i've had this dac for a while and it was a major upgrade from the internal dac on my laptop.
the imaging is much better, the bass is much more well defined, the trebles don't tear, and the mids don't cloud out the entire rest of the dynamic range.
while there is hiss on my sr-535 iems, it isn't intolerable - it is mostly only audible when the source volume dips particularly low.
at the lowest volume setting (zero) the audio is barely a whisper in the 535's, but kick it up one step and it is much, much louder. there isn't really any in-between and sometimes, for background listening, i would really like an in-between. beyond about 5 it's just painful.
the other major problem with the module is the design. it sticks straight out of the usb port and having a headphone cable attached at the end of a stick causes a lot of flex that could potentially damage the port. so i had to buy a usb right-angle adapter for the device and make a metal support bracket to keep it from torquing apart my usb port in it's new orientation parallel to my laptop's chassis.
it's nice to have the usb-otg support for android. i've used it on my phone and it sounds great but the form factor makes it a little ridiculous. it always elicits comments, "why do you need ANOTHER headphone jack on your phone?" the response to which is, of course, just because it looks the same doesn't mean it SOUNDS the same. but that doesn't make it look any less hilarious to have a giant usb stick protruding from the bottom of a phone.
it would be nice if the device could handle 16 bit audio natively. seems like a bit of an oversight to handle several different sampling rates but decide not to implement something as simple as bit depth scaling in hardware. i'm seriously not intending to make so many puns in this review.
even with all these gripes, i'm not dissatisfied with my purchase. it's tiny, portable, compatible with most of my devices, and it sounds great, especially for the price point.
the imaging is much better, the bass is much more well defined, the trebles don't tear, and the mids don't cloud out the entire rest of the dynamic range.
while there is hiss on my sr-535 iems, it isn't intolerable - it is mostly only audible when the source volume dips particularly low.
at the lowest volume setting (zero) the audio is barely a whisper in the 535's, but kick it up one step and it is much, much louder. there isn't really any in-between and sometimes, for background listening, i would really like an in-between. beyond about 5 it's just painful.
the other major problem with the module is the design. it sticks straight out of the usb port and having a headphone cable attached at the end of a stick causes a lot of flex that could potentially damage the port. so i had to buy a usb right-angle adapter for the device and make a metal support bracket to keep it from torquing apart my usb port in it's new orientation parallel to my laptop's chassis.
it's nice to have the usb-otg support for android. i've used it on my phone and it sounds great but the form factor makes it a little ridiculous. it always elicits comments, "why do you need ANOTHER headphone jack on your phone?" the response to which is, of course, just because it looks the same doesn't mean it SOUNDS the same. but that doesn't make it look any less hilarious to have a giant usb stick protruding from the bottom of a phone.
it would be nice if the device could handle 16 bit audio natively. seems like a bit of an oversight to handle several different sampling rates but decide not to implement something as simple as bit depth scaling in hardware. i'm seriously not intending to make so many puns in this review.
even with all these gripes, i'm not dissatisfied with my purchase. it's tiny, portable, compatible with most of my devices, and it sounds great, especially for the price point.