(Unofficial) Moon Drop Dawn Pro Balanced DAC/Headphone AMP Measurements

[seanyang]

I have measured the Moon Drop Dawn Pro with Audio Precision APx555 recently and I would like to share with you. I bought the Dawn Pro myself.

Here's the specifications from the manufacture. Just in case.

The Dawn Pro is a small and light DAC/Headphone AMP, Only 42mm * 22.45mm * 12.39mm and weighted 13grams. According to the manufacture, it can drive a 16Ohm headphone with 120mW.
Although I know it has been designed as a Headphone amp. Due to it has the 4.4mm balanced output. I prefer to use it with a 4.4mm to 2XLR cable as a regular DAC, and this is exactly how I measured with AP.
Here's the measurements with the Bench mode. I'm using the ASIO and set Dawn Pro volume all the way up. Sampling rate set to 48KHz and the output set to 0dBFS by the way.

Very shocking data to me for the tiny size and USB bus powerd device. And almost exactly the same as the Moon Drop official measurement.

As this DAC using CS43131 chip, I have tested the Multi-tone to see if this DAC also has the bug that most CS43131 powerd DAC do.

This is test with 0dBFS output.

And here is the -1dBFS output. I assume that Moon Drop has avoided that bug? Or maybe there's some mistake I made. Please leave a comment if I did something wrong.

Since it's so small that I often can't find it, I made an adapter for it, so it can attached with my key rings. lol

Conclutions
I'm pretty happy to see such small but powerful DAC on the market. I tried this with my Moon Drop Para Planer headphone which has 8Ohm Impedance, Unfortunately it can't drive it well even with balanced cable. But I'm sure it can work well with higher impedance and sesitivity headphones.
And it works as regular DAC for me.

-----------
I'm newbe here and tring to manipulate the APx555 well.
I would like to know how to test the jitter. I have tried to run the jitter vs freq in sequence mode but it seems it won't work with ASIO output. Hope to get your help, Thanks.

 

[Ashimaru]

Nice measurements! What about unbalanced output measurements? And this or Tanchjim Space are better?

 

[Vamp898]

I have measured the Moon Drop Dawn Pro with Audio Precision APx555 recently and I would like to share with you. I bought the Dawn Pro myself.
View attachment 371660

View attachment 371661

Here's the specifications from the manufacture. Just in case.
View attachment 371666
The Dawn Pro is a small and light DAC/Headphone AMP, Only 42mm * 22.45mm * 12.39mm and weighted 13grams. According to the manufacture, it can drive a 16Ohm headphone with 120mW.
Although I know it has been designed as a Headphone amp. Due to it has the 4.4mm balanced output. I prefer to use it with a 4.4mm to 2XLR cable as a regular DAC, and this is exactly how I measured with AP.
Here's the measurements with the Bench mode. I'm using the ASIO and set Dawn Pro volume all the way up. Sampling rate set to 48KHz and the output set to 0dBFS by the way.
View attachment 371764
Very shocking data to me for the tiny size and USB bus powerd device. And almost exactly the same as the Moon Drop official measurement.

As this DAC using CS43131 chip, I have tested the Multi-tone to see if this DAC also has the bug that most CS43131 powerd DAC do.

This is test with 0dBFS output.
View attachment 371663

And here is the -1dBFS output. I assume that Moon Drop has avoided that bug? Or maybe there's some mistake I made. Please leave a comment if I did something wrong.
View attachment 371664


Since it's so small that I often can't find it, I made an adapter for it, so it can attached with my key rings. lol
View attachment 371665

Conclutions
I'm pretty happy to see such small but powerful DAC on the market. I tried this with my Moon Drop Para Planer headphone which has 8Ohm Impedance, Unfortunately it can't drive it well even with balanced cable. But I'm sure it can work well with higher impedance and sesitivity headphones.
And it works as regular DAC for me.

-----------
I'm newbe here and tring to manipulate the APx555 well.
I would like to know how to test the jitter. I have tried to run the jitter vs freq in sequence mode but it seems it won't work with ASIO output. Hope to get your help, Thanks.

How flat does this one measure for you?

 

[Vamp898]

Nice measurements! What about unbalanced output measurements? And this or Tanchjim Space are better?

They should be the same device. As far as my information go, Tanchjim is a Moondrop brand. So i'd be highly surprised, if there are differences in measurements.

 

[solderdude]

flat enough eyeballing the multitone

 

[Vamp898]

flat enough eyeballing the multitone

For sure transparent, yes. In my measurements i had a -0.2db roll-off at 17kHz and i would love to know if this is due to my setup or if its just the device.

So i am not questioning the device but my own measurements^^

 

[Matias]

Thanks for the measurements! Nice to see confirmation that the Dawn Pro is performing well.

BTW it is on sale for 50 usd right now on their official AliExpress store, and dropping price to 44usd on June 17th sale.

