Behringer UCA202 Bargain DAC - Detailed Review & Measurements

For anyone interested in a reasonably priced USB DAC, check out my blog review of the popular bargain priced UCA202 from Behringer. I performed lots of measurements right down to the channel balance tracking at different volume settings (a big weakness of some cheap or poorly designed DACs and headphone amps). The results were rather interesting!

And there's a possible bonus at the end for those into mods or minor DIY projects.

 

@Vitor Machado The mod, if it works out as planned, will be:

 

Qty 1 - 8 pin SOIC surface mount IC

Qty 2 - 0603 surface mount resistors

Qty 2 - Through hole (not surface mount) electrolytic capacitors

 

The capacitors are relatively easy, the resistors are really tiny (although you could also make regular 1/8 watt radial resistors work OK), and the IC is the hardest part. You either need an expensive pair of fine cutters that have special tiny "jaws" that can get between the surface mount leads to cut the old one off the board (the cutters are usually about $30+ US), or a Chip Quik de-soldering kit (~$14 US) with special flux and low temperature removal solder, or a hot air surface mount re-work tool with the right nozzle (expensive).

 

But first I have to confirm it will work as planned and be worth the effort for anyone else.

 

 

 

No sockets for surface mount. It know it's a small picture, but if you look at the photo of the underside of the UCA202 board in the review, you can see the 3 surface mount op amps as little black squares with a dot in the lower right corner of each. The one in the lower left corner of the photo is the headphone amp. The other two closer to the gold RCA jacks at the top of the photo are the Line In and Line Out amps. And the gold RCA jacks give you some idea of the scale and how small everything is.

 

If anyone is worried about the old IC, they can just order a spare of the original part when buying the other parts. At least in the USA they're only about $0.40 each. So it's not worth trying to save the old one.

 

But, I'd hate to see anyone ruin their UCA202 trying to do this mod. You really need to be comfortable with surface mount technology (SMT). It's not easy and someone could possibly damage the UCA202 beyond repair. All the little things that look like solder blobs in that same picture are really resistors, capacitors and even some tiny inductors (coils of wire on a powdered metal form). The picture below shows how big the resistors are off the board. There are 3 of them in the paper strip next to a regular pencil. Each one is far smaller than the tip of the pencil. They're SMALL!

 

They're normally placed and soldered by machines and not really designed for hand soldering by a human. So it's tricky work--kind of like miniature model building only worse. I've done it many times, and have all the right tools, and I'm still not very good at it. If it's more than a few parts, or they're IC's with lots of fine pitch leads, I have a local contract manufacture who does the work for me, but they have a $100 minimum charge.

 

 

That's a valid point. I'll revise the article to make it clear surface mount skills are required. Like I said, I don't want anyone to ruin their UCA202. I also will keep up my search for other reasonably priced well performing USB DACs that don't require the use of a soldering iron.