TempoTec Sonata BHD Pro Portable DAC & Amp Review

[staticV3]

What's the difference between blue and red?

Red has less upper mids:

 

[renaudrenaud]

From Taobao

Seems a color code depending on the signal

 

[Acerun]

Red has less upper mids:
View attachment 312515

Am I wrong that the blues are actually just the zero?

 

[renaudrenaud]

Two CS43131

And a burning FPGA

 

[staticV3]

Am I wrong that the blues are actually just the zero?

Blues are just the regular Zero, correct.

 

[Njoy]

Same as Space and BHD pro, costing even less. I wouldn't be surprised if it has similar performance.

 

[ReaderZ]

This is even better than the Space and only slightly lower performance than L&P W4 which cost 5x as much.

 

[spectral85]

@amirm I couldn't find the frequency response graph, I would greatly appreciate it.

 

[Jimmyblues1959]

This is a review and detailed measurements of the TempoTec Sonata BHD Pro portable DAC and headphone amplifier. It was sent to me by the company and costs US $70.
View attachment 312470
I really like the fresh look of the BHD. There is a red LED that lights up the tiny ICs in there, giving it some elegance. There are volume control buttons on the side with good tactile feedback. And from what I could see in measurements, they have fine resolution.

Importantly there is support for 4.4 mm balanced headphone out in addition to 3.5mm.

EDIT: I originally left out "Pro" out of the name. Corrected some but the rest of the graphs are still missing that word in the model name.

TempoTec Sonata BHD Pro Measurements​

Let's start with our dashboard using balanced output:
View attachment 312471

SINAD of 105 dB is excellent for a portable DAC. But check out unbalanced output:
View attachment 312472

Wow, this thing will give many desktop dacs a run for their money! And that is not all. See the dynamic range:
View attachment 312304
Stunning!

Jitter performance is the best of any dongle from what I can remember:
View attachment 312305

Dynamic range is excellent even at 50 mv:
View attachment 312306
View attachment 312307

High output voltage translates to plenty of power for 300 ohm headphones:
View attachment 312308

View attachment 312309

Same for 32 ohm:
View attachment 312310
View attachment 312311

Not feeling well so no listening performance. May do so tomorrow and report back but I expect no surprises.

Conclusions
The performance of the Sonata BHD Pro rates as state of the art for portable DACs and will easily substitute for many desktop DACs as well. Add this the nice enclosure and controls and you have a winner.

It is my pleasure to add it to my recommended list.

Manufacturer Specifications:
Sonata BHD Pro is a USB C dongle DAC&

• DAC: 2*CS43131
• SNR: 131dB
• THD+N: 0.00012%(@32ohm 1kHz 0dB signal )
• OUTPUT LEVEL: [email protected]/32Ω,[email protected]/32Ω
• OUTPUT POWER: [email protected]/32ohm
• Frequency: 0-40KHZ /+- 0.5dB
• RGB light: indicates working status
• PCM: up to 32Bit/384kHz DSD256(NATIVE)
• DSD: up to DSD256
• MQA: MQA renderer 8X
• Volume Control: hardware buttons
• Platform support: Windows PC,MACOS and Android
• USB Audio driver: Win7,Win8 Win10 & Exclusive ASIO driver for windows system

-----------
As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.

Any donations are much appreciated using: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/

Looks like a nice piece of gear. My biggest concern would be misplacing it.

 

[LDvo]

They are available right now at various sites for 89.99. Not sure where the $70 price tag is coming from unless you want to wait two months...

Yes so that's $70 plus tax which is about another $5 or $6 depending where you live. Or you can pay $13 more and have it on October 3rd via a shop site.

You still have to pay tax even if you buy from shop site plus if your shipment lost or delivered to wrong address - you are on your own.
So many times i could not get refund from alix when item had been misplaced by delivery company. For that reason, I prefer Amazon now.

 

[Svensson]

As someone quite new to all of this. What would be the benefit of using a smsl su1 compared to this in a desktop setup?

