I bought this Amp/DAC combo as a replacement/upgrade for my now-departed Asus Xonar Essence STU. I checked it out online, read some reviews, most of which were in German and I had to translate. The specs looked great and the reviews praised it for the most part. Please bear in mind that is was used with the following headphones, in order of hours: Hifiman HE-400, Audeze LCD XC, Audio Technica ATH-A1000X, VE Monk and Apple earpods for laughs.
This was initially a Amazon review I wrote a year ago, then modified and uploaded it here because I didn't find the product on Head-fi.
Packaging
It was neatly packed, arrived one day late, but I guess that's just the local post office, so it can't be helped. I opened it up, it looked great, but one thing that surprised me was that there was no USB cable included with it. To be honest there wasn't anything else in there except for the power adapter. How do they expect you to actually use it without that cable? It's a bit like one of those batteries not included deal, but on a different scale. They could have thrown in at least one of the cables (Toslink, RCA, USB), but none of them was there. No matter, I went down to my local store and bought one for 5€, no biggy, but still rather mind-boggling. Seems like a bit of marketing flaw, to be honest because they could have at least mentioned that there wouldn't be one in the package.
Form Factor
It's a neat little piece, with a small footprint, a smooth front with two 6.3mm headphone jacks, one volume knob and a Input selection knob. The top and sides of the device have a gritty texture and the contrast between the front and sides feels quite nice to the touch. A down side to this, however, is the fact that the top can easily collect dust and fingerprints are visible on the front, but that's not really a problem since I tend to clean my equipment every day or every other day. It has four small rubber "feet" which are very smooth. I honestly wish all gear came with little feet like these, I feel that they are perfect for using on a desk.
After about a year of normal usage, the paint on the sides seems to have faded and I can see the original colour of the metal. Nothing that isn't fixed by a bit of acrylic, but it's somewhat unusual, since I cleaned it quite often without using any odd substances that would damage either the paint or metal.
It has a simple on/off button which, well, turns the device on or off, which does its thing, I don't really have anything to say about it. It also has a volume knob, which rotates smoothly, doesn't seem to come off and doesn't get noisy after being used a lot as others. It also has a 4-step input select knob, which switches between Coax, Optical, USB and analog. It works fine, but I find it a bit rigid and it doesn't snap into place as "cleanly" as I would want it to, but that's just nitpicking.
Drivers and support
After installing the newest driver from the website and updating the firmware, it behaved well except for one little issue. It can't really do 384k/32-bit in the Windows settings, which I found very odd and somewhat dishonest on their side. I understand that it is possible via WASAPI in certain players, but it doesn't really matter. Because honestly? In many cases it may be rather hard to tell the difference and the impact isn't immense for me.
One issue I have experienced was with the driver. Specifically in its inability to recover from a crash. If the driver crashes, it takes down every Windows service related to Audio with it and every Application which was using it at the respective moment. Also it does not recover from crashes without restarting the PC. Please note that this does not mean that the driver crashes often, but I've been working with software for years and I have a knack for breaking things. It actually never crashed for me with normal usage.
Just device changing, ASIO and WASAPI modifiers and other such things caused it to crash, so I contacted Oehlbach support and told them what issues I had encountered while using the product on Windows 8.1, as the initial driver and the first update were made for Windows 7. Five days later they contacted me, apologized for the inconvenience and asked me to download the new version that they had just uploaded to their site and to let them know if I experience any other issues. I didn't expect it to be fixed (working in QA is the cause for said skepticism), but it was! I was quite surprised by their swift response.
I am now using it on Windows 10 and I don't have any issues with it.
One additional driver-related aspect is that if you have a motherboard which powers up the USB later than the startup (or software that does this. Or simply restarting all of the USBs via scanning or some similar method), the device will appear as disconnected and it will require being powered off and on again.
Sound quality
Prior to this I have owned a Creative Sound Blaster Zx, a Creative Xtreme Music X-fi and a Asus Xonar Essence STU, with which I spent quite a while and it was an amazing little piece of technology. So the following comparisons will be against the STU. Also I did not set up any specific EQ and everything was flat.
I started it up and immediately played Aerosmith's "Dude (Looks like a lady)" and pumped up the volume to test the stereo, but also the noise. At high volume the quiet passages of songs have a bit of noise, not very noticeable (and you really shouldn't be listening to headphones this loud), but it was there. Minor, but present. The highs sounded good and crisp, but not overdone or too strict, but yet again, a bit distorted at high volume levels (These are songs I have heard countless times, so I have a near-perfect idea of what they sound like, so I am able to tell the subtle differences, but yet again, this is easily fixable via EQ).
