SMSL D400EX DAC Review

[PcChip]

any chance of measuring the different "sound color" modes?
I prefer mode 3 but have no idea why

 

[Rahan]

I'm lost in the SMSL range... What is the point of this DAC compare to the Su-10? names seem to indicate those are total different products, but they seem pretty close to me. Did I missed something?

 

[TonyJZX]

here's the su10 (ess)

SU-10

Foshan ShuangMuSanLin electronics Co., LTD. founded in 2009 which located in Shenzhen, China. And our branch company VMV Technology(HK) Company Limited registered in HK in 2013. Our company is specialized in the audio DAC, stereo headphone amplifier, power amplifier, and with own R&D...

www.smsl-audio.com

here's the 400ex (akm)

D400 EX

Foshan ShuangMuSanLin electronics Co., LTD. founded in 2009 which located in Shenzhen, China. And our branch company VMV Technology(HK) Company Limited registered in HK in 2013. Our company is specialized in the audio DAC, stereo headphone amplifier, power amplifier, and with own R&D...

www.smsl-audio.com

here's the 400es (ess)

D400 ES

Foshan ShuangMuSanLin electronics Co., LTD. founded in 2009 which located in Shenzhen, China. And our branch company VMV Technology(HK) Company Limited registered in HK in 2013. Our company is specialized in the audio DAC, stereo headphone amplifier, power amplifier, and with own R&D...

www.smsl-audio.com

there's just not a heap of differentiation there... the 400 series seems to have the "new" design aesthetic with the jog shuttle and the 3 menu buttons like a few of the smsl stuff now and the su10 'old' aesthetic (no buttons, I assume all the vol. knob presses down to select)

even their own features matrix looks identical except obviously the dac where pertinent

i was about to say its "lazy" design but in a way, its not... some people had to design a whole new case and operating structure etc.

i dont get what this serves over the older su10 except that you get to choose the dac chip now

 

[Snoopy]

What would be interesting for me to know is, does smsl sell so many DACs that they just need so use whatever they can get their hands on?

I can't imagine that the market for different DAC chips is that big .. or are some people buying every dac that gets released?

I get that there are different price tiers available but we have so many DACs from smsl that fall into that 300-400 price range that it becomes ridiculous

 

[TonyJZX]

you know what... i have little understanding of the china market... but one would think that the amount of westerners ordering chinese equipment must pale against their domestic demand... this has to be obvious

they have 1 billion people plus... they probably have more "high net value individuals" (say usd$50 mil+) than the entire population of some western countries...

so their middle class audio enthusiasts *must* be buying this stuff

there's no way they're making all that much money from us

so they must have product planners and the like and maybe they think that they can repackage the same old circuits in a new looking case and sell more?

i reminded of a business case i heard of maybe 25yrs ago... my country would be lucky to buy 5,000 models of a single car line in a year... in the US they would sell 250,000 units in just California... so the tail does not wag the dog.

This must be what is happening in China... but worse.

 

[57gold]

Have an acquaintance that employs 20,000 folks in China making electronic devices - phones, tablets, laptops, TV. medical equipment...Asked him about the economics of this process when we met on a flight from west coast to FL, where we both live.

A couple of observations he made: a) if his company was forced to manufacture these products in US, and other manufacturers had access to Chinese production, he would have no business as he would be unable to compete on price; b) he observed that quality of large scale factory out put was low with high failure/reject rates, sometime approaching 20%, and even with that kind of loss it was far cheaper to build stuff in China; and c) better brands like Apple have contracted for very careful QC for their products, others send out product with cursory review and QC is done by the consumer, which gets product to market cheaper. This explains why some of these products have both many 5 star reviews on Amazon et al and some 1 star reviews from folks who end up with units that quickly fail.

 

[mocenigo]

The EQ stuff you can easily do through software.

True, but many people still connect a CD player or a blu ray player to the DAC. In that case, if you want to add some EQ, say, to tame a room resonance, how would you do that?

 

[57gold]

No reason to use a CD or Blue Ray player in 2023. Rip the music to HD and employ EQ software on digital files: a) before sending to the DAC; or b) using a DAC like the RME ones that have EQ capabilities embedded.

 

[Snoopy]

True, but many people still connect a CD player or a blu ray player to the DAC. In that case, if you want to add some EQ, say, to tame a room resonance, how would you do that?

You rip everything and never touch the physical media again because it's a waste of space anyway.

 

[mocenigo]

You rip everything and never touch the physical media again because it's a waste of space anyway.

That’s what I do but the market does not have to ignore those that don’t.

 

[mocenigo]

You rip everything and never touch the physical media again because it's a waste of space anyway.

I just said some people still use a CD player and want to. I agree that to rip everything is the better approach but that was not the point.

