Review and Measurements of Melokin DA9.1 ES9038PRO DAC and Headphone Amp

[alfabian]

What about the SMPTE Intermodulation distortion on S/PDIF?
Any chance of better performance too?

 

[amirm]

No it is the same.

 

[ProFan]

If I reduce the level a bit more to 2 volt nominal, it gets a bit better still:

Actually it looks pretty good at 2V, CH1 especially. 0.0006% THD+N with mainly 2nd and 3rd harmonics isn’t audible.
Regarding CH2 It could be a bad chip (like defective), contrafeit chip, etc. There obviously an issue with USB though ... not comparable with top dogs of course. Thanks for the review!

 

[amirm]

Actually it looks pretty good at 2V, CH1 especially. 0.0006% THD+N with mainly 2nd and 3rd harmonics isn’t not audible.
Regarding CH2 It could be a bad chip (like defective), contrafeit chip, etc. There obviously an issue with USB though ... not comparable with top dogs of course. Thanks for the review!

In that case, do you want to buy it from me?

 

[ProFan]

In that case, do you want to buy it from me?

I already have one
Purchased it for $300, installed the best quartz oscillator I could find for 100 MHz (jitter wise), added Advanced Amanero board (replaced both oscillators on it as well), replaced OPA1612 (although it is good enough by itself) with SS3602, other two OPA1632 are diff ones and should be pretty good, replaced the power supply with ultra low noise one.
I can not say it is the best DAC in the world, but for the money paid it sounds OK, I can not hear the difference in channels or raised distortion at high volume ... although I use about 30-40% level. I use OPPO203 as a source (SPDIF output of it), and headphones (for the DAC’s output) only.
My main system is multichannel, so I use the DAC setup only for stereo records which I can not find in high resolution multichannel version - it means pretty rarely. Thus I have to decline your kind offer, but thanks for it

 

[ProFan]

Did anybody notice that one of the best (if not the best) discrete op amp Sonic Imagery Labs 994Enh-Ticha ALONE has level of THD+N at 0.0003% per datasheet while we have 0.0006% for the whole 9.1 device (non modified) including SPDIF input of it at 1kHz?
It is only doubled level of distortions comparing to a single almost perfect op amp, and practically only 2nd and 3rd harmonics are high enough forming that 0.0006% THD+N level ...
@amirm don’t you want to try testing this 9.1 DAC with the other Amanero ASIO driver (such as you probably have a standard Amanero board for USB in it)? https://amanero.com/drivers.htm