@Bicep You would only use the SU1 as a desktop or main system DAC plus, you would need to buy a headphone amplifier to connect to it. This device has both the DAC and the headphone amp in one small unit. If you are using IEMs or other relatively easy to drive headphones, it is likely all you might need. Also, portable. If you are thinking of using as the DAC to your existing amp hifi setup, again, not quite the higher numbers of the SU1, but if you use a 3.5mm to 2x RCA cable, you may not even hear much difference, depending upon the rest of your kit.

 

[TNT]

Why did you leave ut the multitone part? For me, it would be very valuable to have a consistent set of measurements through all tests.

//

 

[pavuol]

What could be expected from this if considering battery drain when used with a smartphone?

Good question, Termpotec claims in its product page "Low power consumption / Playing continuously 35 hours on mobile phone with 4000mAh battery".

One of the reviewers (PhonoPhi) @HeadFi states:
"Power consumption:
Truly excellent with ca.61-62 mA consumed while playing, shutting down to 14 mA while idle, unlike many other Cirrus-based competitors. Similar to E44 and BHD original, with slightly higher idke for BHD pro (14 vs. 5 mA) because of bright illumination.
Space has 78/78 mA (playing/idle) - no shutdown in idle. That was the main point for me preventing Space being noticeably superior to BHD pro.
Some dongles can use up to 200 mA (Muse M3), 150 mA (AP90), so BHD pro values are great, especially for the power it can provide."

62mA x 35hours would account for 2170mAh consumed, so Tempotec seems right, if you happen to not use your phone much while playing (AccuBattery for my "old" Samsung A50 indicates 50mA avg idle consumption with screen off..)
Also it seems Tanchjim Space loses some points..

 

[GeekyBastard]

Hard choice between this and the Tanchjim Space.

 

[ZolaIII]

In those type of devices, the credit for performance should really go to IC designers (in this case, Cirrus Logic). The OEM only adds a PCB (usually, following a reference design from the chip vendor) and a nice metal enclosure. Assuming a proper design following vendor's guidelines, performance differences among devices using the same IC are typically so small as to be meaningless. So these reviews should really be grouped by the type of chips used.

We evoluted the CS43131 design many times in the past and gave proper credits that it deserves. Reason it performs so good is still class leading EMI rejection rate and embedded class H amplifier. It is very low power consumption because of embedded amp (no need for separate OPAMP tho even such keept power consumption good like in the case of Meizu Pro or Sound BlasterX G6). Because it's simplicity it didn't had really bad implementations if you count out one or two iBasso dongles they didn't did firmware right and abandoned them without fix. There were and cuple where higher amplification stage or power delivery for bi amped embedded one's whosent implementated great (close to clipping and probably soft clipping on full output). So it's not all that simple and bad USB bridge, FPGA or voltage regulation (and pump) can mess the things up significantly (lower the performance, cause problems in operating and increase power consumption) and good jacket as additional EMI rejection cage is important even with class leading IC design. Best implementations so far reach 118~119 dB SINAD on balanced out. Of course it's not all roses so CS43131 has not so great automatic impedance sensing future which user's tend to hate so in later designs OEMs disabled it and a bit fluffy bottom end (really minor, reed Wolf's blog about it). CS43131 isn't new design and all do others are still catching up its time to go future on to new and refined one with USB audio 3.0 specifications.
CS43131 will historically be remembered as a great mobile design and one that brought great performance to user's for 30$ (current Alli price for Sonata HD Pro).
Best regards and have fun.

 

[Eddie]

Why did you leave ut the multitone part? For me, it would be very valuable to have a consistent set of measurements through all tests.

//

And unfortunately no linearity and no IMD.
@amirm Why did you leave out these tests?

 

[Eddie]

Something is wrong with the unbalanced headphone output:

This is also the case at 300 Ohm, but not as pronounced.

 

[Ra1zel]

Output impedance?

