SMSL SU-1 Stereo DAC Review

[LeifB]

If you play music on the DAC and what comes out sounds like music, then I suppose the DAC is musical.

Yes, I think that will be a good answer..

 

[notsodeadlizard]

A friend ask me if this dac is musical.
I like the sound.
What do you say?
Is it musical?

This device is in a price range where to ask any question about any subjective is indecent.
It's a cheap very simple DAC based on the very good chipset which provides 99% of functionality.
It's so cheap that there is no reasons for even simplest attempts to design (I'm not talking about production at all) something based on same chipset on your own. What is really very very bad. But it's too complicated.

 

[LeifB]

This device is in a price range where to ask any question about any subjective is indecent.
It's a cheap very simple DAC based on the very good chipset which provides 99% of functionality.
It's so cheap that there is no reasons for even simplest attempts to design (I'm not talking about production at all) something based on same chipset on your own. What is really very very bad. But it's too complicated.

It is simple.. Maybe the best sound.

 

[dridel]

Anecdotally, it's significantly less noisy than my EVGA Nu Audio Pro. And I have to do more A/B testing, but I believe it sounds better too.

 

[LeifB]

Anecdotally, it's significantly less noisy than my EVGA Nu Audio Pro. And I have to do more A/B testing, but I believe it sounds better too.

Nice..

 

[slg1986]

Hi, i have Onkyo A9130 and wiiM mini connect via optical! With this dac i have good upgrade or not?

 

[LeifB]

Hi, i have Onkyo A9130 and wiiM mini connect via optical! With this dac i have good upgrade or not?

Hard to say.
Just try.

 

[TonyJZX]

the onkyo has this:

High-quality Wolfson® WM8718 192 kHz/24-bit D/A converter

I'm going to say its probably about the same lol... or the smsl would be *marginally* better

 

[slg1986]

the onkyo has this:

High-quality Wolfson® WM8718 192 kHz/24-bit D/A converter

I'm going to say its probably about the same lol... or the smsl would be *marginally* betterth

the onkyo has this:

High-quality Wolfson® WM8718 192 kHz/24-bit D/A converter

I'm going to say its probably about the same lol... or the smsl would be *marginally* better

thanks

 

[ribonucleic]

So strong has been my reaction to the music industries attempted heist with MQA that I couldn't buy a DAC branded with MQA; unless it was on a peal off sticker.

Now that it’s been vanquished, think of it as your enemy’s head on a pole outside your castle.

 

[ribonucleic]

Everybody likes beautifully milled cases. That said, there is a limit to how much I’d pay extra for one. And I would never trade performance for a nice case.

This DAC may not look like much but she’s got it where it counts.

 

[LtMandella]

This is a review and detailed measurements of the SMSL SU-1 stereo USB DAC. It was arranged to be sent to me by shenzhenaudio from the company and costs US $79.99.
View attachment 280769
Despite its simplicity, the SU-1 manages to look elegant with nice fonts and LED indicators for different inputs. Back panel has the basically what you want:
View attachment 280770
My usual minor gripe applies here with right channel RCA not being red although in this case, it is easy to turn the unit around to plug in the cables. A USB-A to USB-C cable is provided. Note that you need to have a USB power supply even if you use non-USB input (it is the only source of power).

SMSL SU-1 Measurements
Let's start with our usual dashboard:
View attachment 280771
Very nice performance with respect to noise and distortion, easily landing it in our "excellent" category of DACs:
View attachment 280772

Zooming in:
View attachment 280773
Full transparency is achieved not only for distortion but also noise:
View attachment 280774

IMD distortion is basically non-existent with the performance limited by noise alone:
View attachment 280775

Jitter shows some negligible spikes of no audible concern at all:
View attachment 280776

Multitone shows extremely good performance:
View attachment 280777

Linearity is almost perfect:
View attachment 280778

Filter attenuation is very good:
View attachment 280779

Resulting in good wideband noise+distortion measurement:
View attachment 280780

Finally, frequency response is essentially flat in audible band:
View attachment 280781

Conclusions
SMSL cuts the functionality to minimum many need to have high quality conversion of digital to analog from multiple inputs. Performance is superb for the cost as it provides full transparency to the source. It proves that performance requires great engineering skill, and not a ton of money. A lesson that I hope one day high-end audio companies and their customers appreciate.

