Desktop USB DAC Archives

If you&#;ve started down the rabbit hole of audiophile gear, you&#;ve probably come across folks out there imploring you to buy a digital to analog conversion (DAC) unit. It can be a little startling being told that you don&#;t have the right equipment, but before you go racing off to figure out how much money you&#;re going to be blowing: read this article first to know if you actually need one. Chances are good that you&#;re completely fine without it.

This is a long article where I try to be as complete as possible, so feel free to skip around. I just don&#;t want anyone to see this and feel like they were misled or I glossed over something important.

Editor&#;s note: this article was updated March 17, to update the passage on bitrate to address newer audio compression standards, and their ability to perform better with lower bitrates.

What is a DAC?

A DAC simply converts a digital signal into an analog one so that your headphones can then create sound. It&#;s that simple! Most DAC chips are found in the sources of whatever you&#;re listening to, and generally run a manufacturer from $3 to $ At this point, it&#;s a very basic component of any smartphone, though the headphone jack seems to be a dying feature (Editors&#; note: a pox on your house, Apple).

A DAC simply converts a digital signal into an analog one so that your headphones can then create sound.

Much like headphone amplifiers, standalone DACs came about as a response to poor audio quality at the consumer level. Back in the day, it was a lot tougher to find good hardware, and nerds like me had to deal with devices that couldn&#;t keep up with higher-end headphones and speakers. Sometimes the DAC assembly would be improperly shielded—introducing staticy noise—or it&#;d be a little too cheap, making the output kinda crappy. Lower sample rates, badly encoded MP3s&#; there were tons of things that children of the 80s and 90s had to deal with when it came to audio. Who wants to listen to low-quality tunes?

But digital music has come a long way since then. Better tech has made shortcomings of even the cheapest chips almost nonexistent, while digital music has exploded in quality past the point of diminishing returns. Where it used to be true that your Walkman&#;s or laptop&#;s internal DAC chip wouldn&#;t be suitable for high-bitrate listening, there are plenty of more compact units nowadays that can keep up.

When do I need a DAC?

Buying an external DAC means the noisy environment in your computer won&#;t mess with your music, though improvements will be minor.

The reason you&#;d get a DAC today is that your source—be it your computer, smartphone, or home system—is introducing noise or incapable of outputting sound at the bitrate of your files. That&#;s it. I know that&#;s a really anticlimactic summary, but that&#;s really the long and short of it. The only other time you could possibly want something super high-end is if you&#;re recording audio for professional applications, but even then the equipment used for processing it can handle it relatively cheaply.

Because DACs are a largely spec-driven item, you can almost always pick out the one you need simply by looking at the packaging. FiiO makes plenty good products for cheap, and if you want an amplifier to go along with the DAC so you never have to worry about either, their E10K is a solid pickup for under $ You could also decide to throw money at the problem by picking up an ODAC or O2 amp + ODAC combo, but that may be overkill. But seriously, don&#;t sink too much money into this. It&#;s just not worth it.

How does a DAC work?

Low bitrates (a) can mangle the waveform a bit, but higher bitrates (b) can sound better in certain circumstances.

Now that you know the why of DAC, let&#;s delve into the how.

All audio, whether it&#;s stored on vinyl or in an MP3 is a compression wave when it&#;s played back. When computers record an analog signal, typically it will be displayed in what&#;s called a waveform, or a representation of the wave where the Y axis is amplitude (how powerful the wave is), and the X axis is time. Each wave will have a crest and valley—called a period—and how many periods there are in a second is called frequency(displayed as Hz). If you&#;ve heard that word before, you know that what frequency a sound is also corresponds to what note it is. The higher the frequency, the higher the note.

The job of the DAC is to take a digitally stored recording and turn it back into an analog signal. To do that, it needs to translate the bits of data from digital files into an analog electrical signal at thousands of set times per second, otherwise known as samples. The unit then outputs a wave that intersects all those points. Now, because DACs aren&#;t perfect, sometimes this leads to problems. These problems are jitter, aliasing, narrow dynamic range, and limited bitrate.

Before launching into the nuts and bolts of how everything works, you need to know three terms: bitrate, bit depth, and sample rate. Bitrate simply refers to how much data is expressed per second. Sample rate refers to how many samples of data are taken in a second, and bit depth refers to how much data is recorded per sample.

What is jitter?

I&#;m going to preface this section just like I addressed it in the audio cable myths article: Jitter is mostly a theoretical problem at this point, and extremely unlikely to rear its head in any equipment made in the last ten years. However, it&#;s still useful to know what it is and when it might be an issue, so let&#;s dive in.

