SMSL D-6 DAC Review

[poopy]

Oh, another disposable DAC. They come monthly these days.

What is the life expectancy of that one?
Six months?

Shouldn't matter, some massive flaws will be found within a few months. Are we expecting anything better from SMSL?

 

[Tks]

28nm is the most cost effective chipset for many application. I believe a few year later, we get to see 7-14nm as ASML and SMIC are mass producing this chip making machines.

May want to get industry players on this piece of information, they're nodes are still in the 40's range..

 

[xaviescacs]

Interesting suggestion. In such a graph, you wouldn't be able to see and identify the rest of the products. You are OK with that?

Sure! Just indicate the bin where the device falls in. If you keep your colors an somehow show the main quantiles and the tail ones we will have a nice summary of the population, IMO. And perhaps eventually the position of each device can be expressed through its quantile.

 

[daftcombo]

Thanks Amir!
What about channel matching?

 

[kongwee]

Many things are reaching 14 NM now. Global foundries has decided to basically stop at 12 nanometer because of the amount of older designs which are moving down to 14 NM now. The overall tape out cost for something on 7 NM today just does not make sense for anything other than an extremely high volume high yield product. Even though seven nanometer has been out for a few years now the price is still not low by any means. Chips like DACs and amp and other similar IC's I would say are a few years away from even being on 14 nanometer. I would be very surprised if any of them are on 14 NM today.
. Another thing which is happening is that larger companies are making SOC with all of these different chips integrated. So smaller companies will either sell or license their designs to larger companies in order to be integrated into an soc. Or they will be almost made irrelevant by the larger company designing something similar to put into their SOC thus eliminating the need for their chip entirely.

This is especially true for the largest companies which are on the smallest most advanced nodes of today. Some of the chips integrated today include memory controllers and power management IC as well as decode and encode ASIC codecs for various common audio, video and photo formats.

The mass availability of smaller and better lithography will guarantee more advancements in everyday consumer electronics for at least the next decade even as lithography technology slows down in its advancement.

SMIC N+2 DUV will make the shift to 14nm very fast as it can make 7nm by multi exposure. That why I say a few year more. In fact SMIC already made 7nm mining cards exposed by someone.

 

[Lambda]

What else could you want?

USB Powered, decent >2Vrms headphone out, enough dedicated buttons on the case so i don't ever have to use the remote.

 

[Deleted member 2702]

I think we need a new way to dislpay the ranking. Even at full size, the device names are getting hard to read

I vote for a histogram!

Rotating it makes it more readable.

That being said, what is important is if there is an audible difference or not between the products compared. I would like to see the product being categorized in groups according to that (and not the numbers). Two groups would probably suffice: "transparent" (alternatively: "great") and "poor".

 

[wask]

Good DAC with balanced output at an affordable price. I'll keep it in mind. Thanks. Looking at past reviews, I see that the yellow identifying mark has been placed on the SU-6 instead of the D-6, although the 5dB per RCA is probably not noticeable at thie level.

 

[Tod]

Does this DAC keep the current volume information when shutting down?

Yes

 

[Bleib]

I agree. Maybe only show the relevant colour or say 25 on either side. As for the DAC itself... meh... another DAC that measures excellent under $200. ho hum. Although... the feature set seems to be above average here at this price point.

Not really meh. We've now seen that SE/XLR out has come down in price. No need to go either balanced (d10 balanced) or not (d10s).
Plus SMSL remotes are pretty good
__
Edit: I'm also surprised that SMSL handled jitter better than Topping did with E30 II

 

[Atratusnex]

I think we need a new way to dislpay the ranking. Even at full size, the device names are getting hard to read

I vote for a histogram!

Just zoom in... It's not hard, you can do this.

 

[Human Bass]

Yea I think the E50/D50 is the next cheapest. Or maybe DX3 pro+?

Smsl DO100

 

[Atanasi]

AKM AK4493 DAC chip powers the unit.

There is a typo here. The chip is the new AKM AK4493S.

 

[Labjr]

I think we need a new way to dislpay the ranking. Even at full size, the device names are getting hard to read

I vote for a histogram!

I think it's fine, still readable. I commented several months ago when they were unreadable and he fixed it so it's pretty good.

 

[Stokdoof]

It's really great. However, this product has a clicking issue at the beginning when playing music files on the Tidal. I don't know why, but I hope it will be updated soon.

Good job bro

Do you use it with your computer ? Maybe you hear the computer mouse clicks.

 

[Walter]

Interesting suggestion. In such a graph, you wouldn't be able to see and identify the rest of the products. You are OK with that?

Nooooooooooo!

 

[Labjr]

Maybe a dumb question, but how do the white LED segments hold up on these? I have the phosphor based LEDs on my PC, and they are all absolutely cooked now. Display and internal case lighting is barely visible at this point. I have been hesitant to buy anything that uses anything other than standard LEDs for the segments since having to deal with a dead display would be rather annoying.

Is that what these LEDs are? They look blue in the photo. I'm anti-OLED or anything that fades or has burn-in. I'm also anti-plastic TRS jack.

 

[Stokdoof]

为什么这个品牌这么喜欢玩机海战术？

Waarom zijn bananen krom ?

 

[thon]

Question about the specs - unfortunately not really clear from the official specs on SMSLs homepage:
does the d-6 support DSD64-DSD256 via DoP through USB (or just DSD64 DoP through optical)?
Thanks in adavance!

 

[Labjr]

Why did SMSL decide to use a figure-8 power cable on this model? To shave a few cents off the BOM?