

Interesting, personally ( probably because my hears are little babies ) I can hear a little difference between 16/44.1 and 16/96. And also between 16 and 24 bits. I can't tel about DSD because I don't have a DAC to read it correctly.

I suspect that if you compared level matched. blind and statistically relevant, you would find those differences disappear.

 

[Charvel]

What's wrong with the sound? You are probably fooling yourself. Most DACs sound fine. And, I'm always suspicious when someone doesn't say exactly what's wrong (a buzz in the background, or weak bass, etc.)

If one is a little louder we have a tendency to think it "sounds better" so listening tests should be level matched. And to avoid bias or "placebo effect" the test should be blind.

What is a blind ABX test?
Audiophoolery


The DAC built into the soundcard/soundship is probably fine. (I did have a soundcard once that made noise when the hard drive was accessed.)


Not all DACs support ASIO. You can use ASIO4ALL, but it's not true ASIO... It's an adapter or interpreter so you can use an ASIO application with hardware that doesn't come with ASIO drivers.

The main advantage of ASIO is that it was designed for low latency (low delay). A few milliseconds of delay isn't noticeable for everyday playback. It's mostly for recording where it's hard to perform with a delay while monitoring yourself with headphones.

It also doesn't resample which might make you "feel better" but it doesn't normally affect the sound. (Windows will resample without telling you. The advantage of the automatic resampling is you can play a high-resolution file on any-old soundcard, just as you can print a high-resolution photo on any-old printer.)

The DAC of my amp have no sound field, I don't feel the power of the voice that a feel with mi CD reader, the bass is muddy and the overall sound like in a box.

The soundcard of the PC don't have any other output than a jack 3.5mm, I'm not interested by this one. And I'm not sure than the soundcard are ok. It's not a pretty good pc, even a good pc ... Actually he is very slow and everything on it is meh, but it's because he is at my grand parent and I don't knows how to clean and use a PC so now he's slow but after a reset he's gonna be like 90% new. I don't new a big pc tu run foobar ....

I don't think I need asio if a use a SMSL DAC. I think it more useful when u use a audio interface for creating music ( like my focusrite solo gen3 ) but not for this DAC.

 

[Charvel]

I suspect that if you compared level matched. blind and statistically relevant, you would find those differences disappear.

If I understand, I listen the video and if I say right I can hear a little difference?
What the interstate of this test on YouTube ? All the audio format is downscale to mp3.

 

[Basic Channel]

I don't think I need asio if a use a SMSL DAC. I think it more useful when u use a audio interface for creating music ( like my focusrite solo gen3 ) but not for this DAC.

If you have this then I suspect you don't need a new DAC. You'd be better spending on things you can hear, like speakers. Once you've treated your room and got good speakers, and measured them flat, then I'd think about a DAC.

Interesting, personally ( probably because my hears are little babies ) I can hear a little difference between 16/44.1 and 16/96. And also between 16 and 24 bits. I can't tel about DSD because I don't have a DAC to read it correctly.

The differences you think you are hearing are far more minimal than moving your head around any room. What differences did you hear between 16 and 24 bits?

 

[Charvel]

If you have this then I suspect you don't need a new DAC. You'd be better spending on things you can hear, like speakers. Once you've treated your room and got good speakers, and measured them flat, then I'd think about a DAC.



The differences you think you are hearing are far more minimal than moving your head around any room. What differences did you hear between 16 and 24 bits?

i dont use my focusrite to listen music on my amp. The focusrite output is a 3.5mm jack and 2x 6.5mm jack. I dont have a jack input on my amp and no jack to RCA cable. I dont want to spend into the acoustic of my room because in two year i go 3 year in canada school and i'm at home only the week end, it's not a priority now. When i create in the futur a dedicated room i do an acoustic treatment.
I agree with the fact that my speaker is trash but like i said i'm on it. I just need to calculate the self and the condensator.
24Bit is more precise and punchy