This is a review and detailed measurements of the Vantec USB Audio Adapter NBA-120U. It was kindly sent to me by a member. This thing has both microphone input (and hence ADC) and DAC+headphone amplifier. You get all of that including Prime shipping from Amazon for just US $10! Could be the bargain of the century....
The design departs from the usual shapes in a good way:
The unit is plug and play with windows. Alas, I could not get the ADC input to be recognized properly by my ASIO driver interface I have to use. Did not try to dig further to get it to work. Playback worked fine though so that is how the measurements are performed.
USB DAC Audio Measurements
As usual we start with our dashboard. Usually I drive the DAC at full digital amplitude ("0 dBFS") but the Vantec seriously distorted the output that way. So I dialed it down until that limit went away:
SINAD (measure of noise and distortion) is nothing to write home about but in dongle category, it is sort of expected:
For dynamic range, I like to see at least 96 dB so we can clear the noise level of 16 bit/CD audio. But we don't quite get there:
Intermodulation distortion versus level shows a horrible response:
Distortion shoots up to a SINAD of -18 dB despite the very low level at -50 dB. Something is seriously broken here.
Jitter shows all kinds of noise and distortion:
Let's see how much power it produces starting with high output load of 300 ohms:
Gosh, we don't get much. Here it is at 33 ohms:
This is very low as we can see in our comparison graphs:
Tiny little dongles do better than this and by far.
Output impedance is the last bit of bad news:
The high impedance is responsible for low power into 33 ohm as so much of it is lost internally. Expect serious change of frequency response with many headphones as well.
Headphone Listening Tests
I connected my Sennheiser HD-650 to the Ventec and boy, I heard the worst fidelity I remember with them. There was no bass. There was no detail. There was no volume. And frequency response seemed to have been changed as well. Could not stand it for more than a few seconds.
Conclusions
Somethings cheap is good. Sometimes cheap is bad. The Ventec NBA-120U is the latter. I suggest avoiding as there are many better choices.
--------
As always, questions, comments, corrections, etc. are welcome.
In the past, I have asked you all for money to buy Christmas presents for other people/panthers. I have not asked you for money for myself. And so you know, I like super expensive and nice presents. So don't be stingy. Donate as much as you can using: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/
The design departs from the usual shapes in a good way:
The unit is plug and play with windows. Alas, I could not get the ADC input to be recognized properly by my ASIO driver interface I have to use. Did not try to dig further to get it to work. Playback worked fine though so that is how the measurements are performed.
USB DAC Audio Measurements
As usual we start with our dashboard. Usually I drive the DAC at full digital amplitude ("0 dBFS") but the Vantec seriously distorted the output that way. So I dialed it down until that limit went away:
SINAD (measure of noise and distortion) is nothing to write home about but in dongle category, it is sort of expected:
For dynamic range, I like to see at least 96 dB so we can clear the noise level of 16 bit/CD audio. But we don't quite get there:
Intermodulation distortion versus level shows a horrible response:
Distortion shoots up to a SINAD of -18 dB despite the very low level at -50 dB. Something is seriously broken here.
Jitter shows all kinds of noise and distortion:
Let's see how much power it produces starting with high output load of 300 ohms:
Gosh, we don't get much. Here it is at 33 ohms:
This is very low as we can see in our comparison graphs:
Tiny little dongles do better than this and by far.
Output impedance is the last bit of bad news:
The high impedance is responsible for low power into 33 ohm as so much of it is lost internally. Expect serious change of frequency response with many headphones as well.
Headphone Listening Tests
I connected my Sennheiser HD-650 to the Ventec and boy, I heard the worst fidelity I remember with them. There was no bass. There was no detail. There was no volume. And frequency response seemed to have been changed as well. Could not stand it for more than a few seconds.
Conclusions
Somethings cheap is good. Sometimes cheap is bad. The Ventec NBA-120U is the latter. I suggest avoiding as there are many better choices.
--------
As always, questions, comments, corrections, etc. are welcome.
In the past, I have asked you all for money to buy Christmas presents for other people/panthers. I have not asked you for money for myself. And so you know, I like super expensive and nice presents. So don't be stingy. Donate as much as you can using: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/
