Glad you find your favorite. The RME ADI-2 Pro is the best electronic device I've ever owned. Been keeping using it for years and still love it. My only complaint is the headphone amp is prone to burn out, and the encoder may fail, and the repair cost is high. Just keep those in mind.
ASR's measurements are written in a way to make you believe their benchmark is the "right" rubrics to grade a device, which is not necessary the case at all:
1. It never put usability and reliability at top --- Most of their top rated devices fucked up seriously and in a lot of cases the companies who made them refuse to take responsibility (Example:
Topping DX3 Pro version 1). Most Topping DACs I have tested are not reliable in that it
may stop playing in a middle of track. This never happens once with professional audio devices (RME, UA, Apogee) that I used. I have tested more than 10 top performing products from China in ASR and returned all of them within Amazon's return window. I simply cannot use them --- weird design choices, serious QC issues, and in many cases simply do not work.
2. The measurements are by no means complete. Luckily I have a ADI-2 Pro so I can do simple measurements by myself. Top rated devices usually only perform good under
@amirm 's test, but fail in the most simple and straightforward test. Example:
SMSL M500 performs really bad unless it is playing mono music. When it is playing stereo,
the SINAD is well below 80. standard tests amir uses just don't tell that part of the story that is more practical to normal music listening. In addition, companies these days are super good at achieving good scores in amir's test in a way that may lead to problems or simply don't make sense (Example: Topping's HP Amp's
input impedance. SMSL DAC's
elimination of output buffers. those tricks can make them top performing, but lose the ability to work together with other products). And let's be practical, for music lovers, who cares about things that beyond audible? And why should I own a product that has the ability to output 6W (which is
not a good thing) to my headphone and
produce a lot of heat
constantly?
3. Official description of many top performing products are just scams. Example: SMSL M500 claims they use OPA1612 but they are not. confirmed by my
teardown and
other's.