Review and Measurements of SMSL VMV D1 DAC

[helloworld]

They were supposed to but I have gotten no confirmation of that yet.

They have sent with dhl

 

[CaptObvious]

I'm interested in how the D1 will compare to the topping D70. Looks like we are hitting an new level of audiophile dacs from China.

 

[Jimster480]

I heard they have sent a new D1 and SU8 to amirm for review last weekend.

Oh, thats awesome. I'm interested to see the performance!

 

[amirm]

OK, the new board arrived today and spent some time replacing the old one with it. The work was fairly involved with some 30+ screws and desoldering/soldering the power supply wires. But it is done.

If you all recall, the problem was with unbalanced output using 192 kHz where we had a set of distortion components that were there with or without signal:

That caused the SINAD to drop by some 20 dB.

The new board nicely remedies that:

Note that the above is with 90 kHz of bandwidth (to go with 192 kHz sampling). At 44.1 kHz, SIAND climbs to 114.5 average as reported in the original review.

I also ran the jitter test since unbalanced performance was not as good as balanced:

We see a nice improvement here with the spikes at 8 and 16 kHz gone as are the other smaller peaks. We also have a slight reduction in high frequency noise.

I ran some of the other tests but there is nothing material to report there.

So assuming this is typical of production boards, we have state-of-the-art performance here.

It took a while but I appreciate SMSL following through and providing the updated board. I know the owner of the VNV D1 will be happy to see this problem resolved.

 

[Jimster480]

Wow very nice! That puts this near the top of the chart then right? With 113 SINAD ?

 

[amirm]

Yes, it is essentially in tie with Opp UDP-205 as the best I have ever tested.

 

[Jimster480]

Yes, it is essentially in tie with Opp UDP-205 as the best I have ever tested.

Nice pairing with the THX AAA then!
Or even the JDS Atom xD
$100 amp with $1300 DAC?!

 

[maxxevv]

Nice pairing with the THX AAA then!
Or even the JDS Atom xD
$100 amp with $1300 DAC?!

But basically some stuff that need not be replaced for a very long time ( as long as they don't spoil of course.) and yet remain completely relevant to whatever else that might come next !

Well worth it in audiophile terms for under US$1500/- for this and the THX AAA789 ! ( the V-1 can be had for under US$1.2 K with some discount.)

 

[bennetng]

OK, the new board arrived today and spent some time replacing the old one with it. The work was fairly involved with some 30+ screws and desoldering/soldering the power supply wires. But it is done.

If you all recall, the problem was with unbalanced output using 192 kHz where we had a set of distortion components that were there with or without signal:

That caused the SINAD to drop by some 20 dB.

The new board nicely remedies that:
View attachment 17825

Note that the above is with 90 kHz of bandwidth (to go with 192 kHz sampling). At 44.1 kHz, SIAND climbs to 114.5 average as reported in the original review.

I also ran the jitter test since unbalanced performance was not as good as balanced:
View attachment 17826

We see a nice improvement here with the spikes at 8 and 16 kHz gone as are the other smaller peaks. We also have a slight reduction in high frequency noise.

I ran some of the other tests but there is nothing material to report there.

So assuming this is typical of production boards, we have state-of-the-art performance here.

It took a while but I appreciate SMSL following through and providing the updated board. I know the owner of the VNV D1 will be happy to see this problem resolved.

Does it change the ESS hump as well?
PS: It is VMV, not VNV

 

[amirm]

Does it change the ESS hump as well?
PS: It is VMV, not VNV

No it doesn't unfortunately. And thanks for catching that. I got that wrong in the original review and keep doing it. Fixed.

 

[helloworld]

Yes, it is essentially in tie with Opp UDP-205 as the best I have ever tested.

Thank you @amirm, could you please run a quick test of THD+N vs frequency and compares it with Benchmark DAC3 HGC? I am curious to see which one is better.

 

[Jimster480]

But basically some stuff that need not be replaced for a very long time ( as long as they don't spoil of course.) and yet remain completely relevant to whatever else that might come next !

Well worth it in audiophile terms for under US$1500/- for this and the THX AAA789 ! ( the V-1 can be had for under US$1.2 K with some discount.)

Yes I think that the performance is great.
But I think my DX7 would probably end up with a SINAD close to 110 without the ESS Hump of the DX7S and even if it scored like 106.... its hard for me to justify $1300 for 6 SINAD increase.

 

[amirm]

Thank you @amirm, could you please run a quick test of THD+N vs frequency and compares it with Benchmark DAC3 HGC? I am curious to see which one is better.

Unfortunately the only saved results I have on that test for Benchmark is at 24 dbu, not 16 dbu that SMSL VMV D-1 outputs. Here is the comparison anyway:

 

[SMSL-Mandy]

Thank you @amirm, Thank you for patiently waiting.

VMV D1 now has a black friday discount at the SMSL-official store.Have the 10% off discount now.

Official sale of origin guarantee.

 

[VintageFlanker]

Does it change the ESS hump as well?

I was wondering : may the ESS hump be audible in any way?

 

[pos]

Is this a new board revision?
How can one be sure he is getting the new version when ordering now?

And... what about the SU8?

 

[SMSL-Mandy]

Amirm will send the old D1 board to us, and we will find out the cause of the failure.

We have checked all the machines in the warehouse and didn't have the problems.

The owner of this broken D1 bought it from ebay at around $1000 which is significantly below our suggested retail price. Hopefully the seller is our official distributor so that we can check all of his products, we will find out.

 

[SMSL-Mandy]

Is this a new board revision?
How can one be sure he is getting the new version when ordering now?

And... what about the SU8?

No it's not a revision.
There's no difference between this board and those we are currently selling.

The new su8 has been sent to amirm.The test will be published soon.

 

[bennetng]

I was wondering : may the ESS hump be audible in any way?

If you like to discuss such things, this thread is more suitable.
https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...-debate-thread-about-audio-measurements.2580/

 

[Roen]

Yes, it is essentially in tie with Opp UDP-205 as the best I have ever tested.

Will you update the SINAD bar graph showing the new positions of SMSL D1 Balanced and SMSL D1 Unbalanced?