Review and Measurements of E1DA 9038S BAL Portable DAC & Amp

[dialogue]

guys can you help me choose, e1da 9038D or Kuang Pai 2 Plus ?
just focus on female 3,5mm/single ended. not the balance.

which one of more powerfull and better technicalities of Single Ended DAC dongle, 9038D or Kuang Pai 2 Plus?

thanks before, for helping me.


nb.
i will use on my smartphone Poco x3 and spotify premium.

 

[Jimbob54]

guys can you help me choose, e1da 9038D or Kuang Pai 2 Plus ?
just focus on female 3,5mm/single ended. not the balance.

which one of more powerfull and better technicalities of Single Ended DAC dongle, 9038D or Kuang Pai 2 Plus?

thanks before, for helping me.


nb.
i will use on my smartphone Poco x3 and spotify premium.

Neither have been measured here but I believe the 9038D will be. On the performance of his previous offering that has been measured plus measurements he has posted plus my experience of it, I would say it is clean and powerful.

Never heard of kuang though.

 

[dialogue]

Nothing much to add after Jim's message, except... if you use headphones (or IEM) that need amping and portability, 9038D will be more than sufficient. Just take care of your hearing, though .
BTW, I found it difficult to even find Kuang Pai 2 Plus on the internet.

thank you very much for the answer. because i try audition of kuang Pai from the selle. is fun musicalis for me. but when i see this forum, from 9038S, i think is like neutral to analytical maybe. superb transparancy, superb micro detil, and Clean.

I dont know if is true or not. but if 9038D is like that, i really really will choose that. because i prefer sound signature like that for my DAC, more than warmish, colorish, fun, musicalis.

kuang pai you can search maybe in chinese forum, or in taobao.

 

[dialogue]

Neither have been measured here but I believe the 9038D will be. On the performance of his previous offering that has been measured plus measurements he has posted plus my experience of it, I would say it is clean and powerful.

Never heard of kuang though.

WOW IF IS CLEAN AND POWERFULL, I WILL CHOOSE 9380D.
THANK you very much for your respons, is so helping me to choose as a buyer.

 

[IVX]

dialogue I did test RT6863D(Kuang Pai 2 Plus uses that) mainland-chinese opamp once and found that unacceptable poor regarding the clipping behavior. Of course, OPA1622 more expensive but it has an ideal clipping. Many DIYers don't care about that, however, an ugly clipping has much more easy hears vs too high THD+N or poor dynamic range.

 

[dialogue]

dialogue I did test RT6863D(Kuang Pai 2 Plus uses that) mainland-chinese opamp once and found that unacceptable poor regarding the clipping behavior. Of course, OPA1622 more expensive but it has an ideal clipping. Many DIYers don't care about that, however, an ugly clipping has much more easy hears vs too high THD+N or poor dynamic range.

thank you very much Ivan for your enlightenment... next week i will recieve my 9038D. i will enjoy. and i hope you can give me, advice-advice for using 9038D. at my smartphone Poco X3. i not use anymore file format like mp3, flac, wav, etc since this year.

i just use spotify premium. i hope i can use maximum from 9038D, for my player and source. thx

 

[parrot5]

is the Tempotec V1 player able to use the hardware volume control of the E1DA 9038D or 9038s?

 

[Viennacalling]

Viennacalling, he got the 9038D sample 1-2 weeks ago.

Cannot wait for testreport

 

[Artaois]

Ok the PlayStation 5 and Xbox series X are out. Has anyone tried the 9038D with them yet? =)

 

[Veri]

Ok the PlayStation 5 and Xbox series X are out. Has anyone tried the 9038D with them yet? =)

Doesn't look like Xbox supports external audio like, at all right now.
https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...box-series-x-support-for-external-dacs.17445/

 

[Artaois]

Doesn't look like Xbox supports external audio like, at all right now.
https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...box-series-x-support-for-external-dacs.17445/

Ouch. Well that's a bummer because they both got rid of the optical out.

 

[bavlf]

(E1DA # 9038S is for music, not for noise) (imho )

 

[Veri]

Ouch. Well that's a bummer because they both got rid of the optical out.

