Apparently a successor has been announced because a fire destroyed some AKM production capacity (??!!??):
"In late October, a massive
82 hour fire destroyed AKM's ability to deliver their flagship ADC and DAC products to customers, and this included the AK4490 DAC and AK5397 ADC used in the
QA401. "
https://quantasylum.com/blogs/news/sneak-peek-the-qa402
New version has XLR:
Thanks for the info! Hopefully QuantAsylum manage to develop a killer budget analyzer!
@QAMatt I hope the development of the QA402 is going well!
Really appreciate if you could give us a bit of update about it
As a QA401 user, if I could request additional features on QA402, it would be the following:
1. DC socket for clean DC power supply with a wide range of DC input voltage like from 9 to 15 volt DC. It might works perfectly fine on USB, but for certain condition it would be really nice to have the option to use clean DC power supply. I usually series 3x 18650 battery to power some DAC or my Zoom F8n. Would be nice if I could do the same for QA402. Not sure if it has any benefit for the overall performance.
2. Since QA402 already equipped with XLR inputs, could you please add the option for the XLR inputs to be connected to a measurement microphone? So we need:
- Switchable 48V or 24V phantom power. 24V is useful to connect some measurement microphones that requires lower bias voltage. Even better if it could also include 5V plugin power for small condenser mics.
- 10, 20, and 30 dB switchable gain.
With this feature I could connect my EIC 60318-4 / IEC 711 coupler for earphone measurement, directly to QA402. But then I need the QA402 software to be able to take the mic calibration file
3. SPDIF optical / Toslink output. This is to drive DAC with Toslink input, so it could be driven with the same clock as the QA402 for better measurement result. Also avoiding USB ground loop.
4. Integration with REW. This is probably a killer feature for many REW users, if that is even possible.
And if with those features the final price still hovers at around $ 1k, I would love to upgrade my QA401
Thank you!