This is a review and detailed measurements of the SMSL RAW-MDA 1 stereo DAC and headphone amplifier. It was sent to me by SMSL and it is a collaboration with Shenzehenaudio (available elsewhere as well) and is on sale for $246.
The first thing I noticed was the much more polished display. It is also quite responsive to rotary control. If you click it in, you get the standard SMSL menu system that is functional and easy to use, albeit not as pretty. Back panel shows addition of more inputs:
We nicely have internal power supply and balanced outputs -- two things I really like in this kind of product. I do wish there was trigger output though to turn our a power amplifier in home stereo setting.
SMSL RAW-MDA 1 Measurements
Let's start with our usual dashboard with balanced output with volume adjusted for nominal 4 volt output:
I expected SINAD of 120 dB for this price class but we have more than that, nicely landing the unit in our top 20 best list:
RCA output takes a smaller than usual hit:
Performance improves if you all the the full 5.3 volt output:
Dynamic range is of course superb:
IMD curve shows excellent performance:
As a note, the blue line was a $245 so the same price showing the progress the industry has made to make more quiet and lower distortion DACs despite the inflation.
Multitone performance is absolutely superb:
As is the stereophile test of 50 Hz into very low impedance of 600 ohm:
Jitter is excellent with both USB and Coax with tiniest spurious tones with Toslink:
I have gotten tired of running filter and filter response tests for all the settings as the results are always the same. So I am showing the default, Linear Fast Roll off:
Using the same, we get this excellent result of THD sweep with frequency:
Edit: linearity test:
Headphone power with 300 ohm nicely passes my minimum threshold of 100 milliwatts:
And produces healthy power with 32 ohm load:
The distortion and noise were so low that in both tests I had to scroll the graph up to see where it landed in low gain mode!
50 mv output test shows the best that can be done without a third, negative gain setting:
Conclusions
The RAW-MDA 1 aims high and achieves it across the board despite its very reasonable price. It is good looking, compact and easy to operate. Some of this we expect from SMSL but the total package is a step forward, as difficult as that may have seemed.
I am happy to recommend the SMSL RAW-MDA 1.
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As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.
Any donations are much appreciated using: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/
The first thing I noticed was the much more polished display. It is also quite responsive to rotary control. If you click it in, you get the standard SMSL menu system that is functional and easy to use, albeit not as pretty. Back panel shows addition of more inputs:
We nicely have internal power supply and balanced outputs -- two things I really like in this kind of product. I do wish there was trigger output though to turn our a power amplifier in home stereo setting.
SMSL RAW-MDA 1 Measurements
Let's start with our usual dashboard with balanced output with volume adjusted for nominal 4 volt output:
I expected SINAD of 120 dB for this price class but we have more than that, nicely landing the unit in our top 20 best list:
RCA output takes a smaller than usual hit:
Performance improves if you all the the full 5.3 volt output:
Dynamic range is of course superb:
IMD curve shows excellent performance:
As a note, the blue line was a $245 so the same price showing the progress the industry has made to make more quiet and lower distortion DACs despite the inflation.
Multitone performance is absolutely superb:
As is the stereophile test of 50 Hz into very low impedance of 600 ohm:
Jitter is excellent with both USB and Coax with tiniest spurious tones with Toslink:
I have gotten tired of running filter and filter response tests for all the settings as the results are always the same. So I am showing the default, Linear Fast Roll off:
Using the same, we get this excellent result of THD sweep with frequency:
Edit: linearity test:
Headphone power with 300 ohm nicely passes my minimum threshold of 100 milliwatts:
And produces healthy power with 32 ohm load:
The distortion and noise were so low that in both tests I had to scroll the graph up to see where it landed in low gain mode!
50 mv output test shows the best that can be done without a third, negative gain setting:
Conclusions
The RAW-MDA 1 aims high and achieves it across the board despite its very reasonable price. It is good looking, compact and easy to operate. Some of this we expect from SMSL but the total package is a step forward, as difficult as that may have seemed.
I am happy to recommend the SMSL RAW-MDA 1.
----------
As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.
Any donations are much appreciated using: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/
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