Managed to get the UDA1 working with the Foobar SACD plugin correctly. Pure DSD goodness.

The new Sony products do support DSD and 32/192 PCM over USB or from file. How could it offer any further convenience for music from a laptop?   Your suggested prepro; I'd buy one of those, has just about everything I feel I'm missing from my AV7701.

Interesting review and very complimentary. I have come across one bug with my UDA1 so far when using the USB input. If you set 24/48 default sample rate for Windows (Sensible for most non audio track use eg. Game and Youtube especially when you use ASIO for audio playback) then if you start a...

The $2000 model looks to have a higher end dac setup (Fully balanced; or at least topology looks like 1 dac per channel and dual power supplies in Hifi News pics). Other balanced dacs costs around $1000+ and they are not media players, the only equivalent I know is the Lumin device and that...

Whilst on the subject it looks like these units use 2.5" internal drives (HAP-Z1ES review in Hifi News) so 2TB is max that will fit for now.

  Some devices use fixed geometry in which case it wont. If it detects a larger drive but expects something odd with the prep you could fix this with a Linux comp and dd + resize2fs (Whatihifi review mentioned the drive is Ext4 formatted).

My own thoughts are that the UDA1 is perfect for desktop PC use which is what I use it for. For main room use I would look at the HAP-S1 or even the HAP-Z1ES; they can play files without a PC (My results are for the UDA1 playing back from a PC using JRivers).

  All Flac files work fine including 16/44, 24/44, 24/96 and 24/192. 32/192 wav plays back and is detected fine by the Dac too. JRivers seems to be the best software match as it supports native DSD   Haven't done a lot of CD res listening yet but Highway to Hell sounds pretty damn good :)

Just got a UDA1 (But seems I'm not allowed to attach a picture).   First thoughts: Lovely sound and nice to have native DSD support at last Plenty loud enough for desktop use through my PMC DB1s despite being only 20W Very low noise floor and quick to switch audio sampling frequencies DSD...

I was hoping for some help in choosing some headphones for a gift. Budget is $100-200 and as it says in the title the user has an Essence STX and listens mainly to Rock with some gaming and TV streaming too.   Any suggestions appreciated.