Su9 is just DAC.
M500 is a DAC and integrated headphone amplifier.
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SMSL SU-9 Balanced DAC Review
- Thread starter amirm
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M500 is a DAC and integrated headphone amplifier.
The guy is young enough to be honest. I'm subscribed to his channel.
young and naive enough to not understand expectation bias?
Nobody is perfect ;-)
BTW I just watched the video, and audio hobby is really funny. The youtuber, who is clearly a clever guy who expresses very well, obviously is becoming to hate the Chi-fi, at least in these type of incarnations, but struggles and makes a serious effort to be neutral and equilibrated.
Guys, let's meet a common ground at the hifi-sphere filling the brackets here: ASR a reason no to buy SMSL/Topping, SBAF a reason no to buy Schiit, CA a reason not to buy (fill a long list here), A'gon a reason no to buy (fill here), HeadFi a reason no to buy (fill with any headphone here), HeadCase a reason no to buy non-stax amps,...etc. Probably we'll have no haters buying in what is left, but nobody to purchase second hand material either ;-(.
Guys, let's meet a common ground at the hifi-sphere filling the brackets here: ASR a reason no to buy SMSL/Topping, SBAF a reason no to buy Schiit, CA a reason not to buy (fill a long list here), A'gon a reason no to buy (fill here), HeadFi a reason no to buy (fill with any headphone here), HeadCase a reason no to buy non-stax amps,...etc. Probably we'll have no haters buying in what is left, but nobody to purchase second hand material either ;-(.
Vini darko
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He questioned the narrative! Quickly grab your pitch forks and form a angry mob 
wasnotwasnotwas
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He should have just let it burn in.
D
Deleted member 15250
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Hey anyone order this from apos? how many days does it take to ship? been waiting a few days for my shipping notice
wasnotwasnotwas
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Yes, and yes (kind of). The tidal app on your phone will decode the mqa file but the resulting stream will be recoded to whatever Bluetooth codec your phone and dac are connected via. It will not be lossless, if its ldac it will be roughly CD quality. Wired would be the only way to get the mqa file to the DAC so it can do the decoding.
misterdog
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young and naive enough to not understand expectation bias?
Though I have heard my SMSL M400 through a £ 100 K rig, and my ears are 61 years old.
My ears still said WOW though.
At my age, you have no expectation bias.
Youth may know better though.
Veri
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Old and naive, got it
no seriously, what makes you think you are immune to expectation bias?
cecelo01
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Upgraded to version 2.06, burn in process finished, a power cable dedicated to the M500 makes a considerable difference. Its performance improves a lot.
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cecelo01
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Some dacs that have already been tested here> PS NuWave, DAC II, Meridian Director, V-Dac II, M1DAC, Dac Magic 100, Dac Magic Plus, Teac UD-301, Matrix Mni i, SMSL M7, Sabaj d4, SU-8 , Electrocompaniet ECD-1, Pre-project Pre Box S2, DX3 Pro Ldac. The M500 was the winner.
wasnotwasnotwas
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Uh-huh
misterdog
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Old and naive, got it
As I have built my own pre-and power amps, and subwoofers, mounted my quad 989 electrostatic loudspeakers into steel frames and listened to dozens of changes and pieces of kit. You learn to listen for changes, good or bad rather than assume change for the better.
One of the biggest changes apart from getting the M400 was mounting the 989 panels into steel frames, I assumed there would be no change, especially as 'someone on the internet' claimed that Peter Walker knew what he was doing and that the standard frames were designed to be lossy.
If all manufacturers suffered from expectation bias there would never be any improvement would there. We would still be listening to the gramophone and the cat's whisker wireless.
D
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My su-9 from apos arrived today! It fits perfectly on top of my bookshelf speaker on my computer desk and I'm using xlr output to orchard audio class d monoblocks hidden behind my monitor with super short speaker cables. Sound is very clean and the 99 step volume control feature is great, the infrared reception works from side angles well. This seems like a very polished product. I do miss a little bit of spatial illusion created by my r2r dac but this dac fits much better into my desk setup.
Hello,@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
I would like to request such feature since I keep mu SU-9 in fixed state and I don't need screen turned on most of the time.
Could you please post an email of responsible person from smsl?
I've been using SU-9 couple of weeks and I really like it especially in combination with Topping A50s. I've tested P50+D50s+A50s vs DU-9+A50s
and I definitely prefer second combination.
I've tested SU-9+JdsAtom but combination with A50s is noticeably better IMHO
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