Review and Measurements of AUDIOPHONICS DAC I-Sabre ES9038Q2M

[voodooless]

@Audiophonics looking at these measurements it looks like THD+N is mostly dominated by the performance of < 1 euro NJM 2114 opamps which are spec'd at 0.0005% or -106db. I wonder what replacing these by something better would yield here because otherwise it seems like a very nice implementation.

 

[Audiophonics]

The question is, if I change the volume directly on the Dac, the Arylic board (https://www.arylic.com/products/up2stream-prov2-receiver-board) change the volume as well, or the 2 volume are independent? (Dac is set as slave)

The question is, if I change the volume directly on the Dac, the Arylic board (https://www.arylic.com/products/up2stream-prov2-receiver-board) change the volume as well, or the 2 volume are independent? (Dac is set as slave)

No problem to control the DAC with an arduino, but from Arylic I don't think it's possible.
The Arylic should have fixed I2S output, and send the volume information by I2C, UART to be read by arduino.

I think that up2stream PRO use software volume, it mean that it reduce volume by shifting I2S bits.

In this configuration (without preamp) could be better have 2vrsm as output of the Dac, if I change the resistors as suggested, I will have some performances decrease in terms of quality or this modification could be used as best practice to have 2vrms as output?
Why you have choose to not provide 2vrms out of the box?
Is it the schematic of this board available?

You can increase output level to 2Vrms without quality problem, we choosen 1.5Vrms / 2V peak arbitrarily.
We will surely produce next batch with 2Vrms.
No schematic available.

ps: you have several chinese dac boards listed on Audiophonics Website, could be really useful provide the test benchmark for these items as well. It’s really difficult find any impartial reviews for these board, and could help a lot for diyer that wants use it for build something good.

Some has been tested here, but there are so many ... we don't plan to test them, we don't have the right measure device, and not enough time/ressources for that.

 

[Surfparadise]

Thank you very much for your answers.

So if I buy this Dac board, and I don’t want use the volume control via i2c, by default It is set at 100% and I will control the volume via the Arylic board, it isn’t?

 

[Audiophonics]

Yes it will stay at 100%
If you want to control hardware volume from DLNA source with this DAC, the only solution I know is to use a RPI.

 

[Surfparadise]

Thanks. So with the right driver you can control the volume via i2s, like with rpi?

In the next batch could I suggest to change the spdif input with the toslink? It is more popular than spdif.

 

[Audiophonics]

Yes exactly.

It works like that on this kit :

https://www.audiophonics.fr/fr/lect...our-raspberry-pi-4-dac-es9038q2m-p-14577.html

Not on the next batch (it's not planned anytime soon since the next gen is out) :

https://www.audiophonics.fr/fr/dac-...9038q2m-usb-rpi-spdif-bt-xlr-rca-p-14562.html

 

[voodooless]

Why does the 7 tone look like that? clipping?

Any idea about this? Seems like an odd measurement if you look at the rest of the data and also what other comparable DAC's with the same chip do, for instance the Loxjie D10.

 

[HAL]

Hello,
For the measurements, what filter setting is selected for the ES9038Q2M DAC?

 

[Jungstar]

I bought this, I really like it with Volumio. My GF also likes that it pairs well with her iPhone.
I'm pairing it with a pair of JBL 308p and a 10" JBL sub.
Clearly better than my former Alexa Echo Link DAC.

 

[Jungstar]

Into volumio ES9028 driver do not load correctly, this overlay was made for their 9028, but driver files are not loaded into the image.

You can activate our driver into all distributions by manually add to config.txt :
dtoverlay=i-sabre-q2m

Or for Volumio, you can update DAC list : (Top of Readme)
https://github.com/audiophonics/Volumio2_I-sabre9028_plugin

In Volumio there is only the 9028 Driver? Is that not working correctly? How can I activate a driver for 9038?

 

[Audiophonics]

In Volumio there is only the 9028 Driver? Is that not working correctly? How can I activate a driver for 9038?

Hi,
It's exactly the same driver, no need to upgrade.

 

[Jungstar]

Hi,
It's exactly the same driver, no need to upgrade.

thanks for the answer! there are actually two possible drivers in Volumio.
- Audiophonics iSabre ES9028Q2M
- Volumio ESS 9028
Which one?

 

[Audiophonics]

thanks for the answer! there are actually two possible drivers in Volumio.
- Audiophonics iSabre ES9028Q2M
- Volumio ESS 9028
Which one?

Use the first one

 

[MalinYamato]

Doesn't this have MQA or are there any PI hats or PI hat stuff that has MQA decoding?

 

[Audiophonics]

Doesn't this have MQA or are there any PI hats or PI hat stuff that has MQA decoding?

Hi, no no MQA support and no plan to add it in the futur on any of our products.

 

[MalinYamato]

Hi, no no MQA support and no plan to add it in the futur on any of our products.

LOL, funny, I just bought a Kadhas Tone Board 2 Pro from your store in France that I'll use as a DAC connected to my PI, that will feed my AMP. It is not a hat but small, and inside the case it looks like a hat with all the 40 GPIO pins. Perhaps I can remove the case and put it on my PI as a hat?

 

[Audiophonics]

I was talking about or own product range.

Full MQA decoding is achieved by using the extra power provided by the XMOS XU216 USB input board.

it's not gonna work the same way with an I2S input (GPIO pins)

 

[somebodyelse]

LOL, funny, I just bought a Kadhas Tone Board 2 Pro from your store in France that I'll use as a DAC connected to my PI, that will feed my AMP. It is not a hat but small, and inside the case it looks like a hat with all the 40 GPIO pins. Perhaps I can remove the case and put it on my PI as a hat?

View attachment 172565

I don't think they've released the pinout for the GPIO unfortunately, but it's almost certainly built to match their VIM compute boards like the first Tone Board was. It may be 40 pins, but it's a different pinout to the Raspberry Pi GPIO so you can't use it like a HAT.

 

[MalinYamato]

I don't think they've released the pinout for the GPIO unfortunately, but it's almost certainly built to match their VIM compute boards like the first Tone Board was. It may be 40 pins, but it's a different pinout to the Raspberry Pi GPIO so you can't use it like a HAT.

that's a pity because putting it on a pi would make a very compact and neat solution. How about not using any of the pins on the GPIO and then simply connecting the Tone board USB C to the USB A of the pi for MQA? Thus, the GPIO pins are only for keeping the Tone board on the pi.

 

[somebodyelse]

that's a pity because putting it on a pi would make a very compact and neat solution. How about not using any of the pins on the GPIO and then simply connecting the Tone board USB C to the USB A of the pi for MQA? Thus, the GPIO pins are only for keeping the Tone board on the pi.

You can certainly mount them very close, and use a short USB cable to connect them. I'm not sure how you intend to use the pins to keep the board on the pi without making an electrical connection. Making some form of mounting bracket to use the mounting holes seems a better bet to me.