Review and Measurements of Budget ($20) DACs

[Lal Beikh]

Hi there,

I know this post is rather old, but i was planning to purchase the Fii0 D03k, but im abit confused on the versioning as some advice not to buy the v2, which is gold plated RCA.

The reason of my purchase is to convert my Sharp BD-AMS10U Blu-ray output from its optical cable to RCA, not sure if it is worth it. The HDMI basically is no more functioning, and im using the unit for CD player only.

Hope anybody can share thier opinion, much appreciated. Tq

 

[Andersonix]

This is not in response to anyone in particular, but last month I tried the Fiio D03K and found it to sound harsh, even after running it 5 days straight. Maybe not a fair comparison, but I compared the D03K via the optical (and USB power) out from my MBP against the USB out to my Objective DAC (ODAC), and after switching back and forth a few times, it became easier to hear the harshness. It has a decent output level for a 5V DAC, but I was hoping it would sound better, even for just $17, and I sent it back.

 

[Fohdeesha]

I was needing a relatively cheap SPDIF > RCA DAC to get analog out from a communal basement TV, and took a shot on the FiiO D3. I have a pretty low noise / high SNR Motu Ultralite here, so I figured I'd test the thing quick and dirty before installing it. The good news is it seems they fixed the weird ringing/aliasing at 48khz sampling rates. I could *not* reproduce the broken 48khz behavior Amir demonstrated in this original post.

Both tests had the D3 powered via the included USB power brick, and the display is set to linear instead of logarithmic to match Amir's graph setup on page 1. Tones at half the sampling frequency were used just like Amir's test as well (11khz for 44.1khz sampling and 14khz for 48khz sampling). Here's the result feeding it 44.1khz (ignore the 0.000% THD, Arta does not seem to like displaying THD in linear display mode, THD+N is accurate though):

Now feeding it 48khz:

As you can see there's no longer a huge difference between the two, at least not that I can reproduce. One thing I found interesting was the massive performance drop when powering it with a different USB power device (like my PC desktop for instance), it shows how bad the lack of filtering is on these (which is to be expected for $19). back to the regular logarithmic scale graphs, 44.1khz 1khz test tone, using the included usb power dongle:

Not bad for $20 I suppose, but what if you power it via a noisier USB source, like a desktop PC? -

....woof

 

[watchnerd]

It's still impressive for $20 with the dongle.

Pretty much audibly transparent for the price of a pizza.

 

[DSJR]

Just bought one to try. 'Sounds' absolutely fine here but as I can't hear down at -90dB I suspect it no longer matters (I've been satisfied with the audio output of a CCA, so I'm not so fussy these days). It's currently powered by the PC, but I have plug-top USB supplies to use instead if necessary. Here, no harshness I could notice (my ears still allow me to hear that if it's there) and bass was fine as well. early days, but it sits down the back out of the way and well, just works... It'll do me in the second system.