My recent experience with a very expensive dongle (L&P W4) solidified my opinion that output impedance is of utmost importance, especially with my iems that all range from 10 to 30 ohm. With W4 I noticed on my moondrop variations decreased bass quality and quantity and slight increase in shout... measured output impedance and behold it's 3ohm on its 4.4mm output

 

[ZolaIII]

Output impedance?

My recent experience with a very expensive dongle (L&P W4) solidified my opinion that output impedance is of utmost importance, especially with my iems that all range from 10 to 30 ohm. With W4 I noticed on my moondrop variations decreased bass quality and quantity and slight increase increase in shout... measured output impedance and behold it's 3ohm on its 4.4mm output

That is a state of art CS43131 implementation but certainly not worth of money and compared to W2.
It's 0.004 THD+N on 16 Ohms 50u so hardly there is a better one (and certainly not mobile one) for low impedance high sensitivity IEM's tho one's with unrealistic impedance/sensitivity should be avoided in the first place. There is increase in THD+N at the bottom (as always and with all) but realistically still berried deep enough even with extreme sensitive low impedance IEM's (see multitone test's).

Measurements of Luxury&Precision W4 USB DAC/HPAmp - L7Audiolab

便携设备 在我拿到W4前，我一直以为乐彼所谓的“自研芯片”是在树新蜂……毕竟上次我看到国内音频厂吹自己“自研芯片”还是在上次。然而我拆开快递的那一刻我就有点惊讶了：乐彼这次居然直接出了小尾巴？自研芯片？扯淡的吧？

www.l7audiolab.com

Measurement of Luxury&Precision W2-131 - L7Audiolab

便携设备 前两天老万又找到我，神神秘秘的说:寄一个新设备过来帮我们找找Bug可好？然后又开始很兴奋的说：我们把CS43131的小尾巴做到了……X（*&（！*@& 我当时就问他：是43198断了吧？W2要改版吧？于是我拿到了Luxury&Precision W2-131

www.l7audiolab.com

 

[PenguinMusic]

I am not familiar with the su1, except that seems to be a stand alone DAC and you would need to add a headphone amplifier to it, while this little thing has both a dac and an amp integrated into it. Though the su1 has optic and coax digital as well as usb inputs. And is easier to I grate with a speaker amp and such.

Depending on what you choose as an a stand alone desktop amp you can get more power especially for non-balanced. Whether you need it will depend not only on impedance but also sensitivity of the headphone you are driving. There are some relatively low impedance headphones that still require tons of power to drive them properly (many planar magnetically for example). And if you have 600ohm Beyerdynamics dt880s, you need more power than this dongle single ended, but could likely get away with the balanced output though the bass might be thin. It’s that whole current vs voltage limited thing.

This dingle-dongle is gonna work better with high sensitivity IEMS than some desktop amps that may cause hiss.depends on output impedances and such.

You can get better SINAD from separate desktop amps and DACs, even very cheap ones like the schiit magni heresy amp and a good dac. But the difference may not be audible. Likely is not unless you have golden ears and some fantastic headphones with impeccable sources.

However, chances are this little deally-whopper will work great and I don’t know of a desktop combo dac/amp or separates that would perform as well for the same money. There might be, just can’t think of one off hand.

I recommend reading lots of reviews from the review index to get a better sense of pros and cons and whatnot.

Hi,

Hum... I think you're not really getting the point of this device. It is all about "portability". To add something that will allow yourt Phone to sound better that it does out of the box.

Think of it this way : instead of having a smartphone and a "high-ennd" DAP that costs a lot of money, has poor SoC, small dispaly and outdated Android System, you just use your phone and add this to have more or less what your DAP would offer (sure it will probably not be the same, but you'll probably hardly notice the difference excpet with some demanding headphones).

Of course, if you want to have a better DAC and a better heaphone amp, you can go for desktop devices. But they won't be "portative" even if some of them (I think of the newly released Shanling H5 and H7) include an internal battery.

Regards.