Gustard X16 Balanced MQA DAC Review

[Veri]

I purchased Topping's DX3 Pro, D50, D50s, DX7s, E30, D30 Pro and SMSL's SU-8, M500 with reference to the ASR data. But none of the products played the music normally. All the products had serious defects.

Serious defects, like popping noises? Not everyone will have serious problems with this though. It will also depends a lot on final listening set-up..

I bought a Gustardx16 and from the get go it had a intermittent clicking sound. I have checked with Apos Audio and they have stated that they have discontinued this item. Amazon don't stock this dac as well. I think Amirm should makes these checks before giving a dac or product his recommendation. I think he is being quiet nieve to accept a product from a manufacturer and then promote it without doing a simple check with a company like Apos. It could also give the impression that he is receiving kick backs for doing so.

Apos no longer sells Gustard. The product itself is not discontinued as far as I am aware of. Also note the ongoing worldwide supply chain problems..

 

[Toku]

Serious defects, like popping noises? Not everyone will have serious problems with this though. It will also depends a lot on final listening set-up..

I criticize the lack of quality evaluation of Chinese companies' products.
When designing a product, there are more or less failures. But in recent situations, there are too many things that have forgotten the basics.

 

[THW]

I criticize the lack of quality evaluation of Chinese companies' products.
When designing a product, there are more or less failures. But in recent situations, there are too many things that have forgotten the basics.

FWIW, my DX3 Pro V1 generally works quite well even after like, 3 years?

 

[Addy]

I am new for DAC but woukd like to have one, under decision between smsl du-9 vs Gustard X16 , please advise.

 

[Pdxwayne]

I bought a Gustardx16 and from the get go it had a intermittent clicking sound. I have checked with Apos Audio and they have stated that they have discontinued this item. Amazon don't stock this dac as well. I think Amirm should makes these checks before giving a dac or product his recommendation. I think he is being quiet nieve to accept a product from a manufacturer and then promote it without doing a simple check with a company like Apos. It could also give the impression that he is receiving kick backs for doing so.

When Amir first recommended this product, it was available for sale via Apos and Amazon. I got mine from Apos.

Do you really expect Amir to follow up with sales availability of every single item he reviewed many months later?

 

[Toku]

FWIW, my DX3 Pro V1 generally works quite well even after like, 3 years?

I bought two DX3 Pro V1s after they were released. And these are working fine now. And one of my favorite products.
The problem I have is the process of getting such stable operation.
If we had taken a little more consideration into the product evaluation test before the product was released, we should have been able to avoid the initial trivial troubles.
Fortunately, Topping has a good mechanism to listen to various opinions of users seriously. On the other hand, some companies do not listen to users at all.

 

[frankh]

I'm still waiting for Gustard X16 driver update for Windows 10. It's high time for them to fix some issues with the current driver such as occasional stuttering audio. I do not experience such issues with my other DACs.

 

[Ashley Salmond]

When Amir first recommended this product, it was available for sale via Apos and Amazon. I got mine from Apos.

Do you really expect Amir to follow up with sales availability of every single item he reviewed many months later?

Hi Friend, my post is to make the point that when you make a statement, and I quote " I strongly recommend the Gustardx16 " then you are suffering an Illusion of Measurement as the product has been pulled from the self due to complaints. Or that Amir is getting paid to promote products or he is naive, or he needs to be more through before making recommendation. Or at the very least update and change his conclusion so people like myself who trusted him don't have to experience disappointment. I was before reading his review going to buy the SMSl su9. In conclusion and my recommendation is take the review of the site at the very least or at change his approach in appraising.

 

[Ashley Salmond]

I criticize the lack of quality evaluation of Chinese companies' products.
When designing a product, there are more or less failures. But in recent situations, there are too many things that have forgotten the basics.

Hi Toku, I have cheaper 5.1decoder with arc that has just as good of quality in regard to reproduce the analogue sound.

 

[Ashley Salmond]

This is a review and detailed measurements of the just announced Gustard X16 Balanced USB DAC with hardware decoding. It was kindly sent to me for testing by SHENZHENAUDIO. The X16 costs US $499.

The X16 is based on the new ESS ES9068AS DAC which has built-in hardware decoding of MQA bitstream. Until now, this was performed upstream of the DAC but now the functionality is core to the DAC chip itself.

