While feeding a stronger signal of 84 dB into a 300 Hz sine wave into both amplifiers I am getting these results on high gain: Honestly, if you don’t know SMSL, you have to get acquainted as soon as possible because you’re missing A LOT. They’re a Chinese company that focuses on a wide range of devices , the most notable ones being DACs & AMPs. They are famous for their value for money-oriented products and that’s the main reason I found them online about 5 years ago. I have made a good comparison to all of them before I made a modification to my SMSL SU6, and M400.

SMSL DO300 | Headphone Reviews and Discussion - Head-Fi.org SMSL DO300 | Headphone Reviews and Discussion - Head-Fi.org

Since Infected Mushroom and Noisia are playing on repeat when I’m testing dynamics, I decided changing the pace a little and giving Igorrr – Spirituality and Distortion ( Qobuz / Tidal) some well-deserved praise. A word of caution first, this is not your regular techno or drum’n’bass, this is like putting some pineapple, a California ripper chili, chocolate and raw meat on top of your Diavola pizza, whilst listening to Gojira. It’s certainly not for everybody, but if you like experiencing new stuff, broadening your musical horizon, please give it a try, but only before watching their Very Noise video. These guys are insane and unstable, but oh so original and different, never using patterns or choruses and never abiding by the rules of conventional electronic music. With D2 doing all the heavy work, I’m getting a higher dose of dopamine, never calming my right foot from hitting the floor, it’s impossible not to smile while digesting and trying to understand what is actually happening in their songs. D2 was hammering my eardrums like no other AKM based DAC was doing, it was both painful & pleasant and this is exactly how I want all my DACs to sound in terms of dynamics. D2 expresses music exactly as its makers intended, if it needs to sound raw and brutal, it will sound that way and if it needs to be gentle and easy-going, it will slow down and show the beauty of that music. Headphone Amps: Flux Lab Acoustics Volot, Benchmark HPA4, Burson Soloist 3X, Musician Andromeda, SMSL SP400, Topping A90, Gustard H16 Sub-bass is exemplary and impressive from even from the first notes. It easily reaches 20 Hz notes and can sustain even longer bass notes with ease. If you love clean undistorted bass, with layers and sub-layers of it, SP400 will easily show them to you. It is linear in here, but powerful and hard slamming when called for. It reminds me a lot about my own HPA4 with the exception that SP400 is even more powerful and full-bodied in here.This is a highly polished DAC that delivered countless hours of satisfaction, more so than many other converters tested around here and as such, it’s my pleasure awarding it with my highest, Gold Award. It was fully deserved and I wish more manufacturers would put a higher importance to component selection and on actual music listening. While I normally do not hear any difference between filters, the DO400 actually offers significant changes when you use them. The largest difference, and arguably the only one which I can hear, is that enabling filters reduces volume output by a good margin. I also have a Bluesound Nodeii, sound wise it is on the bottom of my list. However, the operation of it is wireless, that is I don't need to have a USB cable across the listening room. SMSL opted for the ESS Sabre ES9039MSPRO DAC chip, which was announced last year. It supports up to eight channels, which means you can actually have a truly balanced setup with a single chip. On top of the “usual” 32 bit / 768 kHz PCM and DSD512 support, it also supports MQA. The connection is managed by a latest-gen XMOS XU-316, while eleven TI OPA1612A take care of amplification. The TI TPA6120A amp chips are the reason behind the massive output offered by the DO400, which goes up to an astounding 6 W at 16 Ω. That’s more power than many discrete headphone amplifiers, which puts the progress done in recent years in this department into perspective.