I looked it up for the PS5. Again no dice I'm afraid, it looks like the playstation only reliably supports UAC1 devices. So older devices like the Fiio E10K or ones that have a UAC1/2 toggle switch like the Fiio K3.

 

[Artaois]

I looked it up for the PS5. Again no dice I'm afraid, it looks like the playstation only reliably supports UAC1 devices. So older devices like the Fiio E10K or ones that have a UAC1/2 toggle switch like the Fiio K3.

It's like they want you to use wireless headphones.

 

[TKO]

(E1DA # 9038S is for music, not for noise) (imho )

This is stupid gatekeeping why limit people to what they want to do and how they want to experience it.
I would also like to see if it would be possible to have this connect to a PlayStation if anyone has a 4 or a 5. (I heard everything that works on 4 will work on 5).

 

[Veri]

I would also like to see if it would be possible to have this connect to a PlayStation if anyone has a 4 or a 5. (I heard everything that works on 4 will work on 5).

The only question you need to ask E1DA is if it works on UAC1. If not, it won't work on PS4/PS4/Switch.

 

[TKO]

The only question you need to ask E1DA is if it works on UAC1. If not, it won't work on PS4/PS4/Switch.

Yes for now you are right I am hopeful when Sony updates the HDMI connection for the tempest they look at making the new PlayStation UAC2 compatible.

I was wondering if a device like this can be flashed to UAC1 as I know JDS labs has put out an update for the atom dac end element so they are compatible. Of course they are a bigger company I get that, I just think gaming and hi-fidelity audio is going to be a bigger deal now with both Sony and Microsoft investing in their onboard 3D audio chips and few hifi manufacturers make simple solutions such as this for gaming. I would personally love to have a quality built one like this.

 

[Veri]

I was wondering if a device like this can be flashed to UAC1 as I know JDS labs has put out an update for the atom dac end element so they are compatible. Of course they are a bigger company I get that, I just think gaming and hi-fidelity audio is going to be a bigger deal now with both Sony and Microsoft investing in their onboard 3D audio chips and few hifi manufacturers make simple solutions such as this for gaming. I would personally love to have a quality built one like this.

Maybe @IVX could do such a thing, but JDS Labs are using an XMOS usb receiver, the E1DA is not as far as I know, so it could be impossible...

 

[dialogue]

dialogue I did test RT6863D(Kuang Pai 2 Plus uses that) mainland-chinese opamp once and found that unacceptable poor regarding the clipping behavior. Of course, OPA1622 more expensive but it has an ideal clipping. Many DIYers don't care about that, however, an ugly clipping has much more easy hears vs too high THD+N or poor dynamic range.

Tomorrow my E1DA 9038D recieve by me. after 2 weeks. and i'm very excited.

Is there anything I should prepare first, especially regarding software or firmware updates? please for the best directions for new users. thank you.

I use Laptop Lenovo Ideapad Flex 5 Windows 10.
and the POCO X3 android smartphone in Indonesian regional .

 

[XeCutor]

The discord channel contains a lot of information, and firmware if you wish to change that (stock one should be fine). I wouldn't feel a big need to upgrade firmware until the firmware that supports the tweak app for android is released. The firmwares available today differ in roll-off at 20khz and if they have a power-saving standby feature enabled or not, going in and out of standby generates an audible "thump". I have switched to a firmware with no standby because I use the device 99.9% with a PC so power saving is not a concern to me.
To upgrade the firmware you need to have the comtrue driver installed in windows, I feel this driver to be worse from a usability point of view than the normal plug and play driver you get with windows. It limits max volume (no problem to me because I don't need the head-room so I haven't investigated if there's a workaround), the real issue is that volume control goes from being linear with normal driver to being logarithmic with comtrue driver. This means that instead of small gradual volume adjustments you have like no volume at all up to 40-50% and the usable range (depending on headphones etc) might be a few percent in the 90-range so fine adjustments are potentially not possible anymore. Uninstalling the comtrue driver is easy enough so you can just remove it after you've installed it for upgrading firmware.