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Any reason you're interested in that one as opposed to one of the 10,000 other ones?
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Best cheap USB-C headphone dongles?
- Thread starter starfly
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It's the one I currently have. Was just curious what's inside it.
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Well you can always open it up and see if there are any markings on the chip.... (you can then glue/tape it back together)
I really like the advanced EQ features on your Squig site. Quick question, is there a way to tap into the secondary hardware gain on some of the nicer dongles? I tried your tool with the TRN Black Pearl and while the EQ pushing and pulling functionality works correctly, every time I push an EQ, the hardware volume drops by a lot. Judging by ear it sounds like 40dB or more of attenuation. I have to use the physical buttons to bring the volume back, which makes A/B'ing settings very hard. Did you run into that issue with other USB DACs?
So, I took a conservative approach to avoid clipping, so I apply a negative pregain if the PEQ filters have large positive values but some of the nicer devices actually have a hardware based pregain calculation. But I think I figured out the pattern to recognize which devices have it built into hardware and with ones don't so I can just apply my software versions to the ones that don't.
The next version will include this support so should supported the hardware specifics features of more of these dongles.
HissingFree
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Reference audio analyzer recently uploaded a review of Jcally JM7 (non max), which is supposed to use CX31993 like Graveaudio DA06:
Results are very surprising, to say the least, it has a noise floor of a high end DAC such as CS43131, less than 1uV and extremely high signal/noise:
In fact, noise performance seems to be marginally better than JM20 which they also analyzed recently:
However, they also analyzed Graveaudio DA06 which also has CSX31993 and signal/noise was much lower and more in line with what other testers found about CX31993:
But, checking other tests of JM7 in their review, we can also see the typical weird jitter pattern in 12K test:
Indicating that it is indeed CX31993.
So what's going on here? does CX31993 JM7 variant use a different firmware with some sort of DRE that allows it to have very inflated snr and noise floor?
Results are very surprising, to say the least, it has a noise floor of a high end DAC such as CS43131, less than 1uV and extremely high signal/noise:
In fact, noise performance seems to be marginally better than JM20 which they also analyzed recently:
However, they also analyzed Graveaudio DA06 which also has CSX31993 and signal/noise was much lower and more in line with what other testers found about CX31993:
But, checking other tests of JM7 in their review, we can also see the typical weird jitter pattern in 12K test:
Indicating that it is indeed CX31993.
So what's going on here? does CX31993 JM7 variant use a different firmware with some sort of DRE that allows it to have very inflated snr and noise floor?
New Web Based control app for DACs with PEQ
It's an open source project that looks to be vibe coded using AI, but it works fine on a few my USB DACs like the Black Pearl and Fiio JA11. I find it easier to use than the original manufacturers apps plus there is no need for registration. If your DAC uses WalkPlay it will work with this app...
www.audiosciencereview.com
HissingFree
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So I have tried Graveaudio DA06, a CX31993 dongle without additional opamp, and it's fairly good in use. No crackle in the referenceaudioanalyzer test:
reference-audio-analyzer.pro
Only very occasional crackling in the polarity test, but mostly clean, nothing like JA11 which is absolutely terrible (except with Tinhifi firmware, but that has terrible hissing and noise floor):
There is no hissing... after like 200ms of playing a silence video, slight hissing in first 200ms or so and very slight popping after. Most likely what is happening is the dac is applying noise reduction when it detects a very low signal level, like it was commented here:
www.audiosciencereview.com
Interestingly, similar thing happens with Jcally JM6 Pro, noise is higher first 200ms or so, it's just that the noise reduction that happens with that combo is nowhere near enough to eliminate hissing, it reduces hissing from extreme to very high, because MAX97220 introduces a lot of noise.
That being said, the power consumption this dac has is absolutely amazingly low, so all in all it's really good for the cost, you can get this thing for as low as 1$ depending on new account or not, but if not it's less than 5$.
After testing a bit, the popping after you pause a song or when the song ends is more annoying the more sensitive the iems are, so I've tried KZ EDX PRO 2 (107 db/mw sensitivity and 23 ohms) and Salnotes Zero (108 db/mw and 32 ohms) and it's a very slight popping, not really annoying, also CCA CA2 (112 db/mw, 23 ohms, really sensitive) and here the popping is definitely more noticeable and annoying, but even with these really sensitive iems, the noise reduction is enough for me to not notice any hissing after the noise reduction happens.
It seems only CS43131 with DRE disabled (still good enough noise floor and SNR at 50mv) and ESS dacs are flawless dacs with sensitive iems, but it also comes at the cost of much higher power consumption. More work needs to be done in the sub 10$ range, but CX31993 is as close as it gets, or Apple Dongle but 0.5 Vrms in europe and crackling in some tests and scenarios.
