lol... Well, I give up, this is becoming a truly ridiculous exercise...

lorspeaker said:

Wholly sheetzzz...I heard 20hz loud n clear Right off the first second..with my 60bucks Mikros90 on an iPad

Thanks for this YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-iCZElJ8m0

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Isn't that a $300 headphone list price? Also are you sure you heard the deep rumbling of bass and not just, say, static? It should sound like a very low frequency rumble that you don't hear otherwise and which very slowly goes up on frequency as the video progresses.

I've never heard apple's dac but I read that it was really good

Deep rumble bro...and it rumbled upwards as the hz picks up.
Amazon is clearing stock..price fluctuates betw 60 to 90.

Ipad is my road companion...a first gen relic

Open that youtube I linked earlier and tell me if you hear bass at 20hz with your DAC. I bet you don't. I couldn't with any prior DAC but can with this DAC.

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That's a ridiculous statement. The vast majority of the dacs on the market have a flat frequency response at 20hz into a reasonnable load. They sometimes are down a db or two at 20khz. Most of the es9023 should be dc-coupled and perfectly flat at 20hz.
 
If you couldn't hear 20hz (which should be barely audible on headphones anyway), it means that, somewhere in the chain, too low a load followed a coupling cap that wasn't sized for that load.

lorspeaker said:

Deep rumble bro...and it rumbled upwards as the hz picks up.
Amazon is clearing stock..price fluctuates betw 60 to 90.

Ipad is my road companion...a first gen relic

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interesting

I want to get this ESS9018 DAC from taobao, http://item.taobao.com/item.htm?spm=a230r.1.14.95.CemlVd&id=36448843412 , and I even found a way to order from taobao to the U.S. (http://www.taobaoring.com ) but I hesitate because I can't read chinese.
 
Taobao is clearly cheaper than Ebay though, much cheaper.
 
What the hell taobao? set up an english site.

Just an FYI for elmo, lim, and all the others who claimed to have superior knowledge of hifi tech -- you all missed a HUGE error I was making when testing this DAC. In reality, I wasn't listening to this DAC at all. I was listening to and praising a completely different DAC. In reality this DAC is no better than my laptop/phone DAC. It's different, but not remarkable in any way, and it was not a good use of $86 at all.
 
The details are in my review which are quite embarrassing and which, again neither of you caught. http://www.head-fi.org/products/breeze-audio-pd05-xmos-pcm5102-dac/reviews/10716

How were we supposed to catch it? It's not like we own this piece of gear. You told us that's what it sounded like - so we took you at your word. I don't see how we 'missed' any huge errors. If you're unable to operate a piece of gear as simple as this one properly, I suggest you don't write reviews or comment on other people's abilities/knowledge to begin with.
 
As for this DAC being a piece of crap, well, that kind of goes along with the general sentiment everybody told you in every post in this thread. So as far as I'm concerned, we were pretty spot on.

But I told you guys how I connected it to my receiver, using the SPDIF out of this DAC. An expert would have immediately told me that by doing that I'm not even listening to this DAC, and that I'm listening to the DAC of my Yamaha receiver. And it's not like you guys weren't trying to sound smart, with that other dood telling me all this science and stuff about 20hz sub-bass (which this DAC doesn't produce anywhere nearly as well as I thought, the Yamaha receiver's DAC was producing all of that great sub-bass and detail).
 
Any way, basically this DAC is crap. It has no exceptional sub-bass, no exceptional detail, and it even has line noise (!). its only value to me is that it allows me to convert my computer's USB out into an SPDIF out, which I can then use if I have a DAC such as my Yamaha that only has a SPDIF in (and not a USB in).
 
Embarrassing, but at least I realized what was happening.

elmoe said:

  How were we supposed to catch it? It's not like we own this piece of gear. You told us that's what it sounded like - so we took you at your word. I don't see how we 'missed' any huge errors. If you're unable to operate a piece of gear as simple as this one properly, I suggest you don't write reviews or comment on other people's abilities/knowledge to begin with.
 
As for this DAC being a piece of crap, well, that kind of goes along with the general sentiment everybody told you in every post in this thread. So as far as I'm concerned, we were pretty spot on.

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I guess it was a good learning experience. I'm not getting a Chinese ESS9018 that's for sure (maybe that gustard one, but that's really more like a name brand)

ag8908 said:

  But I told you guys how I connected it to my receiver, using the SPDIF out of this DAC. An expert would have immediately told me that by doing that I'm not even listening to this DAC, and that I'm listening to the DAC of my Yamaha receiver. And it's not like you guys weren't trying to sound smart, with that other dood telling me all this science and stuff about 20hz sub-bass (which this DAC doesn't produce anywhere nearly as well as I thought, the Yamaha receiver's DAC was producing all of that great sub-bass and detail).
 
Any way, basically this DAC is crap. It has no exceptional sub-bass, no exceptional detail, and it even has line noise (!). its only value to me is that it allows me to convert my computer's USB out into an SPDIF out, which I can then use if I have a DAC such as my Yamaha that only has a SPDIF in (and not a USB in).
 
