FiiO KA11 Portable DAC/Amp Review

[CedarX]

I don’t think DRE is bad, as a technical solution to improve DR. The issue with Cirrus Logic approach is: 1/ They used an aggressive DRE scheme to “improve” their old CS4398 DAC, as opposed to work on more fundamental architecture improvements—the lipstick on the mythical pig. And 2/ They were not exactly forthcoming. Apparently, most of the OEMs didn’t know or didn’t understand the feature, and were using Cirrus aggressive default settings. And because many of these OEMs are not that thorough, they never noticed the clicks and other artifacts (to the OEMs defense, it was largely unnoticed in the audiophile community).