CS43198 and CS43131 DAC sound defects
Best cheap USB-C headphone dongles?
It's just a converter, not a dongle because no chip DAC in it!!! These phone had a build-in DAC but a decent one. IMO, Abigal and Avani just hyped too much, nothing special, Sonata HD Pro still a best out there They're 1/8th the price of the S8. Portable audio on android is a fools errand...
www.audiosciencereview.com
Interestingly, similar thing happens with Jcally JM6 Pro, noise is higher first 200ms or so, it's just that the noise reduction that happens with that combo is nowhere near enough to eliminate hissing, it reduces hissing from extreme to very high, because MAX97220 introduces a lot of noise.
That being said, the power consumption this dac has is absolutely amazingly low, so all in all it's really good for the cost, you can get this thing for as low as 1$ depending on new account or not, but if not it's less than 5$.
After testing a bit, the popping after you pause a song or when the song ends is more annoying the more sensitive the iems are, so I've tried KZ EDX PRO 2 (107 db/mw sensitivity and 23 ohms) and Salnotes Zero (108 db/mw and 32 ohms) and it's a very slight popping, not really annoying, also CCA CA2 (112 db/mw, 23 ohms, really sensitive) and here the popping is definitely more noticeable and annoying, but even with these really sensitive iems, the noise reduction is enough for me to not notice any hissing after the noise reduction happens.
It seems only CS43131 with DRE disabled (still good enough noise floor and SNR at 50mv) and ESS dacs are flawless dacs with sensitive iems, but it also comes at the cost of much higher power consumption. More work needs to be done in the sub 10$ range, but CX31993 is as close as it gets, or Apple Dongle but 0.5 Vrms in europe and crackling in some tests and scenarios.
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HissingFree
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So I tried the cmaj test file with DA06 and this test makes the noise shaping very evident, if you play the test at very low volume, just enough to hear the sound only a tiny bit, you will see how the noise floor is exposed and hissing is revealed the three times there is something going on, but then the hissing just disappears with a bit of popping each time there is silence in the test. I seem to hear it much more clearly from the right side, though, no idea if it's because the DAC's noise floor is worse in the right channel or if my hearing is worse in the left. Salnotes Zero is enough to expose this, we are not talking about unusually sensitive iems here.
The same thing happens with Jcally JM6 Pro, but from a much higher level, extreme hissing in the budy sections and the noise floor is just reduced a bit in the silence sections, hissing is still very obvious even when the signal level is really low and there is silence in the song. This thing is probably a sub 70db SNR at 50mV without this trick.
So all in all, it's just not true that standalone CX31993 without the opamp is dead silent with sensitive iems, it is just using tricks to hide the noise floor quickly, after about 100-200ms of the signal level getting really low, but at the end of the day, all these cheap dacs, like CX31993, CB1200AU, KT02H20 etc are just very far from DRE off CS43131, ESS, etc, all these dacs are just flawed and have one issue or another, but I think this one is the best if you don't care about integrated EQ and also want very low power consumption.
Also interesting that, based on all the devices I've tried and relating them to the numbers I've seen published in reviews in terms of noise floor and SNR at 50mV, it seems around 80db is the cutoff point for these standard sensitivity iems (107-108 db/mW, 16-32 ohm) to not expose the noise floor, CX31993 trick lowers noise floor by about 5db according to testing that was done in this forum.
So since CX31993 with trick is around 81-82db SNR at 50mV from the tests and approximations I've seen, without the trick it would fall below the 80db mark and the noise floor is exposed.
The same thing happens with Jcally JM6 Pro, but from a much higher level, extreme hissing in the budy sections and the noise floor is just reduced a bit in the silence sections, hissing is still very obvious even when the signal level is really low and there is silence in the song. This thing is probably a sub 70db SNR at 50mV without this trick.
So all in all, it's just not true that standalone CX31993 without the opamp is dead silent with sensitive iems, it is just using tricks to hide the noise floor quickly, after about 100-200ms of the signal level getting really low, but at the end of the day, all these cheap dacs, like CX31993, CB1200AU, KT02H20 etc are just very far from DRE off CS43131, ESS, etc, all these dacs are just flawed and have one issue or another, but I think this one is the best if you don't care about integrated EQ and also want very low power consumption.
Also interesting that, based on all the devices I've tried and relating them to the numbers I've seen published in reviews in terms of noise floor and SNR at 50mV, it seems around 80db is the cutoff point for these standard sensitivity iems (107-108 db/mW, 16-32 ohm) to not expose the noise floor, CX31993 trick lowers noise floor by about 5db according to testing that was done in this forum.
So since CX31993 with trick is around 81-82db SNR at 50mV from the tests and approximations I've seen, without the trick it would fall below the 80db mark and the noise floor is exposed.
