Taga Harmony DA-400 - a short story of disappointment

[salmo]

The DA-400 is a DAC that was designed by Taga Harmony- European Polish-German cooperation and manufactured in China. From what I've learned, the company's origins date back to the 1990s, and the DA-400 premiered in 2023, based on the ES9038Q2M chip along with a 16-core XMOS. It can currently be purchased for about $180. As for the number of inputs and outputs, it's really rich! In addition, the small display - just right one and not too bright - displays the most important information. The case itself is compact and decently made, the connectors also look solid. I didn't expect much, but I thought that the implementation of the ES9038Q2M would be good enough to get SINAD of 100dB or 105dB, unfortunately.... I was wrong.

More about it here: https://www.tagaharmony.com/en/product/9107/da-400

Measurements taken using an E1DA Cosmos ADC with a JDS Labs Atom AMP 2 as a buffer. The software is Multitone Analyzer. I checked both left and right channels, but didn't observe significant differences between them.

I wasn't expecting much, but TD+N -80dB - I wasn't prepared for this. When I reduced the generator signal by about 2dB, the maximum I get was TD+N -81.5dB, so it's not much of an improvement:

I really started to suspect that maybe in this case it's some kind of driver or ASIO problem. I decided to disconnect the USB and feed an optical signal to the DAC, unfortunately the result was practically the same:

Maybe no serious measurements were taken during the design stage? Or maybe my copy is simply defective? Hard to tell. For comparison - this is how it looks like with the Micromega MyDAC, which is about 12 years old, It achieved juicy TD+N of -101dB with no problem:

I could end this whole thread there, but I feel obliged to post a little more information, so I'm throwing in a handful of basic measurements.

I feel disappointed, because I really visually and functionally liked this DAC. In addition - it was designed in the country where I live, but unfortunately - something did not go quite right. I didn't expect state of the art performance, but I thought that the implementation of ES9038Q2M would be at least decent. Measurements rather leave no illusions here. Probably when used as a simple DAC for a headphone amplifier and at normal listening levels it will not be audible, but already the cheapest dongles with CS43131 provide definitely better performance - the distaste after this test unfortunately remained:

 

[jkim]

This is the worst ES9038Q2M-based DAC I've seen so far.

Have you actually measured the output voltage of a sine tone at 0 dBFS using a multimeter?

 

[DVDdoug]

I feel disappointed, because I really visually and functionally liked this DAC.

But only after you made measurements, right? I doubt you're hearing noise or distortion.

I don't claim to have "golden ears" but the only time I've heard a defect from a "DAC" it was a soundcard that made (audible) noise when the hard drive was accessed.

 

[salmo]

This is the worst ES9038Q2M-based DAC I've seen so far.

Have you actually measured the output voltage of a sine tone at 0 dBFS using a multimeter?

Yup, it's 2,009Vrms on left and 2,0015Vrms on right channel.

But only after you made measurements, right? I doubt you're hearing noise or distortion.

I don't claim to have "golden ears" but the only time I've heard a defect from a "DAC" it was a soundcard that made (audible) noise when the hard drive was accessed.

I know, no one listens to tracks like 1kHz at 0dBFS either Yet I expected that equipment from 2023 and for ~$180 do a little better in measurements. Definitely better to look for a used SMSL SU-1 for about $40.