 

[KoreaBoy]

오늘 도착한 D400EX 좋습니다~

 

[Anthony T]

No reason to use a CD or Blue Ray player in 2023. Rip the music to HD and employ EQ software on digital files: a) before sending to the DAC; or b) using a DAC like the RME ones that have EQ capabilities embedded.

Not everyone wants to use a pc or laptop or NAS with their system or go through the hassle of burning potentially thousands of CDs to HD/SSD when they could be listening to the music instead on a CDP.

You rip everything and never touch the physical media again because it's a waste of space anyway.

No, it’s not a waste of space no more than records are because YOU don’t like or “get it” doesn’t mean it’s crap, it just means you need to work harder to be able to afford the square footage to accommodate it.

 

[Snoopy]

Not everyone wants to use a pc or laptop or NAS with their system or go through the hassle of burning potentially thousands of CDs to HD/SSD when they could be listening to the music instead on a CDP.

No, it’s not a waste of space no more than records are because YOU don’t like or “get it” doesn’t mean it’s crap, it just means you need to work harder to be able to afford the square footage to accommodate it.

I have had over a 1000 Blu-ray movies, collectors edition stuff.. books, artbooks, videogames, and CDs.
I'm glad I got rid of that stuff.

It still bothers me that I have to buy CDs sometimes only to rip them.

Terra-Bytes of storage are available these days even as SSD. There is not really a need anymore to bother with physical media.

Ripping the stuff (you don't burn CDs to a harddrive) is relatively simple. Just rip the CD when U want to listen to it.

vinyl is horrible anyway with the clicks and pops even on a cleaned up well made rip.

 

[Robbo99999]

Not everyone wants to use a pc or laptop or NAS with their system or go through the hassle of burning potentially thousands of CDs to HD/SSD when they could be listening to the music instead on a CDP.

No, it’s not a waste of space no more than records are because YOU don’t like or “get it” doesn’t mean it’s crap, it just means you need to work harder to be able to afford the square footage to accommodate it.

Yeah, but with a CD player you have to waste time & effort finding your CD and inserting it each time, it's not a particularly user-friendly and flexible way of listening to high quality music. All the time & inconvenience & lack of flexibility you waste each time you get up to put in a new CD over the future months & years is saved by investing time just ripping them quickly to HDD in lossless. It doesn't matter though, because people may well like the ritual of leafing through their bookshelves full of CD's then the rigmarole of changing out CD's on the smoothly operating CD drawer, ha! No, but people like the ritual of vinyl don't they, so they can like the ritual of CD, etc. It's not very practical though if you want to get to the nitty gritty of it.

 

[d3l]

Anyone compared the D400 with the Gustard A26? Would love to hear your impressions. The discrete LPF partf of Gustard is interesting concept.

 

[xhattan]

Ok, maybe a silly question but I need to get it out of my system. If price isn’t considered or in a blind testing, Is this DAC really superior to a “high end” DAC of the likes of Pass Labs, Mark Levinson or Naim that measure worst? Or better components would still enhance sound quality over measurement?

 

[mocenigo]

Ok, maybe a silly question but I need to get it out of my system. If price isn’t considered or in a blind testing, Is this DAC really superior to a “high end” DAC of the likes of Pass Labs, Mark Levinson or Naim that measure worst? Or better components would still enhance sound quality over measurement?

Well, any absolute measure of sound quality is given by measurement, not listening, that is subjective. Blind testing can tell you whether there is a significant difference, and usually pleasantness of sound is related to some euphoric effect, such as harmonic profile. In that case at least, this is measurable, and Nelson Pass, for instance, tweaks his products intentionally along those lines (he is not a charlatan or a snake oil vendor, and he does not claim perfect reproduction or measurements, he is very honest about his intents).

So one may LIKE those other products more, and it may even be a majority consensus. But this is not a measure of “sound quality”.

 

[AudioScience Enthusiast]

Why does this D400EX with "high-end" price still have the unchanged Dimmer design from their "cheap" $300-$400 units?

I really dislike the Dimmer function on my DO200 MKII, which is same as this D400EX:

1. The choice of screen Time-Out is only from 5 - 60 seconds.
2. It doesn't come back when there is signal flowing through. It doesn't have intelligent screen shut-off when there is no music playing for sometime.
3. It just has a basic choice of 5 - 60 seconds time-out to choose from

Does SMSL expect people to just leave the screen on all the time? How long will an IPS screen like that last Being on 24/?

At $300-$400 maybe it's easy to replace a new DAC, at $950 price of this DAC, it’s not so cheap to go out and buy a new DAC

Any chance that SMSL will provide a firmware that addresses this "issue"?

 

[AudioScience Enthusiast]

They should start first including a trigger out, this is just the basis of a decent DAC

Why has SMSL cheapened out on a Trigger IN/OUT port?

Especially on D400EX there is horrible or non-existent Auto-On and Auto-Off features, when compared to the Topping E70V.