Next up I played Michael Jackson's "Thriller" and it was revelation. So open, so wide. The spaciousness of it all was amazing. Everything had taken its place exactly the way it should have. Every sound was where it should have been and music was playing. Real music, the way it was meant to be played. The mids were nice and smooth, very well rounded, but not constricted in any way. All very natural sounding. That's when I realised that's what was special about the sound. It was natural, more so than most audio gear can provide, but I digress. I wasn't quite sold on the mids just yet, so I put on Led Zeppelin's "Going to California". Once again the soundstage, the spaciousness of it all. After that song, the best word that I could find which would easily and accurately describe the mids was "pleasant". They were not too rounded or smoothed up as many amps tend to do, it just sounded good. As a final test for the mids I threw "Night Prowler" - AC/DC at it and just as it did years ago, it sent shivers down my spine, once again. I could hear the smooth guitar, the slow vibrato on the ol' Gibson SG, Brian Johnson's rough voice and the constant "nagging" of the cymbals. It was just as I remembered it, except for little detail. The detail itself. I could hear roughly the same things I had heard before, but now all of the sound had a different, grittier texture and it sounded better. The STU did, indeed, offer detail, but not to such extent.
Next up comes the analysis of the Bass and I feel that it requires a bit of a disclaimer: I am not a basshead. I do not enjoy excessive bass in my music, nor do I push up the low EQ. I like bass in music, but within normal range.
I thought that a great song to test the bass would be "Another One Bites The Dust" - Queen. I liked it. It was very controlled, not too obvious or overdone. It sounded right and blended in nicely with the rest of the instruments as they were introduced one by one. Although a good song to start, it's quite linear and I know that alone won't convince you kiddies, as it didn't convince me, either, so I went on with Led Zeppelin's "Heartbreaker" and here I noticed something which I hadn't noticed before and I was shocked. The bass had a rough texture to it. One that I had never been able to discern before. I was gobsmacked and I just kept on listening like an idiot. I could literally here the strings vibrate on the bass. No, not the sound the pickups send to the amp, the actual low frequency vibration of the strings themselves. I could hear the the pick grinding against the rough texture of the strings steel coil. I felt like a complete idiot and with that little revelation I could certainly say that clarity within the bassline was there. No doubt about it. Of course, even after that, I couldn't just pronounce myself just yet, but I was also at a bit of a halt, not knowing what to play next. So I decided to contact a friend which is really into mixing. I know the way he records and he uses complex procedures to get the exact sound he desires. Now, I'm not really into Dubstep or any and all related genres, but I felt that it would be a good test. I asked for a specific track, one of his yet-to-be-released-remixes and he provided a .Wav file, which had a very complex line, with an amalgam of sounds blended into it and a pounding bass line. I'm glad I did, because suddenly I could hear the hard, pronounced bass, pounding away in my ears, the metallic door shutting, the broken glass into the background, the plastic pounding into the plastic bottles, all of these sounds which he had mixed into one song and I could easily discern them all. Once again - clarity and also a sense of comfort with the provided bass. It wasn't exaggerated, it wasn't too thin or lacking and it wasn't too pronounced, it just sounded nice and well-defined. Also the whole ensemble of sounds mixed together without ever sounding muddy or linear.
I have performed additional tests with low quality music formats, for example a 320kbps .MP3 of Aloe Blacc's "Wake me up" (The one without Avicii) and it wasn't unforgiving with it. I guess I could hear a bit of a dithering artifact, but it wasn't unbearable or obvious. If you just want to enjoy your music, it won't bother you. If you are, however, obsessed with analytic listening, very high volume levels (and possibly when using IEMs) you may find it a bit unnerving. I also took out an old recording of Joan Armatrading's "Sometimes I don't wanna' go home", a song which I haven't heard in ears. While it did lack a bit of detail, it still did manage to sound good, there was no clipping, no general distortion or noise. Next up was another .MP3, this time it was Buddy Guy - "What kind of woman", yet again it sounded good, but one thing I noticed is that it wasn't as open as I remember it.
I am very satisfied with the overall sound quality of the Oehlbach XXL DAC Ultra, especially considering its price and size. It's nice to see Audio going down from the ridiculous prices I've been seeing in the last few years.
After owning this for a while I can add a few things. The way to get the best quality out of it is to use it via USB and it provides for a cleaner, rounder sound, not being as sharp as the one you obtain via optical cable. However it appears to smooth out minor imperfections in the lower quality formats, but may provide for a small loss of detail in high res files. That may prove to be a problem for the overly-analytical types, but it still offers a very good sound.
