This is a review and detailed measurements of the Wyred4Sound mINT integrated stereo amplifier and DAC. It is on kind loan from a member and costs US $1,499 from the company. I see reviews dating back to 2013 so the box has been around for a while.
The design goes with the rest of Wyred4Sound gear although in person looks less refined than I expect in this price range:
The back panel shows some very good functionality such as triggers and home theater pass through:
The overall package is small and convenient from that point of view. It ran reasonably cool which was also nice.
As I took this picture, I realized USB only goes up to 96 kHz which is the old school USB interfaces of the time. Fortunately it is asynchronous which was novel at the time and could have been worse in the form of synchronous USB.
Wyred4Sound mINT Measurements
When I first powered on the unit, the measurements were low so to make sure it was not my setup, I took the time to route all cables separately tightened all the connections and performance seemingly improved. But this morning I got up and thought maybe the box was warming up and changes had nothing to do with the wires so ran my standard warm-up test:
Looks like my guess was correct. The amp did not stabilize even after 7 minutes of running with load on. I waited at least that long before I took the measurements you see below so represents the warmer side of things.
With amplifiers with both digital and analog inputs, I always have to determine which input is best which depends on topology of the amp. So let's do that here, first using Aux In analog input:
I tried hard to suppress that mains noise at 60 Hz but every change made it worse. I then switched to USB input:
Man, this is bad. It should be a walk in the park to have DAC that keeps up with an amp that has a SINAD of 77 dB but here we are, with one of the worst performances I have seen with digital input. So let's continue with analog input for the rest of the tests starting with our SINAD rating:
So below average and disappointing. Even more disappointing is the high noise floor:
Crosstalk is fine:
Frequency response unfortunately shows variability which means the class D amp used doesn't use a feedback loop outside of its filter to remove that dependency:
Assuming you have good high frequency sensitivity, this amplifier will sound different with different speakers.
We see that distortion sets in early and rises a lot:
Here is our peak and max power at 1% THD:
Sweeping different frequencies shows reasonable response for a class D but not in general:
Conclusions
I very much like the functionality of the mINT with cute small size. Performance though is subpart and much better can be done than what we have here with discrete parts which may cost even less than this combo.
So I can't recommend the Wyred4Sound mINT. But if you are fond of the functionality, I am not going to chase you out of the room.
-----------
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/
The design goes with the rest of Wyred4Sound gear although in person looks less refined than I expect in this price range:
The back panel shows some very good functionality such as triggers and home theater pass through:
The overall package is small and convenient from that point of view. It ran reasonably cool which was also nice.
As I took this picture, I realized USB only goes up to 96 kHz which is the old school USB interfaces of the time. Fortunately it is asynchronous which was novel at the time and could have been worse in the form of synchronous USB.
Wyred4Sound mINT Measurements
When I first powered on the unit, the measurements were low so to make sure it was not my setup, I took the time to route all cables separately tightened all the connections and performance seemingly improved. But this morning I got up and thought maybe the box was warming up and changes had nothing to do with the wires so ran my standard warm-up test:
Looks like my guess was correct. The amp did not stabilize even after 7 minutes of running with load on. I waited at least that long before I took the measurements you see below so represents the warmer side of things.
With amplifiers with both digital and analog inputs, I always have to determine which input is best which depends on topology of the amp. So let's do that here, first using Aux In analog input:
I tried hard to suppress that mains noise at 60 Hz but every change made it worse. I then switched to USB input:
Man, this is bad. It should be a walk in the park to have DAC that keeps up with an amp that has a SINAD of 77 dB but here we are, with one of the worst performances I have seen with digital input. So let's continue with analog input for the rest of the tests starting with our SINAD rating:
So below average and disappointing. Even more disappointing is the high noise floor:
Crosstalk is fine:
Frequency response unfortunately shows variability which means the class D amp used doesn't use a feedback loop outside of its filter to remove that dependency:
Assuming you have good high frequency sensitivity, this amplifier will sound different with different speakers.
We see that distortion sets in early and rises a lot:
Here is our peak and max power at 1% THD:
Sweeping different frequencies shows reasonable response for a class D but not in general:
Conclusions
I very much like the functionality of the mINT with cute small size. Performance though is subpart and much better can be done than what we have here with discrete parts which may cost even less than this combo.
So I can't recommend the Wyred4Sound mINT. But if you are fond of the functionality, I am not going to chase you out of the room
.-----------
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/
