OK, I've spent a lot of the weekend listening to my new DACmini & comparing it with my other gear, especially with the Newforce HDP ( also a combo dac/amp) & my other main desktop amp, the mighty Audio-GD Phoenix. All I can say is I'm very impressed by this mini. To be honest, I'm by nature a tube guy, so while I can really appreciate solid state gear, I tend to do most of my music listening via tube amps feeding either my speakers or, when the wife is home, via my headphones or IEMs.
Well, for headphones, that could change, I love the sound of the mini on all my full sized headphones but especially the HD 650s, to my untrained ear these two go to gather like coffee & donuts. After the short 2 day recommended by CEntrance, I really settled in & started listening to it. My setup for most of my sessions was using my pc to feed my M2 Tech HighFace USB to SPIDF feeding the coax connection on the DACmini. My music was via Media Monkey using flac files. Starting out I would listen to the DACmini for about 30 minutes & then I'd swishing & listen to the same songs with the same sets of headphones on the HDP. Going back & forth like that for most of 2 evenings, it became clear to me that on almost all the headphones, I preferred the mini. I found the Nuforce, for the 1st time, to sound slightly sterile compared to the DACmini. If I hadn't known better, I would have thought I was listening to a high end tube amp or hybrid. I find it a warm sound w/o benign colored in any way. I felt the base is very tight & the highs very extended & transparent. But it was the mids where I felt the mini bested the HDP to my ear. Not relying only on my headphones, I routed the music out to my PC speakers, the Audioengine 5s & that move only reinforced my opinion that this is a very special dac/amp combo. In fact last night I got so involved in what I was hearing that I totally forgot to do my switching back & forth, but spent over 2 hours just listening to the music.
Let me be clear, I love the Nuforce HDP a lot, but I'm not the first to say that it's main strength is it's dac rather than it's amp. I have used it for most of the time I've owned it as the dac I use to feed my tube amps. I love it's super small footprint & it's overall flexibility. Had I not heard the mini in a direct comparison, I would have said it was the very best ss dac/amp combo I've ever heard, certainly anywhere in it's price range. When I got the DACport , I did a similar comparison & found it to have much more power than the port so it was a better fit for my harder to drive headphones such as the HE5LE. Still I preferred the tone of the DACport to the HDP & it became & still is my preferred device to use as a portable with my IEMs or with my Grados or 840 headphones. I use it daily with my iPad. So as I've said before, I find the DACmini a DACport on steroids. It will drive all of my headphones including the K702s & HE5LEs to acceptable levels. The one headphone that I have that on a couple od songs I wished I had more headroom on are my new (to me) Beyerdynamic 880 600 ohm cans. With it, I sometimes felt I needed a bit more gain to hear a particular song the way I normally would listen to it. No I do like to listen to music louder than most of the rest of my family so this may not be a problem. However, I did talk to Micheal at CEntrance about it & we will discuss it with his folks. The gain issue is a tough one cause they want to be able to use the mini with IEMs as well as full size hard to drive headphones is a balancing act he said. This is the one area where I felt the HDP was a tiny bit better. To my ear it seemed to be able to play my hard-to-drive full-size headphones to a little higher levels than the mini. Buy 90% of the time, even on the Beyers or HE5LEs both amps played each song beyond even my comfortable listing levels. So I don't think it is a big issue. But since I plan to buy the HE 6, before the introductory price goes up, I must assume it won't be a good match for the DACmini at current gain levels.
I do plan to do a lot of listening this week with the DACmini using all my IEM, something I havent done. My expectation is that it will be a perfect match for my IEMs. I look forward to testing out that expectation. I also plan to do more testing of the mini as just a dac & just an amp driven by another of my dads, especially my new EE Minimax 32 bit tube dac. I will report back my findings( or really my opinions, which is what they really are). I'm still hoping more headfi early adopters will report their own thoughts on their own experiences with this new production model of the DACmini
Let me know if you have any questions. Ion now a by any means a practiced reviewer & my relatively short time with this unit means I've only just started my planned effort at seeing how it performs & explore it's main strengths or weaknesses. So far, I can say it is a keeper & will be with me for a long time.
