SMSL SU-9 Balanced DAC Review

[ZgSTar]

I have the project pre box s2 digital DAC, is the su-9 a big upgrade. Thinking about purchasing this the M400 or topping D90 but not sure the extra cash is worth it. Looking to move toma balanced DAC. Any advice is much appreciated. Thanks.

The truth is that it depends on how good is the rest of the chain. One thing is sure if you buy a new DAC in the region of 120+ SINAD you are sure it is completely transparent to the source which basically means that if you want to improve from there you need to look at other components as you can be sure the DAC isn't an issue.

If you can buy from Amazon you can always test and in the case is not a worthy upgrade to your ears... return it!

In case you are restricted to RCA connection in your system perhaps you can have a look at something less expensive like the Topping E30 or SMSL Sanskrit mkII.

 

[Gkhercules]

The truth is that it depends on how good is the rest of the chain. One thing is sure if you buy a new DAC in the region of 120+ SINAD you are sure it is completely transparent to the source which basically means that if you want to improve from there you need to look at other components as you can be sure the DAC isn't an issue.

If you can buy from Amazon you can always test and in the case is not a worthy upgrade to your ears... return it!

In case you are restricted to RCA connection in your system perhaps you can have a look at something less expensive like the Topping E30 or SMSL Sanskrit mkII.

I think the rest of my system is ok. Front speakers are Triangle Genese Trio, amp is Emotiva XPA DR2, pre amp is Emotiva XSP-1

 

[Harmonie]

I think the rest of my system is ok. Front speakers are Triangle Genese Trio, amp is Emotiva XPA DR2, pre amp is Emotiva XSP-1

Triangle makes good value speakers. I'd wish we could review their higher end line here.

 

[ZgSTar]

I think the rest of my system is ok. Front speakers are Triangle Genese Trio, amp is Emotiva XPA DR2, pre amp is Emotiva XSP-1

You should go with XLR so! I have now listened extensively to the SU-9 and I am uber happy with it straight to AHB2 and B&W 702s2. Definitely not missing the RME ADI2 DAC V2 that I moved to my other setup.

 

[Pdxwayne]

You should go with XLR so! I have now listened extensively to the SU-9 and I am uber happy with it straight to AHB2 and B&W 702s2. Definitely not missing the RME ADI2 DAC V2 that I moved to my other setup.

May I know how you control volume?

 

[ZgSTar]

May I know how you control volume?

Sure, directly from the SU-9 with the digital volume on the source (Roon or Audirvana via RPI4) fixed at 0db.

 

[nj75f]

I leave the dac volume fixed at 98 and the amp knob fixed too.
I use Jriver audio software player's internal volume https://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/Volume
Internal Volume applies volume inside the 64bit JRiver audio engine
Any drawback using this?

It says it has even some advantages: Internal Volume is particularly useful if you perform signal processing like Convolution, Equalization, Linkwitz, etc. Any volume reduction will be available as extra signal headroom, reducing the chances of unwanted clipping or volume reductions from Clip Protection.


@SMSL-Mandy
@SMSL_Liu
Reminder to anyone who wants an option to turn off the lcd-display to write an e-mail to smsl personally.
It looks like they do not care to update such simple feature, if not a critical mass is reached requesting it

 

[Cortes]

I own a SMSL-SU 8, so far so good. I was looking into this new version to know how things are evolving, and I just realized that SMSL, Topping, Aune are 'very likely' the same thing. In fact, looking at the reviews of https://aoshidaaudio.com/, distributor or mother company?, they put the same type of snapshots with the graphs of the analyzer. Probably they are using the same analyzer to design these DACs. Funny.

 

[Veri]

I own a SMSL-SU 8, so far so good. I was looking into this new version to know how things are evolving, and I just realized that SMSL, Topping, Aune are 'very likely' the same thing. In fact, looking at the reviews of https://aoshidaaudio.com/, distributor or mother company?, they put the same type of snapshots with the graphs of the analyzer. Probably they are using the same analyzer to design these DACs. Funny.

Sigh. No. Aoshida is just a big Chinese retailer. On their 'blog' they sometimes copy-paste entire ASR articles (without permission of course).
All the brands you mention have nothing to do with each other whatsoever.

 

[VintageFlanker]

they put the same type of snapshots with the graphs of the analyzer. Probably they are using the same analyzer to design these DACs.

Sure, they probably use some Apx555. Spoiler alert : this is not a limited edition (to one unit) gear.