So remember how I said that sample rate can lead to some problems? Jitter is one that gets a lot of attention, but not much understanding. Jitter is a phenomenon that occurs when the clock, or what tells the DAC when to sample, doesn&#;t work as well as it needs to. When the sample points aren&#;t happening when they should, this can lead to a change in pitch for short periods of time. The higher the note that&#;s being reproduced, the higher the likelihood that this problem might occur.

You don't need to worry about slight imperfections in notes near 20kHz because in all likelihood you can't hear them anyway.

However it should be pointed out that this is another one of those problems that isn&#;t as common anymore because DAC units of today are so much better than those of the past. Jitter tends to only happen at super-high frequency notes because those notes have the shortest wavelengths. However, what makes high-frequency notes more susceptible to this type of error also makes them less likely to be heard: most people over the age of 20 can&#;t hear the notes where jitter is most likely to occur.

You don&#;t need to worry about slight imperfections in notes near 20kHz because in all likelihood you can&#;t hear them anyway.

What is aliasing?

A demonstration of aliasing: waveform a and b are identical, but the low sample rate of DAC b has fooled the DAC into thinking the frequency is halved.

Basically, sometimes a sound that&#;s really really high in frequency like a cymbal shimmer, harmonic, or other high note will have this strange warbling or oscillating sound that wasn&#;t in the original recording. What&#;s happening is that the DAC is accidentally creating a lower frequency note because the sample rate isn&#;t high enough.

How do you avoid this problem? Increase the sample rate of course! The more data points you have, the less likely an error will happen in a given set of frequencies. However, there is a point where this simply doesn&#;t audibly help anymore. Essentially, you can eliminate this problem if you&#;re able to sample at least twice per period, thereby forcing sampling errors to exist only in the highest frequencies that you&#;d likely be unable to hear anyway. Considering that the uppermost limits of human hearing range from kHz (as in, 12, to 22, periods per second), doubling that rate nets you somewhere within thousand samples per second, or 44kHz. That last number sound familiar? It should: kHz is the most common sample rate for MP3 files!

What is bit depth and dynamic range?

If you&#;ve listened to really old MP3 files or crappy MIDI music from your old consoles, you&#;ll probably notice that they can&#;t really ramp up volume in a given music track all that well, or that competing instruments are really really difficult to pick out if they&#;re all going at once. This is what bad dynamic range sounds like. Dynamic range in this instance simply refers to the difference between all possible volumes of sounds in a given file.

What governs the theoretical limits of the dynamic range of an audio file is the bit depth. Basically, every single sample (discussed above) contains information, and the more information each sample holds, the more potential output values it has. In layman&#;s terms, the greater the bit depth, the wider the range of possible loudness of notes there are. A low bit depth either at the recording stage, or in the file itself will necessarily result in low dynamic range, making many sounds incorrectly emphasized (or muted altogether). Because there&#;s only so many possible loudness values that a sound could have inside a digital file, the lower the bit depth, the crappier the file should sound however you listen to it. So the greater the bit depth, the better, right?

Well, this is where we run into the limits of human perception once again. The most common bit depth is 16, meaning: for every sample, there&#;s a possible 16 bits of information, or 65, integer values. In terms of audio, that&#;s a dynamic range of dB. In theory, that means that no sound under 96ish dB should be deleted or incorrectly assigned a loudness value.

While that may not sound terribly impressive, you really need to think hard about how you listen to music. If you&#;re like me: that comes from headphones 99+% of the time, and you&#;re going to be listening to your music at a volume much lower than that. For example, I try to limit my sessions to about 75dB so I don&#;t cook my ears prematurely. At that level, added dynamic range isn&#;t going to be perceptible, and anyone telling you otherwise is simply wrong. Additionally, your hearing isn&#;t equally-sensitive across all frequencies either, so your ears are the bottleneck here.

While I'm a super big crank when it comes to silly-ass excesses in audio tech, this is one point I'm forced to concede. However, the necessity of bit files for casual listeners is dramatically overstated.

So why do so many people swear by bit audio when bit is just fine? Because that&#;s the bit depth where there theoretically shouldn&#;t be any problems ever for human ears. If you like to listen to recordings that are super quiet (think, orchestral music)—and you need to really crank the volume in order for everything to be heard—you need a lot more dynamic range than you would with an over-produced, too-loud pop song would in order to be heard properly. While you&#;d never crank your amp to dB, bit encoding would allow you to approach that.

