Fig 1: Setup with USB input.
TL: DR: I freaking love this DAC. It achieves all my goals at such a bargain price. Massive props to Ben&co, looking forward to other Soncoz products in the future.
I. Things I looked for when I was shopping for a DAC (decreasing order of importance):
✓ Excellent measurements! (First by
WolfX-700, then confirmed by Amirm)
✓ Small footprint (As you can see from Fig 1, both the DAC&Amp can fit on my small desk where I study and work. I don't stack them because of heating concerns)
✓ Good customer support (
@Ben1987 and
@Sophia Ann are awesome. Though they might need to hire more people to help a lot more customers in the future
)
✓ XLR-out
✓ ESS chip (A little less relevant)
✓ Price (For me the price is the least important issue, but the performance/price value of this product is just too good. That said, I would have bought the
Soncoz SGD1 if it didn't weight 6.6 lbs (3 kg) and was much bigger)
I've been using this setup every day for almost a week. Here is my personal experience with the LA-QXD1 DAC.
II. Method:
All the comparisons made are 1) qualitative 2) subjective & 3) made as compared to the following control:
laptop SE output -> RCA -> SMSL SP200 Amp -> Headphones. My final setup is described below:
laptop S/PDIF -> Toslink LA-QXD1 -> XLR -> SMSL SP200 -> Headphones. Fig 2 provides some illustrations:
Fig 2: Illustrating control (orange) vs final setup.
III. Sonic Comparisons:
Sonically the LA-QXD1 is awesome. Things I noticed playing a 96khz/24 bit song: significantly better dynamic range, details, and bass performance. I want to stress the clarity and details that I've heard: I heard more details such as the breath of the violinist that I was listening to, the background instruments in Latin Jazz songs and etc. Even normal sound from Youtube/Spotify sounds so much livelier and better! The headphones I'm using has a potentially skull-rattling bass performance. This bass performance could only be brought out through the final setup. (Again,
Everything is compared to control!)
There is a problem that
is not specific to the LA-QXD1 DAC. Initially with
USB DAC input, despite the XLR connections, I hear audible pops and noise when I play a song on Youtube (
for example, so other owners can try out) or in some audio files. Switching to S/PDIF Toslink completely solved this issue so I'm sticking with that for now. I'm looking into an Intona USB isolator as a potential solution to this issue so I can come back to listening to DSD songs.
EDIT: I also experimented with plugging the DAC RCA into my Bluetooth speakers and compare that with Bluetooth pairing. Expectedly, the DAC RCA sounds so much better than Bluetooth pairing but 1) I think I read that Ben
doesn't recommend using both outputs of the DAC at the same time, and 2) I need the portability of the Bluetooth Speakers.
IV. Other comments:
I just love the small footprint and quasi-portability of my setup. I like the looks of the product, but this is a personal taste. My suggestions for a future product have already been listed in this thread such as 1) togglable DAC/pre-amp mode 2) togglable RCA/XLR outputs so people can connect both outputs to different devices and switch between them at the DAC controls. I will report back to this thread in the future should I encounter reliability issues. But for now, I'm a Soncoz fan. It's awesome how ASR brings together great engineers from all over the world who create such great products.
