Budget DACs

Ryanr1987 said:
Zeos is alright. I don't like how the guys on SBAF rip him I think he's just your average dude and the Audio Community can be stuck up their own arse at times. I wouldn't trust him for headphone or sound advice but for your average person not looking for SQ I think he does a good job.

I kind of see his point about not describing SQ because nothing stands it from the crowed minus the NH but A basic description would be nice.
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i wouldnt bother listening to what zeos has to say hes got tin ear.
 
Well I'm happy with the performance of the headphone side too. Driving the HD-25 (70 ohm) they've got plenty in reserve, things get uncomfortable above 1/3 volume.

Tried a few genres and very impressed, can't fault anything about it really. If anything it's highlighted how rubbish some of my FLAC encodes are.

If I'm being really critical there seems to be a little bit of hiss during quieter segments, although again I can't rule out rubbish encodes here.

For sub £50 it certainly is a little trooper.

14031699_360906514297454_1819056973_n by Neil Gates, on Flickr

14128704_589707801231871_1388376855_n by Neil Gates, on Flickr
 
seanyc5 said:
Is there a hiss if you pause the song and crank the volume to max?
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Even some of the high end stuff will have some kind of hiss past about 90-95% volume - but it shouldn't be audible upto atleast 70% volume or so on anything reasonable upwards.
 
It also depends on what you are using to listen through - a lot of otherwise good amps will hiss if you are listening through low impedance IEMs for instance, while that same amp will be utterly silent when listening through 300 ohm Sennheiser HD650s.
 
Mine is absolutely dead silent at full volume with my hd650s, you can't tell it's switched on. I haven't tried a pair of lower impedance phones however.
 
^^ Not a big fan of typical discrete transistor buffers personally though they can have decent output power I've always found they sound a bit raw/"80/90s" audio sounding for want of a better way to put it.
 
Bumping this to ask a question on the SMSL SD 793II for my K7XX's. How would I connect one to my Schiit Vali? At the moment I have a twin phono to 3.5mm going from Vali to my mobo. Would it just be a case of either a coaxial or optical cable from mobo to this DAC then a twin phono to phono cable from the DAC to the Vali?
 
I am thinking of buying the SMSL SD793-II PCM1793 but i am a bit confused. Would I connect this to my onboard sound and if so would I need a cable or does it come with a cable. I also have xonar dgx...should i connect it to that instead.
 
I don't think it comes with any cables, just the mains power.

You could connect to either motherboard or the DGX. Doesn't really matter which, except if you want to make use of Dolby Headphone on the DGX. If you're not bothered about any of the effects stuff, then you might as well just use optical from the motherboard.
 
Use whichever you want, both your motherboard and the DGX have SPDIF optical out, so just connect to the SMSL via an optical cable.

There will be no difference in quality no matter which you decide to use as the signal to the SMSL will be digital data and not audio.

Marsman got here first :D
 
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