The X16 has a solid feel to it but doesn't distinguish itself from other desktop DACs:

View attachment 92496

While a remote control is provided, navigation is easy enough using the rotary control and center button. I like the informative display but as with other Gustard products, I question showing the volume level in such tiny letters. It needs to be center and large with the sample rate shown small.

Back panel shows the usual connection including Bluetooth:

View attachment 92497

Like the nice gold plated connectors.

Gustard X16 Measurements
Let's open the show with our usual dashboard:
View attachment 92498

Wow! I must say, I did not know in advance they were shooting for the moon this way. This is superb performance in a $500 package, placing the X16 second in the list of all DACs tested ever:
View attachment 92499

Here is our top 10 list:

View attachment 92500

So little separates these DACs from each other.

Here is the performance of the RCA output:

View attachment 92501

In both cases, full audible transparency is achieved and then some. Sum of noise+distortion is well below the self-noise of our ears.

Signal to noise ratio is wonderful:

View attachment 92502

If you have noise in your system, this is NOT the place to look!

Intermodulation distortion vs level shows a bit of our famous "ESS IMD Hump" which we discovered two years ago:
View attachment 92503

Shame on ESS for not helping its licensees solve this issue across the board. Fortunately the impact here is very small and it really shows up because the system noise floor is so low.

Jitter and spurious tones are almost nonexistent (difficult in a low noise DAC) and this is even true of Coax input which these days is typically neglected:
View attachment 92504

Intermodulation distortion using our 32-tone test is extremely low:
View attachment 92644

THD+N versus frequency where a lot of DACs fail is excellent as well:
View attachment 92506

This is partially due to good filtering of which only three are available:
View attachment 92508

Did ESS take out the other options or did Gustard? Either way, it is fine by me. I used L Fast for my testing by the way. Default is M Slow I think. Wonder if that is also the MQA filter?

Linearity which is a test of accuracy was the most perfect I have seen:
View attachment 92509

This thing glued itself to the 0 dB error line like nobody's business!

Conclusions
The Gustard X16 comes in an unassuming package making you think you have bought a mid-priced DAC. But looks are deceiving as it produces some of the best measurements I have seen out of some 350+ DACs I have tested! Talk about getting ready to battle with the best of the best. Yes, there is a hint of ESS IMD Hump but it is not excessive enough for me to worry about it although I hope they look at eliminating this.

It is my pleasure to strongly recommend the Gustard X16 MQA DAC.

------------
As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.

Appreciate any donations using: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/

Hi Amir, why don't you take this recommendation down.

 

[frankh]

Hi Friend, my post is to make the point that when you make a statement, and I quote " I strongly recommend the Gustardx16 " then you are suffering an Illusion of Measurement as the product has been pulled from the self due to complaints. Or that Amir is getting paid to promote products or he is naive, or he needs to be more through before making recommendation. Or at the very least update and change his conclusion so people like myself who trusted him don't have to experience disappointment. I was before reading his review going to buy the SMSl su9. In conclusion and my recommendation is take the review of the site at the very least or at change his approach in appraising.

As far as I know, Amirm never forced anyone to purchase any equipment, he merely gives an honest opinion based on his own effort to test the product. I bought my X16 based on his recommendation even though there are some Win 10 driver issues that causes audio to stutter occasionally. That is not Amirm's fault, Gustard has to do their part to support their customers....not Amirm.

 

[Reynaldo]

Here as I use IOs on a Mac Mini together with Audirvana v3.5, the X16 is perfect.
Windows 10 in my opinion is very bad for audio.
f anyone wants Windows the best is Server 2019.
With Windows 10 I always had Ploc problem. Then I tested Server 2019 and it didn't happen anymore.

Windows for audio never again.

 

[wisechoice]

For what it's worth, I can also confirm the DSD crackling issue that others have reported here. Problem appears on Mac and Windows. I tested the Gustard in Audirvana, Colibri, Roon on the Mac, and foobar2000 in Windows. It's especially noticeable in very quiet or nearly silent passages, and it's fairly distracting unless you're listening at lower, background music levels. It's especially distracting with headphones.

My Onyx doesn't exhibit these issues on iPhone or Mac with the same track. To try and get a handle on what was happening, I recorded a track into my Scarlett 2i4 (2nd gen) from both the Gustard X16 and the Onyx, and analyzed it with MusicScope. With the Gustard, you can clearly see the light blue area at the end of the track (audible as crackling/static) right across the spectrum while the music is fading out, as well as the trace of a slightly elevated noise floor and non-uniform noise (most visible outside the audible range in the higher frequencies).