SMSL D1SE DAC Review – Exit Light! Enter Night! - Soundnews SMSL D1SE DAC Review – Exit Light! Enter Night! - Soundnews

When I’m getting new toys to play with, I would pop their hoods, as good audio starts with good PCB design and with high-quality internal components. I would follow their signal path, finding some cool ideas, simplified/overkill digital or analog sections, sometimes small mistakes, but always suggesting a few things. Opening it up was a difficult task, as several ribbon cables are holding its PCB in place, so I took just a small glimpse of what’s inside. Carving two rooms inside its aluminum case, a smaller one for its power supply section and another one for its analog and digital section, already tells me that SMSL is very serious about this one. While D90SE had a slight ringing in the treble, D1SE discarded all those nasty vibrations, pulling glare and putting more textures. Music went smoother, it poured naturally on D1SE, while all that was less impressive on the Topping creation. On the other hand, D90SE had a nicer driver control, leading edges were clearer and, on few occasions, it felt more resolving and transparent. When M400 comparing with the Audio Gd Master 7 (PCM1704), I prefer the sound from Audio Gd Master 7. However, I am impressed by how good the M400 can stand close to the Audio Gd M7 which is more than twice the price. The music from Audio Gd Master 7 has more layers. The sound stage is more vivid. Audio Gd M7 and R7 sound different to each other. R7 (discreet ladder) has a more sparkle high ends where PCM1704 is more mellow and rich mid range. SMSL M400 is good too all over. If you are interested in driving headphones only and you own a single DAC, get the SP400 and move to the conclusions. If you want to drive headphones, but you also need a decent preamplifier for your loudspeaker setup: get the SP400 and move to the conclusion. If you have multiple audio sources (DACs, CD players, Turntables) and you need the most precise and uncolored headphone amplifier and preamplifier section then you should proceed with this comparison. People that are really interested in HPA4 would probably use it in a speaker setup too, as it’s still the best preamplifier bar none I’ve tried and don’t forget that it has 4 analog inputs! Two single ended and two balanced inputs. It’s so easy comparing two or even four DACs with HPA4. Via its graphical user interface, I can volume match each analog input so that I would have the same sound pressure level with 4 different DACs. All my DAC comparisons were done via HPA4, it is not only a headphone amp, but much more than that, hence the huge price difference.Here is the direct link to the zip file. Note that neither Mac nor PC can unzip this file. The only way to unzip is to use 7-zip: At the heart of its digital processing, stays a powerful ES9038 PRO 8-channel DAC chip of ESS Technologies. This is their best and most premium converter. SMSL has plenty of experience with this chipset, as they used it in its predecessor (D1), in their M500 and SU-9 DACs. Being the most powerful THX-AAA amplifier has its perks as you can drive pretty much any headphone you want with flying colors. Yes, including the notorious Hifiman Susvara, add the Abyss 1266-TC in here too and the Audeze LCD-4 seems like a child’s play for it. As you can imagine, all those IEMs, portable dynamic headphones, desktop dynamic and planar magnetic headphones were driven to their fullest and there is nothing more to say about it. I felt an absolute control over the drivers, lightning-fast notes sounded exactly as they should, dynamics were pressing the gas pedal and SP400 was keeping up with all of that. Sincerely, everything except for the Susvara, sounded pretty much the same on the HPA4 by Benchmark, it was always fast and engaging, it was always visceral, it had a perfect pin point imagining and a well-spread and layered sound. With most headphones I didn’t even reach its half volume position on high-gain, even Hifiman Arya and Audeze LCD-4 felt like a feather weight load for it. When it’s smaller sibling VMV D1SE finished its burn-in cycle, I’ve immediately felt a higher sound density to my former ESS-Sabre converters, it added more weight and saturation and the same is happening with VMV D2, but this time around at a higher degree. All that was smooth and vivid, feels more intense and alive, literally begging for more music to be added into my playlist.

