This is a review and detailed measurements of the EarMen Tradutto stereo DAC. It is on kind loan from a member and costs US $770 from the company direct.
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The Tradutto is extremely heavy for its size, having been machined out of solid metal. The corners are a bit sharp though for my taste. A chunky machined remote is also included:
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The remote is rechargeable which is nice. What is not nice is that it has no volume controls (nor does the unit itself) so I don't know about its usefulness. On a desk I can just hit the same buttons myself. Another odd thing is using 4.4mm pentacon for balanced output. This kind of connector is use for balanced headphone output sometimes but hardly ever for line out. Sadly the company doesn't include an adapter for it to dual XLR.
Out of the box, one RCA channel was not working. I could feel the connector moving left and right and I could briefly get it to work if I held on to the cable. The other one did not feel very secure either.
EarMen Tradutto Measurements
Let's start with RCA output:
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As you see, one channel is dead. That aside, note that the output is nearly 2.2 volts meaning it will be louder when you compare it to vast majority of DACs out there that output 2 volts. In subjective testing this could cause people to think the fidelity is better for Tradutto even though it is not.
I used a Frankenstein pair of adapters to go from Pentacon to 4-pin XLR and from there, to two 3-pin XLRs:
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Company specs the output to be 4 volts but I am only getting 2.2 volts. Not sure if this is a problem with the unit or the adapter I have.
Distortion dominates the SINAD score, landing an average rating:
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In its price range though, competitors do far, far better.
Dynamic range is along the same lines:
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Multitone performance is decent:
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Intermodulation distortion vs level shows classic ESS DAC IMD "hump" which other companies have solved for a long time now:
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I expect a perfect response in this price class when it comes to jitter but we don't get it:
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Linearity is also non-competitive:
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There is only one filter and its response is poor:
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This causes THD+N vs frequency to look really bad at low sampling rates:
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Increasing the sample rate to 192 kHz eliminates the effect of the filter but still leaves us with non-competitive performance.
Finally to squash any comments about tonality being different, here is the frequency response:
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Conclusions
A no frills desktop DAC with near perfect objective measurements goes for $150 or even less these days. The Tradutto charges five times as much but delivers worse performance. Money was spent on case and such which don't add value to performance of the unit. And frankly don't make it look any nicer either. Functionality is poor as far as lack of volume control. There is not one thing you can hang your hat on that would say you should buy this device. In a competitive market, it has no place.
I can't recommend EarMen Tradutto DAC. Company needs to do far better to improve performance and functionality.
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