World's Cheapest DAC Review

[Vini darko]

The ongoing poop stuggles story is funny (because it's not happening to me)
Hard to find enthusiasm for complaning about this dac considering it's rock bottom price.

 

[sergeauckland]

I bought one of these a couple of years ago as I couldn't believe anything could sell for £3.95 including free shipping from China!

I measured distortion of 0.87% at -4dBFS, so thought it was pretty bad. Put it away in a drawer and forgot about it until this morning.

Thanks to John, (Post #15 above) I never thought to check the DC offset, which measures about 0.5v. Take that out just with an output capacitor, and the distortion drops to 0.008%, so both my distortion meter and my ADC are sensitive to DC! I've only had the distortion meter since 1987 and never noticed!

Mine has an output of around 0.8v for 0dBFS, which is 0dBu, so quite usable for most everyday applications.

Staggering performance for so little, and it really shows that pretty much any DAC, as one would find in a tablet, mobile 'phone or any digital player these days is quite good enough for transparency. It has always made me wonder why anyone ever buys an external DAC when they have a perfectly good one in their CD player/digital player/ tablet/'phone or whatever.

Oh and by the way, I used the wall-wart USB power supply that came with my Lenovo tablet for the measurements this morning.

S.

 

[martin900]

I'm already surprised that it actually works and doesn't come dead last in the charts.

 

[daftcombo]

Still performing better than a 10,000$ totaldac.

@amirm , what about a listening test?

 

[3125b]

It is literally called "Digital To Analog Audio Converter."

Fair enough I guess, at least that name makes sense
With 98dB DR this might actually do quite ok in many applications. For the price that's certainly an achievement, right?
It performs better than I anticipated from reading the title and seeing the picture.

 

[Tks]

The saga continues.

Literally the type of service you get here in NYC. Worse if you live in a Co-Op building because the management company has to approve of every little fucking thing. Takes months to get anything done, if they don't forget. Constant excuses like, "oh it's winter now, oh it's summer now, everyone's on vacation, oh it's C19 now everyone's dead" (you get my point).

Ineptitude with plumping and just general home service is the biggest pile of shit unless you pay the Mafia to come in, and threaten someone's life to send qualified people that have the faintest of clues of what they're talking about, and not be cheap or lazy bastards when they do arrive.

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As for the DAC, someone need to get the Mafia to send this DAC over to Microsoft and Sony's dumbasses. This company produced an entire DAC for $2, and these clowns with their next-gen consoles couldn't be bothered to include a Toslink port on their consoles, EVEN THOUGH they've had it on their older ones. The cost cutting is unbelievable.

 

[Helicopter]

Staggering performance for so little, and it really shows that pretty much any DAC, as one would find in a tablet, mobile 'phone or any digital player these days is quite good enough for transparency. It has always made me wonder why anyone ever buys an external DAC when they have a perfectly good one in their CD player/digital player/ tablet/'phone or whatever.

S.

Just about any DAC chip is going to be good enough. Its implementation in the circuit, and the analog signal at the device output are a different story. Output performance, even with a chip that is fine may be quite inadequate for various reasons.

I do agree you probably dont need or really benefit from a DAC for your Samsung phone or Onkyo CD player.

 

[carlob]

Open it up, we need to know what's inside

 

[Timbo2]

If you need multi-channel, USB, and want an ADC all for the reasonable price of $25US I can recommend this:

https://vantecusa.com/products_detail.php?p_id=155

No optical however. I use it with KVM to switch sound between PCs. Actually works much better than the analog switching I had on my old KVM before I upgraded. I'm not listening on the highest fidelity speakers, but to my ears nothing audibly wrong.

 

[sergeauckland]

Just about any DAC chip is going to be good enough. Its implementation in the circuit, and the analog signal at the device output are a different story. Output performance, even with a chip that is fine may be quite inadequate for various reasons.

I do agree you probably dont need or really benefit from a DAC for your Samsung phone or Onkyo CD player.

I suppose it depends on your definition of 'adequate' and therefore 'inadequate'. Mine is good enough for transparency, which these days is trivially easy to achieve.