I am happy to recommend the SMSL SU-1. There is no more excuse for having bad DAC performance!

------------
As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.

Appreciate any donations using: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/

I bought this and it sounds really fine, quite nice. But I had a thought. Amir mentioned I believe that the company shipped him the product. Hmmm, so they could cherry pick if they wanted to? I would think they would certainly cherry pick a unit knowing it would be sent to a very well known and highly visible on the internet reviewer.
Am I wrong?
By the way, they need to ship this with a fresnel lens if they expect anyone over 20 to be able to read the enclosed operation guide

 

[TonyJZX]

logically i dont think these companies would bother trying to golden sample an $80 dac... in an effort to sell more $80 dacs?

if they were to do such things they would golden sample their flagship $1,000 unit


we can accuse them of a lot of things but as far as audio goes there's not much to gain

further these things have a short life... it'll be gone in 18 months time

 

[LtMandella]

logically i dont think these companies would bother trying to golden sample an $80 dac... in an effort to sell more $80 dacs?

if they were to do such things they would golden sample their flagship $1,000 unit


we can accuse them of a lot of things but as far as audio goes there's not much to gain

further these things have a short life... it'll be gone in 18 months time

Can't say I agree. Remember this is China manufacturing. They have engineers coming out of the woodwork, literally millions of them out of the state schools every year. It costs the manufacturers basically nothing to make sure all reviewers receive 'vetted' units.
China does not have Intel type human capital costs.

 

[TonyJZX]

here's a central irony

you seem to not have much faith in china manfacturing and you call into disdain the whole thing... inc. china education and you compare smsl... to intel

and yet you still buy their stuff? why not buy geshelli?

further if you want to make extraordinary claims you need extraordinary evidence

this has all the energy of someone who doesnt like mcdonalds... while inhaling a big mac

the OP has already claimed that these companies have required he purchase his own units from retail stores and test it and they would reimburse him if there was any doubt

theres a lot to criticise about the chinese, and i do it often but one should have some evidence beforehand

 

[LtMandella]

your imagination is running wild.

 

[Overseas]

Now that it’s been vanquished, think of it as your enemy’s head on a pole outside your castle.

By the way, in this DAC is MQA decoding embedded in the chip or separately?

 

[ribonucleic]

By the way, in this DAC is MQA decoding embedded in the chip or separately?

Whatever part of the purchase price went towards MQA (five bucks?) is money I’d rather they spent on balanced outputs.

 

[ManniX]

By the way, in this DAC is MQA decoding embedded in the chip or separately?

The AK4493S DAC doesn't know anything about MQA (luckily).
There's actually no MQA decoding but "unfolding" which is very likely a task done by the XMOS SoC which in turn sends the "high-quality almost-lossless psycho-perceptual-enhanced" PCM to the DAC.

 

[Abrise]

Why do I have so much noise on my SMSL SU1 usb input and not on the spdif optical input. I have purchased the excellent E1DA Cosmos ADC to make measurements on a few DAC and amps and discard the bad one. The SU1 is supposed to be the standard for comparison. However I have difficutlties with the SU1 usb input.
The SU1 is attached to a desktop computer, the E1DA to my laptop on battery.
When I feed the SU1 through optical I have very good results close to Amir .

However with the same settings I have bad results when using the USB input.

Although the THD is still excellent I just wonder why I have so much noise ? The noise cannot comme from the ADC nor the computer because it was good on optical with the same other connections, I mean USB powered on the desktop on the SU1 and USB powered by laptop on the ADC.
Is my SU1 bad or is there another explanation ?