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Review and Measurements of SMSL SU-8 DAC

Thank you @amirm ! It is great to know that you will have another unit for re-measuring. Looking forward to see if there is any unit variations. I was thinking if you are interested in measuring my unit.
 
Hi @amirm! Thank you so much for you time! I think I might found what is wrong in my understanding/testing. I have confused "output stage saturating " with "clipping". Looking back to the SU-8's balanced output measurement, the sine wave is good in maximum level. The waveform does not show flat/chop off head in wave peak and valley. Thus, it does not do the clipping in maximum volume level.(Or maybe the effect is not so obvious in visible level on sine waveform) The test of increasing volume level matches the sine wave form. It makes me slightly relieved since I was afraid that possible clipping could hurt my headphones/speakers.

The output stage saturation problem on SU-8 is that at high volume(close to 0 dB), the harmonic distortions at higher frequency increase dramatically. This is not a clipping problem.

I am so sorry for my confusion. Really looking forward to measurement of the newer SU-8 unit!
 
Internally looks like a respectable unit,
I've been using it for a week, active monitors on the XLRs and I also experimented by driving headphones Fidelio X2 directly from the RCA output, and It drives them no problem, also making them sound somewhat very pleasing and relaxing to the point I'm not sure if I'll ever want to plug them back into their dedicated amp..
Outstanding value for a 200€ DAC.


5b42d711Ncd82047a.jpg

5b42d712N27b237af.jpg
 
Is it supposed to be ”fixed” the balanced output, do you know?
 
I really hope this gets fixed, because this would be perfect for my desk. I love my Emotiva XDA-1 (I'd offer to send it to you but after you measured the LCX...I'll stick with my subjective delusions, lol...also this thing is big and probably not cheap to ship back and forth) but it takes up so much room on my small desk, and I need something that takes up a lot less room.
 
boys i need a piece of advice smsl su-8 or topping D50 ? Smsl features are quite nice XLR internal transformer on the other hand D50 form factor is very handy but regardless... well not to mention the sanskritt 10th very tempting as well ... help :)
 
After seeing the Gala DAC showing some serious issue, I'm reconsidering this DAC.
Just have some questions:
Does the saturation mean that I just have to lower the volume a bit? (Hopefully, SMSL has adressed this issue)
What about that famous "ESS Hump", does this in any case spoil my listening experience?
 
SchwarzeWolke said:
After seeing the Gala DAC showing some serious issue, I'm reconsidering this DAC.
Just have some questions:
Does the saturation mean that I just have to lower the volume a bit? (Hopefully, SMSL has adressed this issue)
What about that famous "ESS Hump", does this in any case spoil my listening experience?
Click to expand...
If you use the volume control in SU-8 then you won't be using it at max anyway. Even if you did, the distortion is 80 dB down so not a major issue.

On ESS hump, we have had to deal with it in many products so it is as good as many others.

FYI SMSL still says they will be sending me a new SU-8.
 
maxxevv said:
Chanced upon what seems to be a newly released, dedicated headphone amplifier from SMSL that's specifically designed to match the SU-8.
Decent output ratings but as always, the output impedance is not listed ( which usually means its not good ... )

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/SMS...lgo_pvid=da8575fa-7c16-4ac4-974d-417449c4c480
Click to expand...

It can be found even cheaper here :

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Full-Balan...752638?hash=item2ab9bc4ffe:g:184AAOSwZ3pb0uKr

The specs aren't clear, it doesn't say if the power ratings are single channel or l+r, volume control seems to be digital (rhead like), but what's a bit worrying is that it has a built in equalizer, in a cheap unit like this such kind of processing may degrade sq (are they using ADC>DSP>DAC?).

Also I prefer protuded volume knobs. Anyway if it performs well it is certainly cheap for what it offers in terms of functionality.

BTE, if they fix the output stage saturation in the SU8, unless they call it SU8 v2 or something like that it will be hard to tell them apart, there's still a lot of unsold stock.
 
Jimmy said:
The specs aren't clear, it doesn't say if the power ratings are single channel or l+r, volume control seems to be digital (rhead like), but what's a bit worrying is that it has a built in equalizer, in a cheap unit like this such kind of processing may degrade sq (are they using ADC>DSP>DAC?).
Click to expand...
I don't think the equalizer to be digital, wouldn't make any sense really, maybe it's a digital controlled analog, that would make more sense, or maybe it's some sort of harmonic saturation curves similar to those implemented in SU-8.. For sure I'll buy one once available in my country, although I'm really enjoying SU-8 unbalanced output to run my X2s headphones directly, for other headphones I'll be glad to give SH-8 a try, if it turns out to be half as good as the SU-8 for the price it will be a win!
 
I think this was touched on before in the review. The filters add distortion/harmonics? With no filter selected, the results are quite good. I'm curious if the filters are options with the chip itself. Regardless, the performance/features from this unit nothing else has at $200.
 
Pillars said:
I think this was touched on before in the review. The filters add distortion/harmonics? With no filter selected, the results are quite good. I'm curious if the filters are options with the chip itself. Regardless, the performance/features from this unit nothing else has at $200.
Click to expand...
Not the filters but the sound profiles (Rich 1 2 3, Tube 1 2 3 , Crystal 1 2 3) are custom harmonic distortion "curves" created by SMSL taking advantage of the THD compensation feature of the ES9038Q2M chip.
The reviewer did't know this at the time of measurement, which makes me wonder if the problem with distortion at high levels shown in the graphs is somehow a cumulative effect related to this particular feature.
 
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