I agree that sometimes, especially with tube outputs, the results are mediocre, even poor, and possibly not even transparent, but then those results are there deliberately, to make the DAC sound 'different', and therefore, given the high price, 'different' must be 'better'.

It would take staggering incompetence to screw up the analogue audio output enough to be audible except deliberately.

I know it's a modest sample, but every CD player, going back to the Marantz CD63 and CD73 of 1984 onwards, various 'supermarket' i.e. under £20 DVD players plus my various laptops, and tablets have all measured sufficiently well for transparency, that I personally haven't come across anything that wasn't. Even this daft £3.95 DAC is fine now that I've got over the DC offset that affected my measurements. I confess I never actually listened to it, as I couldn't see the point.

S

 

[restorer-john]

Thanks to John, (Post #15 above) I never thought to check the DC offset, which measures about 0.5v. Take that out just with an output capacitor, and the distortion drops to 0.008%, so both my distortion meter and my ADC are sensitive to DC! I've only had the distortion meter since 1987 and never noticed!

Absolute killer that DC offset is! Glad you looked into it like I did.

Cheers.

 

[YSC]

if it don't perform worse than the typical tv 3.5mm out this is actually worth it! when it's cheaper than a 3.5mm to RCA adaptor cable..

 

[pozz]

unless you pay the Mafia to come in

Woven into the fabric of the city. Negotiators for hire. Two broke legs or your money back.

 

[Helicopter]

I suppose it depends on your definition of 'adequate' and therefore 'inadequate'.

S

I agree. My requirements, at least for stereo music at home, go far beyond anything that I would try to justify with a rational argument, though $199 is my most expensive DAC.

It would take staggering incompetence to screw up the analogue audio output enough to be audible except deliberately.

S

You have measured a lot of outputs without finding 'staggering incompetence' but I still feel like I might benefit from actively avoiding it in something like my laptop analog output. Perhaps I should reconsider some preconceptions.

 

[DSJR]

I bought one of these a couple of years ago as I couldn't believe anything could sell for £3.95 including free shipping from China!

I measured distortion of 0.87% at -4dBFS, so thought it was pretty bad. Put it away in a drawer and forgot about it until this morning.

Thanks to John, (Post #15 above) I never thought to check the DC offset, which measures about 0.5v. Take that out just with an output capacitor, and the distortion drops to 0.008%, so both my distortion meter and my ADC are sensitive to DC! I've only had the distortion meter since 1987 and never noticed!

Mine has an output of around 0.8v for 0dBFS, which is 0dBu, so quite usable for most everyday applications.

Staggering performance for so little, and it really shows that pretty much any DAC, as one would find in a tablet, mobile 'phone or any digital player these days is quite good enough for transparency. It has always made me wonder why anyone ever buys an external DAC when they have a perfectly good one in their CD player/digital player/ tablet/'phone or whatever.

Oh and by the way, I used the wall-wart USB power supply that came with my Lenovo tablet for the measurements this morning.

S.

DAMN! I went hunting for mine and easily found the 5VDC wallwart plus home made linear supply. As for the little box itself, it's disappeared into one of my many 'black holes' here and may well turn up again somewhere.

 

[PresbyByrd]

Dacs and septic tanks makes one think of Schiit. Anyway, I am pooped, so I will sign out.

 

[Joachim Herbert]

This is almost AV revceiver grade.

 

[Putter]

Glad you finally got down to my price range! My version which I found at a Truckload clearance store ran me $3 I think, but didn't include the 5 volt wall wart although I have plenty I've collected over the years. It did however include a USB 1A out. I'm inspired to try it out. I may need a converter for my Roku.

 

[PeteL]

This is the A/D version in the same casework. I can't seem to find the D/A- think I gave it my father for optical TV to HiFi sound a while back.

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Incredible... Digikey sells the pcm1802 adc chip for 4$ singles, 3$ moderate quantity... How can it possibly add up to a profitable finished product, I'm puzzled.

 

[Guerilla]

Would be fun to mod it to high tier performance