 

[Cortes]

Sigh. No. Aoshida is just a big Chinese retailer. On their 'blog' they sometimes copy-paste entire ASR articles (without permission of course).
All the brands you mention have nothing to do with each other whatsoever.

How do you know that?. I mean, probably is irrelevant for us, but It's possible all this electronics comes out from the same factory. In the car industry that happens often, and is good to know to make purchase decisions and not overpay for brand name.

 

[Veri]

How do you know that?. I mean, probably is irrelevant for us, but It's possible all this electronics comes out from the same factory. In the car industry that happens often, and is good to know to make purchase decisions and not overpay for brand name.

Aoshida is a massive store/reseller, you can find that info online quite easily. People from Topping like @JohnYang1997 are active on this forum. There's no reason to believe these brands are in fact from one of the same major company. Only that I know of is Sabaj/Loxjie fall under big S.M.S.L. group. Weird sites like www.smsl-topping.com only make it appear they are related but they are not.. they are direct competitors lol.

 

[jphng123]

Hi..newbie to ASR and this thread

This may have been asked earlier but does this DAC pair well with Topping A90 amp? Thanks in advance

 

[Veri]

This may have been asked earlier but does this DAC pair well with Topping A90 amp? Thanks in advance

Hi there. Sure, it absolutely does. The SU-9 is an all-around excellent performer and so is the A90.
Note that you might want to use 94/100 volume to get 4V output, as indicated in Amir's review.

 

[jphng123]

Hi there. Sure, it absolutely does. The SU-9 is an all-around excellent performer and so is the A90.
Note that you might want to use 94/100 volume to get 4V output, as indicated in Amir's review.

Hi Veri,
Thanks for your reply.

Black Friday season is near....Cheers

 

[Jinster]

Hi everyone. New member here. I just bought the SU9 on the strength of ASR's measurements. It's directly paired with my Emotiva XPA-2 Gen 3 (without a preamp in between). My speakers are Yamaha NS-F900.

Anyway, I am pretty new to the DAC scene. I have always just used the network streaming function in my Yamaha AVRs.

I want to clarify a few things:

I am playing lossless FLACs using Foobar2000 on my Windows 10 PC, to which the SU9 is hooked up. I see that Foobar2000 is doing all the FLAC decoding....... is this how it's meant to be? Foobar decodes FLAC to PCM, sends the 32 bit PCM to SU9, which then converts the PCM to analogue soundwaves?

The way DACs are described made me think they are "decoders" too... so maybe the SU9 should be doing the FLAC decoding instead?

 

[Veri]

Foobar decodes FLAC to PCM, sends the 32 bit PCM to SU9, which then converts the PCM to analogue soundwaves?

Yes. FLAC is just compressed waveform, your player decompresses it and sends PCM data to the DAC. The DAC performs data/digital to analog(RCA/XLR) duties, that is all. Totally normal operation

The only reason we use FLAC and not some direct wave format is that it will cost you a lot more space on your hard disk drive... when unpacked, it is bit-per-bit identical.

 

[Moderate Dionysianism]

Hi there. Sure, it absolutely does. The SU-9 is an all-around excellent performer and so is the A90.
Note that you might want to use 94/100 volume to get 4V output, as indicated in Amir's review.

Sorry if that's been answered somewhere else - I did search around here, but some threads are super long so it's quite possible I missed something.

I don't have technical background and come here to learn and make informed decisions when spending money, so I wanted to ask about the purely practical implications of this whole 'DAC output impedance vs. amp input impedance'.
Am I correct to assume that effectively means smaller range of usable volume control on the amp side when the DAC is at 100%/0dB? If so, then how big would that range reduction be, in terms of simply operating the amp's volume knob?

For the SU-9 via XLR we should have a 3.7k ohm at the amp's input as pointed out by Amir.

The A90 has 2k ohm as John said in this thread
the FLUX FA-12 has 20k as per the mfr's website
the Monolith 887 - 50k as per the mfr's website

Let's assume all 3 amps have identical gain settings and identical number of volume steps. We see as much as 25x difference, but the consequences are negligible in the daily use?
I understand that it's not a basis to disqualify any product, but I'd be very curious to learn the principle behind this effect. Again, my apologies if someone has already elaborated on this!

 

[Palex]

I have bought CD - MQA. On optics I connect Marantz SA 8005 to M500 - there is no MQA. SU - 9 is MQA support on optics?

 

[maxp779]

What's the difference between the su9 and m500?

Apart from the shape and the m500 being older, I can't tell what else is different.