This is a review and detailed measurements of the Loxjie D40 stereo DAC with Bluetooth and headphone amplifier. It was sent to me by the company and costs US $430.
I like the design -- it reminds me of some European brands. Bright white LED display is highly responsive as is the rotary controller. I expect and am happy to see built-in power supply in this price class:
Loxjie D40 DAC Measurements
Let's start with our usual dashboard using USB input and XLR connection:
This is stellar performance with distortion at -140 dB and noise floor that is almost falling off the bottom of the chart! No wonder then that the D40 ranks as the forth best DAC I have ever measured:
RCA output performance is nearly as good:
Dynamic range as we could predict is excellent:
IMD performance is excellent other than a small indication of "ESS DAC IMD Hump:"
Linearity is textbook perfect:
Multitone results is superb:
Jitter performance over USB is excellent as well:
Toslink and Coax add some low frequency benign jitter:
Three filters are provided:
Attenuation is quite high which helps when we perform wideband THD+N measurements:
Loxjie D40 Headphone Measurements
Let's start with 50 mv and full output SNR:
The former is slightly below average:
Fortunately there is good amount of power with very low noise and distortion in general:
Notice lack of clipping. This means any distortion you hear is in the headphone or the content!
Loxjie D40 Listening Tests
I performed my testing with my Sennheiser HD650 and Drop Ether CX which are at different ends of the impedance spectrum. There was plenty of volume driving both with superbly clean sound. Driving my everyday Dan Clark Stealth headphone was also satisfying but due to its lower sensitivity, the D40 could not drive it to its maximum volume.
Conclusions
Playing at this level of performance is not easy: tons of attention needs to be paid to circuit design and layout to stomp any and all sources of noise and distortion. Other than leaving some ESS IMD distortion on the table, the D40 performs superbly in DAC department. The headphone output while not at the same level, still provides excellent performance and volume level.
I like the physical design which sets itself apart from the competition while being very performant to user input.
It is my pleasure to recommend the Loxjie D40 DAC and Headphone Amplifier.
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As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.
Any donations are much appreciated using: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/
I like the design -- it reminds me of some European brands. Bright white LED display is highly responsive as is the rotary controller. I expect and am happy to see built-in power supply in this price class:
Loxjie D40 DAC Measurements
Let's start with our usual dashboard using USB input and XLR connection:
This is stellar performance with distortion at -140 dB and noise floor that is almost falling off the bottom of the chart! No wonder then that the D40 ranks as the forth best DAC I have ever measured:
RCA output performance is nearly as good:
Dynamic range as we could predict is excellent:
IMD performance is excellent other than a small indication of "ESS DAC IMD Hump:"
Linearity is textbook perfect:
Multitone results is superb:
Jitter performance over USB is excellent as well:
Toslink and Coax add some low frequency benign jitter:
Three filters are provided:
Attenuation is quite high which helps when we perform wideband THD+N measurements:
Loxjie D40 Headphone Measurements
Let's start with 50 mv and full output SNR:
The former is slightly below average:
Fortunately there is good amount of power with very low noise and distortion in general:
Notice lack of clipping. This means any distortion you hear is in the headphone or the content!
Loxjie D40 Listening Tests
I performed my testing with my Sennheiser HD650 and Drop Ether CX which are at different ends of the impedance spectrum. There was plenty of volume driving both with superbly clean sound. Driving my everyday Dan Clark Stealth headphone was also satisfying but due to its lower sensitivity, the D40 could not drive it to its maximum volume.
Conclusions
Playing at this level of performance is not easy: tons of attention needs to be paid to circuit design and layout to stomp any and all sources of noise and distortion. Other than leaving some ESS IMD distortion on the table, the D40 performs superbly in DAC department. The headphone output while not at the same level, still provides excellent performance and volume level.
I like the physical design which sets itself apart from the competition while being very performant to user input.
It is my pleasure to recommend the Loxjie D40 DAC and Headphone Amplifier.
-----------
As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.
Any donations are much appreciated using: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/
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