Just in case, I also analyzed the DSD file itself, which shows none of the issues the Gustard X16 does.

Pretty disappointing.

 

[wisechoice]

I also bought this in part based on Amir's recommendation. It would be good if he could add a note to the review about these issues. It's a pretty significant flaw in the device.

 

[0ldSchool]

Saw that too and ordered from Apos

APOS has just quit carrying the Gustard X16. They wrote me 06/21/21 saying this:

"Hi Keith,
Happy Monday!

This is Shiela from the Support team @ Apos Audio. Our apologies for not being able to respond to you right away.

Thank you for writing in! With a sad heart, we have decided to mark the Gustard lineup as sold out. For the time being, we do not plan to carry the Gustard X16 MQA DAC anymore.

You may want to consider other product offers we have like the Topping D90SE DAC, Topping D70s MQA, or the SMSL SU-9. These units are of higher quality product with noticeably better sound quality and reliability."

[I corrected Sheila's statement/assumption by sending her Bob Stuart's treatises on the differences between MQA rendering, decoding, and FULL HARDWARE decoding, with a suggestion she review the differences before saying something like "higher quality product with noticeably better sound quality and reliability." The sales hype makes me tired - and sales is how I made an honest living for 33 years.] I had already ordered an SMSL SD-9 from APOS before the above exchange.

 

[amirm]

I think he is being quiet nieve to accept a product from a manufacturer and then promote it without doing a simple check with a company like Apos.

Company did NOT send me this DAC. I don't even know anyone there. One of their online sellers, Shenzhenaudio sent it to me as I clearly noted in the review:

This is a review and detailed measurements of the just announced Gustard X16 Balanced USB DAC with hardware decoding. It was kindly sent to me for testing by SHENZHENAUDIO. The X16 costs US $499.

In that regard, they are no different than Apos.

 

[amirm]

Hi Amir, why don't you take this recommendation down.

As I have explained to you multiple times in email across many days, my recommendations are based on measured performance. It is up to you to gather other sources of information for the production reliability and functionality. I am not running the quality assurance department for these companies. No review site is like that. If something fails during my testing, then I absolutely note it and will not recommend it. But if it functions perfectly and measures the same, it gets a strong recommendation from me.

For your part, you ordered a product from China and then had the natural difficulty of getting post-sale support. There are plenty of western products could have purchased and retails like Amazon with unconditional return policy. But you didn't do that, took on some risk and it cost you. As I have repeatedly told you, I feel bad for you and even offered to refund your donation but that is as far as I can go. I cannot put down products for problems I can't confirm myself or withhold recommendation and wait for things that won't come (e.g. reliability data).

Simply stop reading the site and your problem with me will be solved.

 

[dmac6419]

For what it's worth, I can also confirm the DSD crackling issue that others have reported here. Problem appears on Mac and Windows. I tested the Gustard in Audirvana, Colibri, Roon on the Mac, and foobar2000 in Windows. It's especially noticeable in very quiet or nearly silent passages, and it's fairly distracting unless you're listening at lower, background music levels. It's especially distracting with headphones.

My Onyx doesn't exhibit these issues on iPhone or Mac with the same track. To try and get a handle on what was happening, I recorded a track into my Scarlett 2i4 (2nd gen) from both the Gustard X16 and the Onyx, and analyzed it with MusicScope. With the Gustard, you can clearly see the light blue area at the end of the track (audible as crackling/static) right across the spectrum while the music is fading out, as well as the trace of a slightly elevated noise floor and non-uniform noise (most visible outside the audible range in the higher frequencies).

Just in case, I also analyzed the DSD file itself, which shows none of the issues the Gustard X16 does.

Pretty disappointing.

I have no problem playing DSD or any other files on the Gustard X16,no crackle's,pops or any issues shutting it down.

 

[MaxBuck]

The more problems I read about with Chinese DACs, the happier I am to have purchased the Schiit Modi. Few "features," but performance seems flawless and it just works.

 

[amirm]

The more problems I read about with Chinese DACs, the happier I am to have purchased the Schiit Modi. Few "features," but performance seems flawless and it just works.

We haver had our share of Schiit product issues as well so I would not say they have an advantage there based on history.