Conclusion
So to recap, great sound quality, really good price-performance ratio, no USB/Toslink/RCA cable, minor driver issues which have been resolved in 5 days of notifying the Oehlbach support. All of these are my argument for a four-star review of a solid product.
Thanks for the read and let me know if you have any questions!
This was initially a Amazon review I wrote a year ago, then modified and uploaded it here because I didn't find the product on Head-fi.
Packaging
It was neatly packed, arrived one day late, but I guess that's just the local post office, so it can't be helped. I opened it up, it looked great, but one thing that surprised me was that there was no USB cable included with it. To be honest there wasn't anything else in there except for the power adapter. How do they expect you to actually use it without that cable? It's a bit like one of those batteries not included deal, but on a different scale. They could have thrown in at least one of the cables (Toslink, RCA, USB), but none of them was there. No matter, I went down to my local store and bought one for 5€, no biggy, but still rather mind-boggling. Seems like a bit of marketing flaw, to be honest because they could have at least mentioned that there wouldn't be one in the package.
Form Factor
It's a neat little piece, with a small footprint, a smooth front with two 6.3mm headphone jacks, one volume knob and a Input selection knob. The top and sides of the device have a gritty texture and the contrast between the front and sides feels quite nice to the touch. A down side to this, however, is the fact that the top can easily collect dust and fingerprints are visible on the front, but that's not really a problem since I tend to clean my equipment every day or every other day. It has four small rubber "feet" which are very smooth. I honestly wish all gear came with little feet like these, I feel that they are perfect for using on a desk.
After about a year of normal usage, the paint on the sides seems to have faded and I can see the original colour of the metal. Nothing that isn't fixed by a bit of acrylic, but it's somewhat unusual, since I cleaned it quite often without using any odd substances that would damage either the paint or metal.
It has a simple on/off button which, well, turns the device on or off, which does its thing, I don't really have anything to say about it. It also has a volume knob, which rotates smoothly, doesn't seem to come off and doesn't get noisy after being used a lot as others. It also has a 4-step input select knob, which switches between Coax, Optical, USB and analog. It works fine, but I find it a bit rigid and it doesn't snap into place as "cleanly" as I would want it to, but that's just nitpicking.
Drivers and support
After installing the newest driver from the website and updating the firmware, it behaved well except for one little issue. It can't really do 384k/32-bit in the Windows settings, which I found very odd and somewhat dishonest on their side. I understand that it is possible via WASAPI in certain players, but it doesn't really matter. Because honestly? In many cases it may be rather hard to tell the difference and the impact isn't immense for me.
One issue I have experienced was with the driver. Specifically in its inability to recover from a crash. If the driver crashes, it takes down every Windows service related to Audio with it and every Application which was using it at the respective moment. Also it does not recover from crashes without restarting the PC. Please note that this does not mean that the driver crashes often, but I've been working with software for years and I have a knack for breaking things. It actually never crashed for me with normal usage.
Just device changing, ASIO and WASAPI modifiers and other such things caused it to crash, so I contacted Oehlbach support and told them what issues I had encountered while using the product on Windows 8.1, as the initial driver and the first update were made for Windows 7. Five days later they contacted me, apologized for the inconvenience and asked me to download the new version that they had just uploaded to their site and to let them know if I experience any other issues. I didn't expect it to be fixed (working in QA is the cause for said skepticism), but it was! I was quite surprised by their swift response.
I am now using it on Windows 10 and I don't have any issues with it.
One additional driver-related aspect is that if you have a motherboard which powers up the USB later than the startup (or software that does this. Or simply restarting all of the USBs via scanning or some similar method), the device will appear as disconnected and it will require being powered off and on again.
Sound quality
Prior to this I have owned a Creative Sound Blaster Zx, a Creative Xtreme Music X-fi and a Asus Xonar Essence STU, with which I spent quite a while and it was an amazing little piece of technology. So the following comparisons will be against the STU. Also I did not set up any specific EQ and everything was flat.
I started it up and immediately played Aerosmith's "Dude (Looks like a lady)" and pumped up the volume to test the stereo, but also the noise. At high volume the quiet passages of songs have a bit of noise, not very noticeable (and you really shouldn't be listening to headphones this loud), but it was there. Minor, but present. The highs sounded good and crisp, but not overdone or too strict, but yet again, a bit distorted at high volume levels (These are songs I have heard countless times, so I have a near-perfect idea of what they sound like, so I am able to tell the subtle differences, but yet again, this is easily fixable via EQ).