Additionally, if you record music, it&#;s always better to record at a high sample rate, and then downsample, instead of the other way around. That way, you avoid having a high-bitrate file with low-bitrate dynamic range, or worse: added noise. While I&#;m a super big crank when it comes to silly-ass excesses in audio tech, this is one point I&#;m forced to concede. However, the necessity of bit files for casual listeners is dramatically overstated.

What&#;s a good bitrate?

While bit depth is important, what most people are familiar with in terms of bad-sounding audio is either limited bitrate, or aggressive audio compression. Ever listen to music on YouTube, then immediately notice the difference when switching to an iTunes track or high-quality streaming service? You&#;re hearing a difference in compression quality.

If you&#;ve made it this far, you&#;re probably aware that the greater the bit depth is, the more information the DAC has to convert and output at once. This is why bitrate—the speed at which your music data is decoded—is somewhat important. If the bitrate is low, it&#;s possible that not enough data will be converted to create the analog wave, meaning less information is converted, meaning you hear crappier audio. It&#;s really as simple as that.

kbps is perfectly fine for most applications and truth be told most people can't tell the difference.

So how much is enough? I usually tell people the kbps rate is perfectly fine for most applications (assuming you&#;re listening to bit files). Hell, it&#;s what Amazon uses for its store, and truth be told most people can&#;t tell the difference. Some of you out there like FLAC files—and that&#;s fine for archival purposes—but for mobile listening? Just use a kbps MP3 or Opus file; audio compression has improved leaps and bounds in the last 20 years, and newer compression standards are able to do a lot more with a lot less than they used to. A low bitrate isn&#;t an immediate giveaway that your audio will be bad, but it&#;s not an encouraging sign.

If you&#;ve got space to spare, maybe you don&#;t care as much how big our files are—but smartphones generally don&#;t all come with GB standard&#; yet. But if you can&#;t tell the difference between a kbps MP3 and a +kbps FLAC, why would you burn 45MB of space when you could get away with 15?

USB D/A CONVERTER DA from Luxman

by Liquid Sound | Feb 19, | DAC'S | 0 comments

DA USB D/A CONVERTER from Luxman

by Liquid Sound | Feb 13, | DAC'S | 0 comments

Qutest from Chord Electronics

by Liquid Sound | Jul 31, | DAC'S | 0 comments

Hugo 2 from Chord Electronics

by Liquid Sound | Jul 31, | DAC'S, HI FI | 0 comments

Mojo from Chord Electronics

by Liquid Sound | Jul 31, | DAC'S | 0 comments

Super DAC Headphone Amplifier

by Liquid Sound | Mar 1, | DAC'S | 0 comments

Best DACs Buying Guide: Welcome to What Hi-Fi?'s round-up of the best DACs you can buy in

You might not realise, but most of us make use of at least one digital-to-analogue converter (or DAC) every single day. Any device that delivers digital sound – be it a  Blu-ray player, digital TV box, games console, portable music player or smartphone – requires a DAC to convert its audio to an analogue signal before it is output.

Without a DAC, your digital music collection is nothing but a sizeable collection of “0s and 1s” (more on that shortly) that makes sense only within the digital domain. In short, DACs play a large part in making digital music worthwhile.

The best DACs will make your system sing, but something sub-optimal - or sticking to the ones used in some components - might prevent you getting the most from your set-up.

Whether you're after a cheap USB DAC for your laptop, a high-end device to slip into a home hi-fi system, or a hybrid of the two, you're sure to find a contender on our list of the best DACs.

See all our DAC reviews

Chord continues to light up the premium market for DACs and the Qutest is the proof. It's the product that lesser rivals look up to at this price point. The DAC delivers a crisp, clean and concise sound, with Chord's now familiar neutral tonal balance.

As with all decent hi-fi gear, it'll take a bit of running in time before the Qutest really starts to sing. But when it does you're in for a treat: songs are imbued with a great sense of scope, and there's warmth and texture in abundance.

The Qutest boasts Chord's trademark colour-denoting buttons which tell you which source it's drawing on: they glow white for USB-Type-B (capable of accepting bit/kHz PCM/DSD); yellow for the first BNC coaxial and red for the second (bit/kHz); and green for the optical (bit/kHz/DSD64).

Given there's no Bluetooth connectivity or headphone amp on-board, the Qutest’s sole purpose is to be the digital-to-analogue bridge between your digital source and amplifier. And it does the job brilliantly.

Read the full review:Chord Qutest

A great way to improve the sound of your phone or laptop, we can’t think of a better alternative for portable use. The M-DAC nano is a tiny unit, barely bigger than a custard cream biscuit. It’s light, weighing in at just 28g, and there's a built-in rechargeable battery, too.

