This is a review and detailed measurements of the portable 1mii Lavaudio DS400 DAC, headphone amplifier and Bluetooth. It was sent to me by the company and costs US $145 but it is on Amazon for $91 including Prime shipping.
The DS400 looks really elegant and reminds me of professional field recorders. There is a nice switch for low and high gain as well as a bass boost. Importantly "balanced" output is provided which provides double the voltage/four times the power through 4.4mm connector.
I must confess, I did not see that it has Coax and Toslink *output* until I took this picture after the review!
I also assumed the included 5 volt USB adapter was required and ran all of my testing that way. It was not until I connected to my computer for listening tests that I found out it was optional and only needed for portable devices (that don't provide power?).
I had a small issue on power up in that one channel would be quite faint. Plugging and unplugging remedied it and I no longer could replicate this. It could have some kind of input sensing or going into protection (see review later).
Note that unlike some of its competitors, there is no battery inside DS400.
1mee Lavaudio DS400 Measurements
Let's start with our dashboards:
In both cases I had to go slightly below the nominal 2 volt/4 volt as otherwise, distortion would rise. At this slightly reduced level, performance is very good for a portable device:
From here on, I stuck with balanced output. Here is our dynamic range:
I was very impressed with full output on the left. At much reduced output level, not so much. Very sensitive IEMs may demonstrate some noise.
To see the effect of the bass boost, I ran a frequency response test:
Didn't expect to see bass roll off without boost active. With it on, we see the typical overboosting much beyond pure bass area.
Multitone again shows low distortion for a portable device:
Linearity is nailed:
IMD test also shows very good performance until output starts to saturate:
Only one filter is provided but it is a good one:
Attenuation could be better though as it impacts this wide-band response:
Jitter performance was once again surprisingly good:
Let's see how well it does in power department:
As you can tell by the line going horizontal (in red), at max volume some kind of protection circuit kicks in. This requires power cycle as otherwise you only get very faint and distorted sound.
Lavaudio DS400 Listening Tests
With my Sennheiser HD650 high impedance headphone, I had plenty of volume for enjoyment. Unless you maxed out the volume -- in which case the high frequencies became annoying -- performance was excellent. Good bit of bass and overall fidelity was had.
Switching to Drop Ether CX low impedance headphone, there was a bit more volume but deep bass notes distorted more. Turning on the bass boost made this problem massively worse. When pushed to the limit, the unit shut down requiring power cycle. Mind you, at good/typical volume, fidelity was very good.
Conclusions
In portable category, you have dongles which are small but tend to have less power. Then there is this class of small headphone amp/DAC which greatly improve on that at the cost of another (small) box to carry. The next class up has battery which enables it to produce even more power but you sacrifice weight and size. DS400 falls in the middle category. While not perfect, there is good engineering inside this little box to deliver a good stand-alone DAC together with good headphone amplification.
Overall, I am going to recommend the 1mii Lavaudio DS400 especially at the sale price on Amazon as of this writing.
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As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.
Any donations are much appreciated using: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/
The DS400 looks really elegant and reminds me of professional field recorders. There is a nice switch for low and high gain as well as a bass boost. Importantly "balanced" output is provided which provides double the voltage/four times the power through 4.4mm connector.
I must confess, I did not see that it has Coax and Toslink *output* until I took this picture after the review!
I also assumed the included 5 volt USB adapter was required and ran all of my testing that way. It was not until I connected to my computer for listening tests that I found out it was optional and only needed for portable devices (that don't provide power?).
I had a small issue on power up in that one channel would be quite faint. Plugging and unplugging remedied it and I no longer could replicate this. It could have some kind of input sensing or going into protection (see review later).
Note that unlike some of its competitors, there is no battery inside DS400.
1mee Lavaudio DS400 Measurements
Let's start with our dashboards:
In both cases I had to go slightly below the nominal 2 volt/4 volt as otherwise, distortion would rise. At this slightly reduced level, performance is very good for a portable device:
From here on, I stuck with balanced output. Here is our dynamic range:
I was very impressed with full output on the left. At much reduced output level, not so much. Very sensitive IEMs may demonstrate some noise.
To see the effect of the bass boost, I ran a frequency response test:
Didn't expect to see bass roll off without boost active. With it on, we see the typical overboosting much beyond pure bass area.
Multitone again shows low distortion for a portable device:
Linearity is nailed:
IMD test also shows very good performance until output starts to saturate:
Only one filter is provided but it is a good one:
Attenuation could be better though as it impacts this wide-band response:
Jitter performance was once again surprisingly good:
Let's see how well it does in power department:
As you can tell by the line going horizontal (in red), at max volume some kind of protection circuit kicks in. This requires power cycle as otherwise you only get very faint and distorted sound.
Lavaudio DS400 Listening Tests
With my Sennheiser HD650 high impedance headphone, I had plenty of volume for enjoyment. Unless you maxed out the volume -- in which case the high frequencies became annoying -- performance was excellent. Good bit of bass and overall fidelity was had.
Switching to Drop Ether CX low impedance headphone, there was a bit more volume but deep bass notes distorted more. Turning on the bass boost made this problem massively worse. When pushed to the limit, the unit shut down requiring power cycle. Mind you, at good/typical volume, fidelity was very good.
Conclusions
In portable category, you have dongles which are small but tend to have less power. Then there is this class of small headphone amp/DAC which greatly improve on that at the cost of another (small) box to carry. The next class up has battery which enables it to produce even more power but you sacrifice weight and size. DS400 falls in the middle category. While not perfect, there is good engineering inside this little box to deliver a good stand-alone DAC together with good headphone amplification.
Overall, I am going to recommend the 1mii Lavaudio DS400 especially at the sale price on Amazon as of this writing.
-----------
As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.
Any donations are much appreciated using: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/