Next up I played Michael Jackson's "Thriller" and it was revelation. So open, so wide. The spaciousness of it all was amazing. Everything had taken its place exactly the way it should have. Every sound was where it should have been and music was playing. Real music, the way it was meant to be played. The mids were nice and smooth, very well rounded, but not constricted in any way. All very natural sounding. That's when I realised that's what was special about the sound. It was natural, more so than most audio gear can provide, but I digress. I wasn't quite sold on the mids just yet, so I put on Led Zeppelin's "Going to California". Once again the soundstage, the spaciousness of it all. After that song, the best word that I could find which would easily and accurately describe the mids was "pleasant". They were not too rounded or smoothed up as many amps tend to do, it just sounded good. As a final test for the mids I threw "Night Prowler" - AC/DC at it and just as it did years ago, it sent shivers down my spine, once again. I could hear the smooth guitar, the slow vibrato on the ol' Gibson SG, Brian Johnson's rough voice and the constant "nagging" of the cymbals. It was just as I remembered it, except for little detail. The detail itself. I could hear roughly the same things I had heard before, but now all of the sound had a different, grittier texture and it sounded better. The STU did, indeed, offer detail, but not to such extent.
Next up comes the analysis of the Bass and I feel that it requires a bit of a disclaimer: I am not a basshead. I do not enjoy excessive bass in my music, nor do I push up the low EQ. I like bass in music, but within normal range.
I thought that a great song to test the bass would be "Another One Bites The Dust" - Queen. I liked it. It was very controlled, not too obvious or overdone. It sounded right and blended in nicely with the rest of the instruments as they were introduced one by one. Although a good song to start, it's quite linear and I know that alone won't convince you kiddies, as it didn't convince me, either, so I went on with Led Zeppelin's "Heartbreaker" and here I noticed something which I hadn't noticed before and I was shocked. The bass had a rough texture to it. One that I had never been able to discern before. I was gobsmacked and I just kept on listening like an idiot. I could literally here the strings vibrate on the bass. No, not the sound the pickups send to the amp, the actual low frequency vibration of the strings themselves. I could hear the the pick grinding against the rough texture of the strings steel coil. I felt like a complete idiot and with that little revelation I could certainly say that clarity within the bassline was there. No doubt about it. Of course, even after that, I couldn't just pronounce myself just yet, but I was also at a bit of a halt, not knowing what to play next. So I decided to contact a friend which is really into mixing. I know the way he records and he uses complex procedures to get the exact sound he desires. Now, I'm not really into Dubstep or any and all related genres, but I felt that it would be a good test. I asked for a specific track, one of his yet-to-be-released-remixes and he provided a .Wav file, which had a very complex line, with an amalgam of sounds blended into it and a pounding bass line. I'm glad I did, because suddenly I could hear the hard, pronounced bass, pounding away in my ears, the metallic door shutting, the broken glass into the background, the plastic pounding into the plastic bottles, all of these sounds which he had mixed into one song and I could easily discern them all. Once again - clarity and also a sense of comfort with the provided bass. It wasn't exaggerated, it wasn't too thin or lacking and it wasn't too pronounced, it just sounded nice and well-defined. Also the whole ensemble of sounds mixed together without ever sounding muddy or linear.
I have performed additional tests with low quality music formats, for example a 320kbps .MP3 of Aloe Blacc's "Wake me up" (The one without Avicii) and it wasn't unforgiving with it. I guess I could hear a bit of a dithering artifact, but it wasn't unbearable or obvious. If you just want to enjoy your music, it won't bother you. If you are, however, obsessed with analytic listening, very high volume levels (and possibly when using IEMs) you may find it a bit unnerving. I also took out an old recording of Joan Armatrading's "Sometimes I don't wanna' go home", a song which I haven't heard in ears. While it did lack a bit of detail, it still did manage to sound good, there was no clipping, no general distortion or noise. Next up was another .MP3, this time it was Buddy Guy - "What kind of woman", yet again it sounded good, but one thing I noticed is that it wasn't as open as I remember it.
I am very satisfied with the overall sound quality of the Oehlbach XXL DAC Ultra, especially considering its price and size. It's nice to see Audio going down from the ridiculous prices I've been seeing in the last few years.
After owning this for a while I can add a few things. The way to get the best quality out of it is to use it via USB and it provides for a cleaner, rounder sound, not being as sharp as the one you obtain via optical cable. However it appears to smooth out minor imperfections in the lower quality formats, but may provide for a small loss of detail in high res files. That may prove to be a problem for the overly-analytical types, but it still offers a very good sound.
Conclusion
So to recap, great sound quality, really good price-performance ratio, no USB/Toslink/RCA cable, minor driver issues which have been resolved in 5 days of notifying the Oehlbach support. All of these are my argument for a four-star review of a solid product.
Thanks for the read and let me know if you have any questions!