Embarrassing, but at least I realized what was happening.

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No, an expert wouldn't have built the DAC this way. Basically, your 'DAC' is a DAC and a USB/SPDIF converter rolled into one box. But we had no way to know any of this without seeing the schematics. 
 
From what I'm reading: your DAC has a coaxial "output" that bypasses the DAC entirely and just sends the USB's digital signal (making use of the XMOS chip to do a USB/SPDIF conversion) to your yamaha receiver. Guess what? This is going to be even more embarrassing for you:
 
You're connecting the headphone output to your Yamaha receiver: meaning that this crappy sound you hear from the headphone amp that's inside your DAC is being brought along to your receiver. Not only that but a headphone output isn't meant to be used to send the signal to an amp - there's likely to be some impedance mismatch issue (I'm no expert on this though, someone better versed is likely to chime in). Either way, if listening to the DAC through headphones using the headphone out = a big cut off in frequencies, then that cut off is going to be present as well when you connect the DAC via headphone out to your receiver.
 
So while the headphone amp part of your device is obviously crap, it doesn't necessarily mean that the DAC part is. Unfortunately, there is no way to tell without modifying the device to add some RCA outputs, which is what should've been there to begin with instead of the completely useless coaxial output.
 
One thing we can agree on: your device is essentially only useful as a USB/SPDIF converter.

elmoe said:

   
No, an expert wouldn't have built the DAC this way. Basically, your 'DAC' is a DAC and a USB/SPDIF converter rolled into one box. But we had no way to know any of this without seeing the schematics.
 
From what I'm reading: your DAC has a coaxial "output" that bypasses the DAC entirely and just sends the USB's digital signal (making use of the XMOS chip to do a USB/SPDIF conversion) to your yamaha receiver. Guess what? This is going to be even more embarrassing for you:
 
You're connecting the headphone output to your Yamaha receiver: meaning that this crappy sound you hear from the headphone amp that's inside your DAC is being brought along to your receiver. Not only that but a headphone output isn't meant to be used to send the signal to an amp - there's likely to be some impedance mismatch issue (I'm no expert on this though, someone better versed is likely to chime in). Either way, if listening to the DAC through headphones using the headphone out = a big cut off in frequencies, then that cut off is going to be present as well when you connect the DAC via headphone out to your receiver.

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Yeah. The manufacturer said they added that feature if you wanted to use this as a USB/SPDIF convertor. Not a bad option, and I think all DACs should have that feature. What's wrong with adding another feature? This is especially useful if you buy, say, that Yulong DAC that only has an SPDIF in and not a USB in.
 
Edit: I don't care about the headphone out issue, because I will just be using the SPDIF out and my Yamaha's DAC for now.

P.S. In case you're wondering why I used the headphone analog out instead of the analog out jack, it's because the latter only outputs to the right speaker and not the left. not sure if that's a design issue or a problem with something I'm doing (but I think it's the former).

ag8908 said:

 
Yeah. The manufacturer said they added that feature if you wanted to use this as a USB/SPDIF convertor. Not a bad option, and I think all DACs should have that feature. What's wrong with adding another feature? This is especially useful if you buy, say, that Yulong DAC that only has an SPDIF in and not a USB in.
 
Edit: I don't care about the headphone out issue, because I will just be using the SPDIF out and my Yamaha's DAC for now.

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It's a terrible feature because it is pointless: why add a DAC to a USB/SPDIF converter??? A USB/SPDIF converter is made so you can use USB from your computer to connect a DAC that lacks a USB input. Look at my signature: I own an old Benchmark DAC-1 that doesn't have a USB input, which is why I bought a USB/SPDIF converter. When you made your purchase, what you wanted first and foremost was a DAC, not a USB/SPDIF converter. Any DAC with a USB input doesn't need a USB/SPDIF converter - why would they???
 
Not to mention that this USB/SPDIF converter is most likely to be of very poor quality (considering how the headphone amp, the simplest part of the device, has such a crappy design), and that you could've bought a properly built USB/SPDIF converter for the same price (that's about what I paid for mine in fact).

elmoe said:

   
It's a terrible feature because it is pointless: why add a DAC to a USB/SPDIF converter??? A USB/SPDIF converter is made so you can use USB from your computer to connect a DAC that lacks a USB input. Look at my signature: I own an old Benchmark DAC-1 that doesn't have a USB input, which is why I bought a USB/SPDIF converter. When you made your purchase, what you wanted first and foremost was a DAC, not a USB/SPDIF converter. Any DAC with a USB input doesn't need a USB/SPDIF converter - why would they???
 
Not to mention that this USB/SPDIF converter is most likely to be of very poor quality (considering how the headphone amp, the simplest part of the device, has such a crappy design), and that you could've bought a properly built USB/SPDIF converter for the same price (that's about what I paid for mine in fact).

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Yeah it's definitely a waste of money.