SMSL DO200 Pro DAC Review

[agnostic]

No. With CEC, you send volume commands to the TV via its remote, it passes them on to the external DAC via HDMI, and the external DAC applies the signal attenuation.

How can a hifi nerd acept this additional HDMI for connection? And it doesn't validate the necessity of this design.

 

[staticV3]

How can a hifi nerd acept this additional HDMI for connection? And it doesn't validate the necessity of this design.

I don't understand, sorry.

 

[Pulkass]

This is a review and detailed measurements of the SMSL DO200 Pro balanced stereo audio DAC. It was sent to me by Aoshida Audio and costs US $399.
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The small curve on top of the display distinguishes this DAC from myriad of others from SMSL and adds a bit of class to it. Otherwise, the user interface is the familiar SMSL interface which is easy to use if not fancy. Rear panel shows a couple of variations from ordinary:
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We have USB-C instead of type 2 and importantly, inclusion of HDMI ARC support for better integration with TVs outputting the same.

Power supply is included in the case which I appreciate.

If you are not familiar with my DAC measurements, please watch my tutorial on it:

SMSL DO200 Pro DAC Measurements
Let's start with our usual dashboard with volume set to 0 dB and output, XLR:
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Distortion is vanishingly small and combined with noise, we are comfortably in the "transparent" zone for DACs. Ranking is way up there despite the modern cost:
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RCA output costs a bit of penalty but still fully transparent:
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I tried testing the HDMI ARC but whether it is the fault of my adapter or the DAC, I could not get stable output.

Noise performance is essentially state of the art:
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IMD distortion is kept in check with a wide margin compared to our reference:
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Loading up the output makes little difference:
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There is inconsequential low frequency jitter over both inputs:
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Likewise, linearity shows a tiny bit of deviation:

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Multitone output shows impeccable results:
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Behavior or default filter is quite good:
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We do see artificially high level of noise in our wideband, 90 kHz distortion test:
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As you can see in the inset, this is due to "noise shaping" which takes noise in the audible band and pushes it up to 50 kHz+. I reduced the bandwidth of the measurement to 45 kHz and as you can see in brown/green, the levels are vanishingly low.

Conclusions
The DO200 Pro DAC turns in state of the art performance for what is a very good price these days for a balanced DAC. Inclusion of HDMI ARC I am sure is appreciated by many. There are a few minor nits but nothing remotely interfering with fully transparent (to source) operation of the unit.

I am happy to recommend the SMSL DO200 Pro.
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As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.

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Bought it, arrived today, the other l own is Smsl DO100. This DO200pro has razor sharp, ultra definite mid highs, which l love. Really an improvement over the DO100. The only thing l dont like it s the display! Connected to my balanced tube pre amp via xlr, really satisfying.