A little dac that one of my friends passed me sometime back but did not really have much time to get around to reviewing the DAC indepth due to my irl commitments. This dac uses the PCM5102A along with a Saviaudio SA9027 asynchronous USB chip. Clocks are done with the Asahi Kasei AK8133E clock generator. It costs only 49USD before shipping which is now 10 bucks.
I thought the ODAC would be a tad more resolving on further listening but for those that don't want to fuss with the ODAC's shortcomings or make an isolator, I think this a pretty darn cheap and good alternative alongside the Modi.
http://stoneracoustics.blogspot.sg/2013/10/ud110v2.htmlThe Setup:
Acer Aspire V5 122P Win8 laptop-> UD110mk2 -> 3.5mm to RCA adapter-> shielded RCA cables-> SB1240 line in-> usb cable with a ferrite choke on the device side-> Fujitsu Lifebook
Software:
ARTA
Foobar
Other Equipment:
Fluke 8060A May 2013 cal for levels calibration
Test conditions:
Batteries only for laptops
1khz square: linear phase filters here, nothing interesting
Low level resolution(-90.31dbFS test) : despite my ADC's weaknesses with the 10khz tone, there are a lot of pickets around the region. Also I observe some DC shifts(is it?) in the waveform. For the high res test with 32 bit signals, not much benefit of being able to play 32 bit vs 24 bit since noise performance ain't that great.
CCIF high frequency twin tones: They look cleaner than the ODAC ones but distortion tones are higher in amplitude, they lose out to the ODAC numbers wise due to the odd order distortion DFD3. In hearing I think that would be the treble textures.
Jitter: Some funny tones are present but are really low level. Otherwise, a fantastic performance from a 49USD dac.
THD: Very low and gets real close to the ODAC.
Conclusion: No frills and no bs performance in a small package. I would shill the sh1t out of this thing.
EDIT:It took me a while to realise what I was looking at in the low level resolution spectrum but that is actually a 50hz tone modulating the low level 1khz spectrum, due to power filtering.
