This is a review and detailed measurements of the SMSL SU-10 Balanced DAC with Bluetooth. It was sent to me by the company and costs US $900.
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Front panel is smooth and slick and sports the new colorful display from SMSL with large volume level which I very much appreciate. Interestingly volume goes up another 2 dB (or so) so you have a bit of headroom. Back panel shows some new features:
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For the first time we have a choice of USB-B and -c inputs which you can select from the menu. Another new feature is ability to turn on the balanced or RCA outputs independently or together. Nice!
The high cost is partially due to use of not one, but two ESS ES9038Pro DAC chips. The 8 channels in each chip is combined to get the best dynamic range for each channel.
Based on company recommendation, I upgraded the unit to latest firmware.
SMSL SU-10 Measurements
Let's start with our usual balanced output after letting the device warm up (SMSL recommendation):
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Distortion is extremely low at -140 dB so SINAD is noise dominate as usual. It is hitting the limits of the analyzer in this front but it still manages to squeak by to get #1 place:
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Of course no one should worry about fraction of dB SINAD as the measurements are highly variable in that regard.
RCA output performance is a bit lower as usual but still excellent:
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Dynamic range is superb as we would expect:
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At max volume, balanced dynamic range got close to 132 dB.
IMD distortion and noise is very low although there is more than a hint of "ESS IMD Hump:"
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Linearity is perfect:
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Multitone test shows the very low distortion:
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Jitter performance is uniform and excellent on all three inputs:
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The usual set of filters are provided:
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As you can see, there is also an "off" mode available which oddly was the default.
Frequency response suggest Fast Linear as one of the better filters to use:
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Using that we get excellent broadband THD+N vs frequency:
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Conclusions
The SU-10 is an excellently engineered DAC. It aims to squeeze the last bit of performance available. Such improvement is limited by how well I can measure it due to analyzer noise itself. We clearly have state of the art performance here. Whether that justifies the higher cost is something that is your business and not mine.
Besides performance we have nice new functionality in the form of two independent USB inputs and support for independent audio outputs. One or the other may be critical for some of you.
I am happy to recommend the SMSL SU-10 DAC.
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