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Leckerton Audio UHA-6S.MKII Portable DAC & Amp Review

Rate this portable DAC & HP Amp:

  • 1. Poor (headless panther)

    Votes: 125 77.2%
  • 2. Not terrible (postman panther)

    Votes: 31 19.1%
  • 3. Fine (happy panther)

    Votes: 4 2.5%
  • 4. Great (golfing panther)

    Votes: 2 1.2%

  • Total voters
    162
We seriously need a "…WTF" vote option for rubbish like this.
 
I bought one of these many years ago and soon thereafter threw it away. I had hoped to use it when traveling to boost headphones played from an iPod. As I recall, it didn’t seem to do anything. I remember corresponding with the owner of the company, who I think at the time was building these as a side-hustle from a regular engineering job.

This was after I had bought a similar little doodad at the very dawn of the iPod era from Ray Samuels Audio, also not effective, and a PITA because the tiny battery cover retaining screws would easily be lost. It sits in a drawer somewhere with a loose backplate. Also, it had a loud, scratchy volume knob that grated, and which the maker informed was normal behavior. Well, okay, but it still sucked.

I gave up buying portables for years afterwards until Fiio came around, and theirs was far better for a fraction of the price. Soon thereafter, though, I could get a bedside Topping unit which blew the portables away, and iPads powered IEMs well enough to let me skip the portable outboard amp when traveling.
 
I can see this as a rationale for a device like this. But . . . from a Marie Kondo standpoint; wouldn't an external battery pack for your phone reduce the in hand clutter?
That makes much more sense to me. There are many good ones out there, from Anker and others.
 
From the product manual;

View attachment 394484


JSmith
+/-6 V supply rails > consistent with the 55mW @ 300 Ohms spec. But only 30mW @ 16 Ohms ??? :rolleyes:
Are the op-amps that limited in current capacity? Is it an hyper-aggressive internal protection?
Seems rather strange…
 
Micro-USB… Must be an old design…
 
Thats strange!

On there page they have a forg above there name. Amir comes up with the cooking panther. And lecker is german and means good tasting. What kinde of conspiracy is this?
 
Hmm.. high performance (fast) op-amps tend to be very fussy about decoupling supplies and input / output capacitance buffereing. I wonder if putting these op-amps on DIP converter boards without on-board components is causing instability.

Amir, if you feel like it, perhaps try putting a good old NE5532 or LM4562 DIP op-amp directly in there and it might run as intended? Just a guess.

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This brings me back to my early days of my audiophile journey... What a throwback! I remember small portable devices like this and the Kingmax UD384 back one the Head-Fi forums. It's pleasant to see that it measures well for the time.
 
Thank You Amirm!

You've really been putting in overtime lately.

And on DAC/amps, the most interesting subject!

Pic not related.
 

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With an iphone the battery is not really needed as you can just use a magsafe battery while using a DAC running from the port/OTG cable. I use this setup for listening to music or streaming stored video on planes.
 
I did some research, it was harder than expected, but this DAC/amp was released in 2012. Considering that, I think it offered great performance and utility back then. And I think the review should include that info.
 
I think it would be really interesting to have interviews with the people making class leading products, as well as maybe the people producing less so. I am curious what their culture is like internally, what are their goals and current wisdom? Would that dilute the integrity of ASR? There is something sacred about absolute honest testing.
 
I did some research, it was harder than expected, but this DAC/amp was released in 2012. Considering that, I think it offered great performance and utility back then. And I think the review should include that info.
2012 is important, but I can't speak for whether it was great performance back then.
 
2012 was a much different time for portable DAC-amps. Some of the most popular models were the likes of FiiO's E7 and E17, but otherwise there weren't nearly as many mass-market options. The only USB options readily accessible to DIYers and small-scale builders were TI's dated PCM27xx which are limited to 16/48. Remember how the ODAC was not open source as an NDA was required. Modern high-performance DAC + HPA chips didn't really take off until about 2016 (AK4376A, CS43130).

The AD8397 was quite powerful with near rail-to-rail output but a bit of a finicky part if memory serves, and could get unstable unless you gave it some 10 ohm output series resistors.
 
Should've been mentioned in the original post that it's a legacy model imho.
It is for sale now which is all that matters in my book. I am not a historian to go and check for what you say.
 
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