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005005948595719.html

 

[splitting_ears]

Incredible performance, I'm very tempted to get one. Can anyone tell me if Moondrop provide ASIO drivers with it? I've sent them a message but never heard back.

 

[solderdude]

For sure transparent, yes. In my measurements i had a -0.2db roll-off at 17kHz and i would love to know if this is due to my setup or if its just the device.

So i am not questioning the device but my own measurements^^

Do comparative measurements with known devices.
-0.2dB at 17kHz is not audible for mortals > 30 y.o. when it is real.

 

[mc.god]

Incredible performance, I'm very tempted to get one. Can anyone tell me if Moondrop provide ASIO drivers with it? I've sent them a message but never heard back.

Since it uses Comtrue 7601 usb bridge the official drivers should work fine

https://www.comtrue-inc.com/index.php/download2/category/4-ct7601

I just examined into the installer and there is a ctasio64.dll library so they provide Asio along with uac2.

 

[splitting_ears]

Since it uses Comtrue 7601 usb bridge the official drivers should work fine

https://www.comtrue-inc.com/index.php/download2/category/4-ct7601

I just examined into the installer and there is a ctasio64.dll library so they provide Asio along with uac2.

Excellent, thank you very much for looking into it!

 

[mc.god]

Excellent, thank you very much for looking into it!

Be advised that I cannot guarantee the drivers work since I don't have the dongle so maybe better waiting for some owner to confirm.

 

[Ashimaru]

They should be the same device. As far as my information go, Tanchjim is a Moondrop brand. So i'd be highly surprised, if there are differences in measurements.

Do you have unbalanced measurements for Dawn Pro?

 

[Vamp898]

Do you have unbalanced measurements for Dawn Pro?

No, only balanced. But i'd be surprised if it performs different on unbalanced.

 

[Bleib]

The new budget king

 

[mc.god]

The new budget king

Together with Jcally JM20 for half the price if you don't need balanced

https://audiosciencereview.com/foru...ed-to-cirrus-logic-cs43131.23138/post-2003925

 

[Jimster480]

While this is pretty amazing for the price; it isn't much different from the FiiO KA13.

There are so many good dongles now, I feel like we have gotten behind here on the forum with the number of dongles on the market that now rival many desktop products that cost way more.

 

[Vamp898]

By the way, i totally forgot to update this Thread, i am very sorry.

The Roll-Off was due to my Measuring Setup. I have an better setup now and see there


The Roll-Off is gone =) So it is flat

 

[Vamp898]

While this is pretty amazing for the price; it isn't much different from the FiiO KA13.

There are so many good dongles now, I feel like we have gotten behind here on the forum with the number of dongles on the market that now rival many desktop products that cost way more.

The KA13 does have one big disadvantage because FiiO did something absolutely unnecessary because FiiO is FiiO

For FiiO, big numbers on papers are the most important thing, so they did something stupid. They did put Op-Amps behind the CS43131 (which is completely useless as the CS43131 already has an Headphone driver, it does not need an Op-Amp, that is the whole feature of the thing), so basically all what FiiO does is boost the output of the CS43131 afterwards which does have disadvantages.

While the DAWN PRO has an Noise Floor of 1.3µV on 4.4mm Balanced, the KA13 has 3.1µV and they also increased the distortion and output impedance.

All they do is take the input signal from the CS43131 and boost it which is kinda unnecessary and useless. If the CS43131 doesn't have enough power, the right thing to do is to take the CS43198 and put Amps behind that one. But that is more expensive and hence, FiiO didn't do it. They should just have left the CS43131 alone do the job and be done.

So the KA13 has more power, but is worse in everything else.

 

[Jimster480]

The KA13 does have one big disadvantage because FiiO did something absolutely unnecessary because FiiO is FiiO

For FiiO, big numbers on papers are the most important thing, so they did something stupid. They did put Op-Amps behind the CS43131 (which is completely useless as the CS43131 already has an Headphone driver, it does not need an Op-Amp, that is the whole feature of the thing), so basically all what FiiO does is boost the output of the CS43131 afterwards which does have disadvantages.

While the DAWN PRO has an Noise Floor of 1.3µV on 4.4mm Balanced, the KA13 has 3.1µV and they also increased the distortion and output impedance.

All they do is take the input signal from the CS43131 and boost it which is kinda unnecessary and useless. If the CS43131 doesn't have enough power, the right thing to do is to take the CS43198 and put Amps behind that one. But that is more expensive and hence, FiiO didn't do it. They should just have left the CS43131 alone do the job and be done.

So the KA13 has more power, but is worse in everything else.

Yes, that is true. But according to their own tests on their website; the KA13 has around 108 SINAD. That should do the job anyway.
The desktop mode does deliver big power; and this has been able to power some of my Planar's. Honestly it is great power in a small package even if the design is not the most ideal, it is pretty cheap and destroys other dongles I had before in terms of power output for full frame headphones.