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sound_judgment
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New here so I didn't want to start a whole new thread for this, but I'm currently in this search and feeling a bit at wit's end. I have Beyerdynamic MMX 330 PRO headphones. I've never had a DAC before, but my goals here are to solve a bit of a noise floor issue with the mic, ensure I'm getting the most out of sound quality, and make switching between my MacBook and Windows laptop a little easier. Ideally all without breaking the bank. Here's what I've tried so far:
- Apple USB-C to 3.5mm - sounded fine, portable, cheap, but introduced this high-pitched whine to all my recordings, so it's sadly unusable for my purposes. Bummer.
- Fosi K7 - solved the mic noise floor issue, no whine, but after two hours swapping between the K7, Apple dongle, and plugging the headphones straight into the 3.5mm jacks while testing with high-quality FLAC files and games like Marathon, the difference in sound quality was barely noticeable even when actively listening for it. My hearing is good, so maybe I'm being overly skeptical to avoid placebo, but for $200 and not portable, I needed the sound quality to be a noticeable step up in casual listening to justify it. I've seen a few reviews mention that the MMX 330 PRO headphones don't really need an amp though, so perhaps that's part of it.
- Hidizs SD2 - again not a significant change in sound quality, but it solved the mic issues and is extremely portable. However, the design blocks the other ports on my laptops and it's so aggressive with power saving/thermal management that it shuts off nearly the instant there's no audio playing, so whenever audio does play, I miss the first couple seconds of it. Two very frustrating flaws.
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"Keep using the laptop ports until you hear something (which may be never)" sounds like a fine option to me in your case. Most people buying dongles are not replacing an onboard headphone jack, they're adding one where none exist using the dongle to smartphones and the like.
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sound_judgment
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Yeah, in terms of sound quality, I'm happy with the laptop ports and don't need more volume, but unfortunately I still need something because of the noise floor issue with the mic. Additionally, when plugged in via 3.5mm on my MacBook, for some reason I have zero control over input volume with these headphones. Doesn't matter what I've set the value to; it's just super loud until I lower it to about 3%, then nothing at all. Plugging in via USB-C fixes that immediately.
The reason I'm going for a dongle is because it seems cheaper and far more portable. My Windows machine and MacBook are rarely in the same place so a single desktop solution doesn't really work, whereas just leaving a dongle connected to my headphones is ideal. I really wish the Apple dongle didn't introduce that whine. I don't get it.
The reason I'm going for a dongle is because it seems cheaper and far more portable. My Windows machine and MacBook are rarely in the same place so a single desktop solution doesn't really work, whereas just leaving a dongle connected to my headphones is ideal. I really wish the Apple dongle didn't introduce that whine. I don't get it.
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Frankly, if you're not too critical of the sound quality on the listening side, I would suggest simply spamming all the no-name sub-10usd dongles out there that are the right form factor until one lands the punch
staticV3
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Edition XS has 110dB SPL/1V at 14Ω.
A single-ended SGM8262 dongle (e.g. JM20MAX) can output 2V into 14Ω, hence 116dB SPL with the Edition XS.
A differential SGM8262 DAC (e.g. FiiO KA15), with a differential headphone cable for the XS, can output 2.6V into 14Ω, hence 118dB SPL.
For reference, I rarely listen louder than 90dB SPL Peak.
The Edition XS + SGM8262 can play about 7x louder than that.
___ | <- my usual loudness |
____________________ | <- Maximum loudness of Edition XS + SGM8262 |
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yeah seems pretty loud enough. i kinda want to return my L30ii and just get a SGM8262 based dac.
isnt the edition xs 18Ω?
staticV3
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wow that is pretty low.
staticV3
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14Ω is not a problem:
FIIO KA15 Portable DAC & Headphone Amp Review
Important Update (8/1/25) FiiO is the first audio company reacting to the issue of DRE-induced distortion associated with the CS431xx chips! A new firmware release for the FiiO KA15 supports an option to enable or disable DRE. With this firmware installed, it does not exhibit distortion behavior...
www.audiosciencereview.com
(Unofficial) Review of JCALLY JM20 MAX: USB-C Headphone Dongle with High Unbalanced Output Power
Introduction Presented here is a review of the JCally JM20 Max based on detailed measurements. This DAC/headphone dongle has some features that piqued my curiosity: It is a USB dongle that claims to provide relatively high unbalanced output power (195 mW @ 32 Ohm per channel), which is rare...
www.audiosciencereview.com
JCALLY JM20 MAX Headphone Dongle Review
This is a review and detailed measurements of the JCALLY JM20MAX DAC and portable headphone amplifier. It was sent to me by Crinacle. Cost is anywhere from US $22 to $65 :eek:. The dongle has a bit of style to it with that logo and such. Otherwise it is well, a dongle. :) Key thing is how it...
www.audiosciencereview.com
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