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Loxjie D50 Review (Stereo DAC)

amirm

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This is a review and detailed measurements of the Loxjie D50 balanced USB MQA DAC with Toslink, Coax and Bluetooth inputs. It was kindly sent to me by the company and costs US $720 on Amazon with free shipping.

The look and feel is similar to its sister company products:

Loxjie D50 Review Balanced USB DAC.jpg


The back panel has the usual connections we have come to expect in this tier product:
Loxjie D50 Review Balanced USB DAC XLR Toslink Coax.jpg


The unit feels quite solid giving a feeling of quality (again, typical of high-end desktop DACs).

Loxjie D50 Balanced DAC Measurements
As usual, we start with our dashboard of 1 kHz tone, sending bits via USB and extracting using balanced XLR outputs:


Loxjie D50 Measurements Balanced DAC.png


As you see, performance is exemplary with SINAD that represents relative sum of distortion and noise outperforming 95% of DACs tested so far:
Best balanced USB DAC Review.png


Zooming in we get:

Best high-end DAC review.png


D50 can output higher voltage though and if allowed, it increases its SINAD by another dB (overcoming some of the analyzer noise):

Loxjie D50 Measurements THD+N vs level Balanced DAC.png


That little glitch by the way is my audio analyzer changing scales and with it, creating more self-noise. The DAC performance is likely linearly increasing.

Here is unbalanced performance:
Loxjie D50 Measurements RCA Unbalanced DAC.png


Dynamic range which is a measure of DAC noise is way up there of course:

Loxjie D50 Measurements Dynamic Range Balanced DAC.png


Indeed, our distortion products are down -130+ dB so noise is setting SINAD by itself more or less. This is audio transparency beyond transparency.

Intermodulation distortion performance is excellent:

Loxjie D50 Measurements IMD DistortionBalanced DAC.png


We have our usual reconstruction filters:
Loxjie D50 Measurements Filter Balanced DAC.png


I performed my testing using Sharp setting. Despite that, some amount of imaging occurs due to attenuation not being more perfect:
Loxjie D50 Measurements THD+N vs Distortion Balanced DAC.png


Loxjie D50 Measurements FFT Balanced DAC.png


As you see, there are "images" created at sampling rate - signal rate to the tune of -108 dB which is what we saw in the filter test above. Fortunately this is a measurement issue as you won't hear these spurious tones in ultrasonics and with such low amplitude.

Jitter performance is excellent using USB which runs asynchronous (blue):

Loxjie D50 Measurements Jitter Balanced DAC.png


Toslink/Coax require extracting and chasing the input clock and shows clear artifacts in those sequence of pulses. Fortunately levels are at or below threshold of hearing so not an audible issue.

Linearity is perfect:
Loxjie D50 Measurements Linearity Balanced DAC.png


Multitone is superb as well:
Loxjie D50 Measurements Multitone Balanced DAC.png


Conclusions
"If you measure it, it will get better." -- TQM (Total Quality Management) liaison at a company I worked at.

We started a race by measuring DACs and a number of companies decided to squeeze every bit of performance they could get out of their DAC silicon. So here we are, DAC after DAC with "instrument grade" performance, producing a level of transparency that is guaranteed to surpass every person on this planet and others I am sure.

Our test is demanding enough to still find a few minor issues like Toslink jitter and reconstruction filters not being strong enough. Fortunately they are not a barrier to transparency.

Prices have gone up due to fire at AKM factory, China shipping costs, etc. But at least we have competition to get the best possible price, feature set, support, etc. we can get.

Needless to say, I am happy to recommend the Loxjie D50 based on its measured performance.

Note: as usual, my tests are focused on performance and any issues I find in the few minutes I use the product. I am not in a position to determine reliability of a product. You all need to help each other on that.

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

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amirm

amirm

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This is an SMSL clone, isn't it?
They are sister companies/brands. I am not sure who designs what. I don't think the form factor is identical to any SMSL product. It seems wider to me. But yes, the display and guts seem to be similar if not the same as SMSL DACs.
 

Kachda

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Great performance but I'd personally think the D30 at 1/4 the price which can also be used for headphones is a much better value (unless you really need balanced out). I doubt I could distinguish them in performance as a DAC.
 

Matias

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Yet another perfect measuring DAC. Look how far we have gone indeed.
 

gvl

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Should we assume they omitted the output buffer in this one too as they did in the M400? There is $90 price difference as well, what else are we missing here?
 

Tks

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We still suffering a shortage of quality Toslink connectors from Toshiba (or was it some other company?). Seems this trend of SPDIF Optical performance has been pretty bad for a while now.

Also, with AKM literally up in flames, I hope more move on to ESS chips. Prices for some of these DACs is just going up and up. (I'm bias toward ESS now since they have proper filters, and seemingly when anyone that manages the ESS Hump mitigation, usually nails the rest of DAC with performance that outdoes AKM variants). Though I can't blame folks, getting ESS implementation right doesn't seem as much of a cake-walk as AKM. Especially with ESS's retardation-levels of documentation (if you can even get your hands on them half the time).
 

Helicopter

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Thanks Amir. This is excellent performance and a good bill of features. Also, good of them to send a unit for testing.

I like the layout of the back including mains in. I would like to see AES-EBU too, but it is not needed. USB-C is another missed nice feature because you can't put the plug upside down in the jack.

This also way above my willingness to pay, but it should still serve buyers well.
 
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