Teac UD-501

AlexChato9

New Head-Fier
Pros: Plays DSD, excellent headphones amplifier, built like a tank, XLR output
Cons: Major drop happens sometimes over USB under Windows 7 with direct sound playback, fixed in Windows 10 and nothing with ASIO/JRiver
This will be the second review on this product that needs, by seeing the number of review, to be discover more! I was searching a DAC for our home-theater/audio setup. Composed by 3 Totem Tribe III because the rest of the family is more axed on the movie section I took an Integra 70.5 for the amplification section but I wanted to bypass its DAC. My retailer in Québec as a 100$ off on the UD-501 and for what it can do, I took it right of the bath. The support of DSD was a benefit for me because I have a lot of DSD music on my NAS and the only way to play it was to send the audio via the HDMI connection of my computer to the amplifier directly with some transcoding involved by JRiver. I compared the sound to the integrated DAC in the Integra (not a bad one at all for a receiver) and the sound is more rich in the high, but the soundstage is wider without being undefined. When listening with headphones, I use the UD with the "sharp" filter for PCM and the FIR2 which is most neutral one with my Focal Listen, but it's set on "slow" for PCM with a pair of Grado RS2i because damn they are too sharp! Overall, it acts very good as an headphones amplifier, and the power output is more than enough for the headphones I have.

Like in the video, changing the input selector to Coax and going back to USB resolve the problem but it's annoying... Maybe it's my USB cable that came with an HP printer... Next purchase!
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buson160man

1000+ Head-Fier
Pros: excellent dac
Cons: no preamp function
I am surprised that there were no reviews of this dac on head-fi. So let me be the first.
  I have had this dac for over a year now and it has blossomed into a very good dac in my desk top setting. I am using a pair of emotiva airmotiv 5s monitors and the set up is sounding pretty impressive for monitors of their size. It has taken awhile to get the most out of my set up. I have settled on interconnects and power cords . I am using balanced nordost heimdall v1 interconnects to my powered emotiva airmotiv 5 monitors and emotiva power cords on the airmotiv 5s. On the teac ud-501 dac I am using a nordost brahma power cord .
   The teac ud-501 has turned out to be a excellent performer. The sound is very dynamic and tight sounding. There  is ample weight in the presentation with good clarity as well. The headphone amp sounds very good as well with my akg 701s with good clarity and decent detail reproduction. You will definitely not be bored with its presentation .
   The only negative is that the teac ud-501 does not have any preamp function ability. I have had to rely on the volume control on my emotiva desk top monitors . If it had a preamp function the ud-501 would be pretty much a perfect desk top solution . It would have been interesting if it had single ended and balanced preamp outputs . But as it stands I have little to complain  about this excellent dac.
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TienV1125
TienV1125
hi there. it good that u post this review up. i saw this DACs at my dealer but didn't have a chance to try it out. would u say the Teac DAC more of a neutral or warm DAC.
 
thanks
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