Being small and light are major plus points for portability, but the nano’s biggest advantage over rivals such as the Cyrus Soundkey or the AudioQuest Dragonfly (below) is that the connection with your device is done wirelessly, in this case by aptX Bluetooth (v).

Sonically, it's just as sweet as the custard cream we mentioned earlier: this is an impressively solid performance, giving a marked improvement in bass punch and power. Not only that, it also adds volume while still managing to refine the sound.

Overall, it's an exciting and entertaining performance that will improve your music on the move with minimum fuss. What could be better?

Read the full review: Audiolab M-DAC nano

Want all the benefits of the DragonFly Red (v headphone output, bit-perfect digital volume control and MQA renderer) with more detail, greater dynamics and an even better sense of timing? Then you should try the latest instalment in AudioQuest's line of portable DACs - the DragonFly Cobalt.

The new model boasts a more advanced DAC chip, and a new microprocessor draws less current and bumps up the DAC's processing speed. Yes it costs around a little more, but it does take performance to another level. We'd willingly pay the extra.

Once attached to your laptop or smartphone, and selected as means of audio output, the DAC’s LED will shine one of six colours to indicate sampling rate: red for standby, green for kHz, blue for 48kHz, yellow for kHz, light blue for 96kHz or purple when decoding MQA. It's a great feature for at-a-glance checking, and helps justify the extra outlay.

Read the full review: AudioQuest DragonFly Cobalt

A cheaper alternative to the AudioQuest above is the Cyrus soundKey. There’s a mm socket for plugging in headphones (or connecting to a system). At the other end there’s a micro USB socket. There’s no need (nor any room) for anything else.

In the box Cyrus provides a cable terminated with a micro USB at both ends (for use with appropriate Android devices) and a micro USB/full-size USB cable (for use with laptop or desktop computers). Apple user? You'll need to buy a dedicated cable.

Sonically, it's the musical equivalent of the Tardis - it might be small, but it affords your tunes an immense amount of space so nothing sounds too cluttered. This is especially pronounced when listening to quieter, sparser material. There's also a great level of detail, with voices and instruments rendered in a completely natural way. Dynamics and transparency are also key strengths that make this mini marvel punch well above its weight.

Read the full review: Cyrus soundKey

The majority of DACs and headphone amplifiers fitted to smartphones or laptops are cheap and not very good. Adding a dedicated DAC, no matter how small, can make all the difference. So, a DAC and headphone amp disguised as a USB stick sounds like a great idea - and the DragonFly Red, like the DragonFly Cobalt above, pulls it off superbly.

Though on first glance, it might seem a bit under-powered. After all, its hi-res support tops out at bit/96kHz, which is the same as the much cheaper AudioQuest DragonFly Black. But it does have a higher voltage output (v), which makes it better suited to driving more demanding headphones.

And it makes a real difference. Use it instead of the headphone output on your computer and you'll notice improved weight and texture to your tunes, combined with a natural and subtle sound. All told, it's a supremely compact and convenient device that can be taken anywhere for an immediate musical boost.

Read the full review: AudioQuest DragonFly Red

Mojo is short for ‘Mobile Joy’. And this DAC more than lives up to its name. 

Sonically, It can convey power and scale when the music requires but has the finesse to make the most of the subtler passages, too. That sense of organisation is clear here, as is the Mojo’s composure when music becomes demanding. There's plenty of detail to get your teeth into, and while it's a full-bodied sound, it avoids any hint of excess richness at mid- and low-frequencies.

We’re also happy with the unit’s sense of refinement. Its transparency means that poor recordings (and sources) will be easy to spot, but this DAC won’t go out of its way to be nasty.

Battery life is around eight hours which makes it a decent companion for a commute or business trip while inputs include micro USB, optical and coaxial. The only feature missing from Mojo's arsenal is Bluetooth, but we're prepared to give it some leeway because it sounds so good. Go on, get some Mobile Joy in your life.

Read the full review: Chord Mojo

The original M-DAC was among our favourite pound-for-pound DACs for half a decade - and in Audiolab finally gave it the long overdue update treatment. Thankfully, the M-DAC+ was well worth the wait and is still up there with the best DACs at the money.

You don't just get a bigger box, you get much better specs too. Such as? There's support for bit/kHz and DSD hi-res music, plus a host of new connections to keep you entertained. It also has added tweakability: there's a ridiculous 11 filters to play with, each making a subtle but noticeable difference to the sound. That should keep you busy.

And on the audio side, you won't be disappointed. There's a wide, believable soundstage, impressive detail levels, and good timing. It's not the last word in attack and drive but if you can handle that, there's not much else to quibble with here.

Read the full review: Audiolab M-DAC+