D&A Alpha DAC & HP Amp Review

[Robbo99999]

I voted it at Fine, just because I think there are cheaper better performing options as long as you don't need quite as much headphone power output. I don't think you can really say there's anything wrong with this product though!

 

[shuppatsu]

There's little chance I would be able to hear this distortion, but since we tend to judge based on engineering prowess, this one-channel distortion hump seems to be the kind of thing we'd rake the likes of Schiit over.

 

[sansenri]

seems like a very nice piece of kit performance wise (thanks for testing Amir), but I beg to differ from many of you... it looks so ugly!

 

[Chazz6]

Too many good choices for DAC/HP amp. Wish it had PEQ settings...

Yup. You can find an RME ADI FS 2 DAC for about 50% more $. It has a five-band PEQ (and Loudness and channel balance), which I find very helpful to get the most out of my speakers in my listening room.

 

[totti1965]

Gawd that thing looks awful - designed for old wealthy men with 'something missing' in their lives, I suspect..... There are way OTT wrist-watches costing mega-mega-bucks that offer similar over-complexity to suit a particular mindset

Gives a big smile on my face! There is some truth in your words.
But I like this complex design.
What I, the old, but non welthy man, don´t like, is, that the optical design of the Power amp doesn´t fit at all
to the beautiful and much simpler optical designed DAC which they build.

The best thing: stereophile found out, the amp is not neutral at all:
But the slight Bass boost if the loudnes is at - 20 dB may please many old wealthy men......

Fig.3 HiFi Rose RA180, normal mode, frequency response at 2.83V into 8 ohms with volume control set to the maximum (left channel green, right gray) and with subsonic filter activated (left cyan, right magenta), and with volume control set to –20dB (left blue, right red) (1dB/vertical div.).

 

[dananski]

Wow, eight slices. That is one fancy toaster.

 

[AdrianusG]

Wow, eight slices. That is one fancy toaster.

 

[Fomalhaut]

SMSL skinned version belike

 

[danadam]

Full attenuation at 24kHz means that aliases only occur above 20kHz.

It's a DAC, not ADC, so there are no aliases. There are images, a copy of 20k-22k that lands at 22k-24k. But because there's not much content in 20k-22k and the copy is attenuated by at least 10 dB, that shouldn't be much of a problem.

 

[Chanur]

I can't see any reason to buy the pro over this for headphones use. I also really like the look. I might add it to my pokemon stack for that price.

 

[totti1965]

I can't see any reason to buy the pro over this for headphones use. I also really like the look. I might add it to my pokemon stack for that price.

AFAIK: The difference is that the pro has also an analog input, which is handy, if you have a separate Record Player (+ Phono Pre) or any other analog device which you want to connect with your set-up.

 

[Proud Audiophile]

The tests are great but but I would like to see more about the feature set. Does it have a remote? How would it be at driving a power amp directly? Will it sound better than my Benchmark DAC3HGC? Could anyone tell a difference? What about the build quality or the manufactures reliability, support and warranty service? So in this day and age when all the best products test far beyond human hearing (i think), features, support and build quality become the reason for a purchase not all out performance so I would like to see a little more information in this regard if the review is intended to aid my purchase decision. Cheers.