Hi-Res DAC

I purchased this as soon as the mail about this dropped in my mail. Although I didn't need this as I already own the Alo Audio Pilot (1st version), I bought this anyway as a gesture of love and respect to the folks at Headphone Zone. Honestly, I didn't expect much, looking at the price point. But I was pleasantly surprised!

While writing or discussing any audio gear, it seems that technical jargon predominates everything else these days. People talk and talk about frequencies and graphs galore.
It seems that everybody is an audio engineer. But, needless to say, they are not. I do not pretend to be that either. Keeping that firmly in mind, let's discuss this DAC.

Build and in-hand feel: superb! Not only at this price but for any price! It is an all-metal construction, except for the wire in the middle, and it feels superb in hand.

My experience with Android phone: the sound of this DAC is lively and fun. The tuning of the sound is not flat but significantly altered to give it slam and punch. The holographic presentation of sound (technical jargon is “soundstage”) is not that wide, but it is not intimate either; it is somewhere in between. The directionality of each sound source in that holographic presentation (technical jargon is “positioning” or “instrument separation”) is superb! Male and female vocals sound true to life and never feel wanting in anything. The sound of disparate instruments like guitar, piano, harpsichord, ukulele, etc are true to life, too. So if you are into Indian and/or Western classical music like me, you can relax and enjoy the music avidly! Some instruments like the oboe or sitar may sound slightly out of tune sometimes, but that ain't a deal breaker in any way.

My experience with Linux desktop: with the provided USB-A to USB-C converter, I used this with my Linux machines (Fedora and Ubuntu). Sound impressions are mostly the same as with Android, but here I found it to be more holographic and the sound sources a bit more widely dispersed. Classical music from Idagio from a web browser sounded phenomenal!

My experience with iPad and MAC: here the sound was the most intimate. The holographic presentation of sound and the directionality of each sound source are less pronounced, lending the sound an “inside my head” feel. But that didn't take the melody away from the sound. ( I suspect Apple is the culprit here. They cripple anything non-Apple connected to their system. Don't they?)

Main strength: the power output (65 milliWatt at 32 ohms) is the main strength of this DAC. The dedicated amplifier chip, MAX97220, does wonders here! And we all know how good that Conexant CX31993 DAC chip is! It is a powerhouse DAC chip used by many manufacturers, and it is a reliable performer. The output is also very clean. (Although I heard some background noise in some tracks, it depends on the IEMs or headphones you are using. It might also be because it is still very new; that's why I’m not counting it as a drawback.)

Drawback (and confusion): the biggest drawback that I found was that it was not forgiving to poorly recorded tracks. Poorly recorded tracks sound bad with this DAC. I call it confusing because any DAC that is tuned as lively and vivid-sounding does not show such characteristics. Flatly-tuned DACs, such as the Alo Audio Pilot, can show such bias. But this shouldn't. This does that anyway and it can be heard on Spotify or Apple Music. And as it doesn't have a flat tuning, correcting the sound of those poorly sounding tracks is very hard, almost impossible. Other than this, there is not much else to carp about.

Comparison with Alo Audio Pilot: the Pilot costs 5 times the price of this. The Pilot has a flat sound, I mean a dead-flat sound. As a result, you can control, tweak, and refine the sound of the Pilot in a precise way(with an equalizer), which is not possible in our reviewed DAC here. The holographic presentation of sound and directionality of sound is much more pronounced in the Pilot, irrespective of the music source. But these are to be expected as this costs five times that of our reviewed DAC here. (By the way, the Pilot, too, exposes poorly recorded tracks badly. But in this case, it is normal because the Pilot has a dead-flat tuning. You can rectify the sound for that track by equalizing, which is not possible in our reviewed DAC).

Conclusion: after about 30 hours of listening to various genres of music through various apps and devices, I can confidently say that it is one of the best DACs that I’ve ever used! I say this irrespective of the price point. Trust me, I have quite a big collection of DACs, IEMs, and headphones and I use them regularly. Unless you have a headphone with high impedance ( 80 ohms or more), or you want more power from a tiny dongle-DAC, this is a very strong performer in all aspects. It gets my full recommendation!

A special request to folks at Headphone Zone: please consider releasing a similar device with a 4.4 m...

Didn’t make such a difference in the music quality, but made it softer.

The dongle is impressively well-made and exudes quality right from the start. Setting aside its build quality, I found that it made very little difference to the sound quality compared to other dongles on the market, such as those from Apple or OnePlus, both of which I tested it against. While it did boost the audio and somewhat cleaned up the noise, the difference wasn't drastic. However, it does work flawlessly with Apple devices, which is a definite positive. I also tried it with my PC, which has a motherboard equipped with high-end audio capacitors for producing clean sound, but the results were pretty much the same there too. Overall, it did make some difference, but when compared to, for example, a OnePlus dongle that costs Rs 400, I don't think it's worth five times the price. By the way, I tested these with Sennheiser CX275s and Sony XM4 headphones. It's a good thing that Headphone Zone provides easy returns; I think it's time to upgrade my Sennheisers.

The DAC quality is so good and premium ... I bought it after watching the RAGHAV YT video... I tell you it was the best decision that day ... DAC made my music experience a whole better ... the Music has better details and clarity now, I was underutilizing my IEMS.
Thanks, Team HEADPHONE Zone for providing such a great product.

QUALITY-10/10
SOUND-10/10
BUILD-10/10

Can't get better

Within one week, the wire housing detached from the connector. I asked for a replacement under the warranty, but the headphonezone team denied it.

In terms of quality, its just increasing the overall volume of the earphones. I didn't notice any significant change in clarity/depth/seperation.

I tried it with apple music lossless. Also with FLAC files in USB audio player pro. No change in quality.