This is a review and detailed measurements of the Audirect (or Hilidac) Beam 2SE headphone DAC and amplifier. It was sent to me by the company and costs US $89. It doesn't seem to be available on Amazon.
The enclosure for the Beam 2SE seems to be made out of metal and shiny plastic, giving it a rather high-end look:
There is a USB-C terminal at one end, and 3.5 mm "unbalanced" headphone jack on the other side:
Nice shiny little cables are provided which is a good thing as I could not get any of my other USB-C cables to work reliably. Theirs fits securely and worked fine.
Typical of these dongles, my ASIO interface layer that I need for any audio analyzer to control them truncates to 16 bits causing errors. So for most of the tests I played the test files through my Roon player in exclusive mode which doesn't have this issue. So please pardon fewer than normal tests.
Audirect Beam 2SE Measurements
As usual we start with our dashboard:
This is competent performance when it comes to noise and distortion although not class leading:
Output voltage of 1.5 volt is better than what you get out of a phone but again, shy of the best in class which produces 2 volts or more. This will hurt its performance with high impedance headphones later.
Dynamic range is good and in line with the dashboard performance:
Jitter is clean although the higher than normal (by desktop standard) may mask some spurious tones:
Certainly far, far better than a $9 dongle.
Multitone is as expected:
And better than CD depth so you are good there.
Switching to my analyzer controlling the device so we see the power sweep we get:
As noted, there is not enough voltage here to produce top of the class performance. There is however plenty of current to do that with low impedance load:
Beam 2SE Headphone Listening Tests
I was impressed with the ability of the 2SE to drive my low impedance Ether CX headphone. There was plenty of power with no sign of distortion (there was no clipping in any of the above graphs). Power availability was a bit less with Sennheiser HD-650 but still, I found the fidelity excellent and loud enough.
Conclusions
The Beam 2SE targets middle of the road performance and it easily gets there. Distortion and noise should be below audibility with enough power to satisfy most users. The design is sleek and differentiated. Just be careful about which cable you use with it.
Overall, I am going to recommend the Audirect / HiliDAC Beam 2SE. It gives you another option at a different price point.
-----------
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 enclosure for the Beam 2SE seems to be made out of metal and shiny plastic, giving it a rather high-end look:
There is a USB-C terminal at one end, and 3.5 mm "unbalanced" headphone jack on the other side:
Nice shiny little cables are provided which is a good thing as I could not get any of my other USB-C cables to work reliably. Theirs fits securely and worked fine.
Typical of these dongles, my ASIO interface layer that I need for any audio analyzer to control them truncates to 16 bits causing errors. So for most of the tests I played the test files through my Roon player in exclusive mode which doesn't have this issue. So please pardon fewer than normal tests.
Audirect Beam 2SE Measurements
As usual we start with our dashboard:
This is competent performance when it comes to noise and distortion although not class leading:
Output voltage of 1.5 volt is better than what you get out of a phone but again, shy of the best in class which produces 2 volts or more. This will hurt its performance with high impedance headphones later.
Dynamic range is good and in line with the dashboard performance:
Jitter is clean although the higher than normal (by desktop standard) may mask some spurious tones:
Certainly far, far better than a $9 dongle.
Multitone is as expected:
And better than CD depth so you are good there.
Switching to my analyzer controlling the device so we see the power sweep we get:
As noted, there is not enough voltage here to produce top of the class performance. There is however plenty of current to do that with low impedance load:
Beam 2SE Headphone Listening Tests
I was impressed with the ability of the 2SE to drive my low impedance Ether CX headphone. There was plenty of power with no sign of distortion (there was no clipping in any of the above graphs). Power availability was a bit less with Sennheiser HD-650 but still, I found the fidelity excellent and loud enough.
Conclusions
The Beam 2SE targets middle of the road performance and it easily gets there. Distortion and noise should be below audibility with enough power to satisfy most users. The design is sleek and differentiated. Just be careful about which cable you use with it.
Overall, I am going to recommend the Audirect / HiliDAC Beam 2SE. It gives you another option at a different price point.
-----------
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/