SMSL VMV D2 DAC Review – Class Leading D/S DAC - Soundnews SMSL VMV D2 DAC Review – Class Leading D/S DAC - Soundnews

PCM Filter – you can select your desired digital filter that are built-in directly in the DAC chip itself, there are 6 filters to play with, but the sound difference is slight at best. The DO400, like most DACs these days, offers a ruler-flat frequency response with virtually no distortion whatsoever. Its sound is clean and clear, with no audible deviation from perfect neutrality. Thanks to the super-low output impedance, there’s no variation in the sound even if you use extremely low impedance earphones. Transients are really fast and the DO400 has no issues whatsoever driving very fast headphones such as the Arya. It doesn’t have any issues driving headphones that require (or that can manage) a lot of power, either, including the likes of the HE-560 and the Spirit Torino Radiante; the significant power output it is capable of makes it a unit that can drive basically anything.

Let’s talk about the layout. On the front, we have a 1.9-inch color TFT display, 2 buttons, and a volume knob with an extra button on the center. The screen shows information about the volume level, sample rate, and active input. The volume knob can also be used to navigate through the menus of the D1SE. However, you might find the remote control navigation tad simpler, compared to the volume knob navigation. With D1SE, aggressive music as heavy metal can be a little fatiguing after about an hour or so, while D2 sounded more organic, it put more life in those guitars, while gently smoothing out the ringing of the cymbals. What’s more interesting is that dynamics themselves were going higher on D2, easier reaching their peaks, releasing a higher engagement factor. While the family resemblance is quite big and both units have plenty of technicalities in common, D2 wanted to impress a lot more with music reproduction more than anything else. It took me and carried over my childhood memories when I was still listening to music through a cassette player. I’m not fond on using this word, but it was more musical and more organic sounding to me. Another striking difference was the bass output, D1SE felt immaculate when it comes to speed and decay, but D2 punched nicer and delivered a heftier bass output quantity wise. It was punchier and harder smalling in there, transforming regular electronica into something impactful and toe-tapping all the time. In terms of features, on one hand Topping added an additional digital input (AES), D90SE offers a much better Bluetooth codec support (AptX-HD and LDAC) and you can even choose between a 4V or a 5V output via XLR, on the other hand SMSL offers a much nicer user interface and lots of sound presets that can literally transform it from a linear sounding unit, into to a rich or overly smooth sounding unit. Those presets made a substantial difference, while digital filters found on both devices did little to nothing at all. Although I appreciate seeing extra features on D90SE, those sound presets that are working on a hardware level on D1SE can help you a lot with a better system matching, choosing a sound signature that suits your needs. When it comes to sound performance, there are two instances that I will cover. If hard to drive planar magnetics are not on your daily menu, then SH-9 would be a better choice, since there is little to no difference between both siblings with desktop dynamic headphones or with easy to drive planars like Erzetich Phobos and Kennerton Wodan. Both are extremely neutral sounding with a slight tint towards naturalness and real textures. Wodan had a slightly better bass impact and a deeper stage on SP400, but others performed more or less the same on both devices. Az S.M.S.L. átfogó értékesítési hálózatot hozott létre, ami 33 nagyvárosra terjed ki; stratégiai partnerséget alakítottak ki Japánnal, Nagy-Britanniával, Németországgal, Portugáliával, Szingapúrral és más országokkal, termékeiket világszerte több mint 30 országba exportálják, és immáron Magyarországra is, a Muzix Group jóvoltából.

SMSL D400EX DAC Review | Audio Science Review (ASR) Forum SMSL D400EX DAC Review | Audio Science Review (ASR) Forum

Considering its impressive power supply design and filtering stages, I would be surprised hearing anything less than an immaculate performance in repelling all types of noise. Adding a cell phone on top didn’t add hum or hiss and all I’ve heard was a clean, undistorted sound.I tested the SMSL DO400 with my computers, a custom-built desktop connected through an optical cable and an HP EliteBook 745 G5 connected through USB. I used a variety of headphones, including the HiFiMAN HE-560, the HiFiMAN Arya and the KZ Krila. Leave a Reply Cancel reply Did you like the review? Let me know! Please note that you should write in English, as comments in other languages will be deleted. Thank you! In the end, you have the power of making it smoother, more tubey or you can go with the most transparent and detailed sound possible. It is really up to you to decide which sound tuning works better for your needs.