[Nankai]

 

 
Why don't you build some consumer grade products with Hi-Fi elements?  One of my friend asked me last year. He was right, we do have the ability to build consumer grade products, such as headphones, sound card, players, as cheap as those sold in walmart, and sound a lot better. So we registered HIFIMAN EXPRESS trademark, and designed several new products under this brand. HM-101 portable USB DAC is the first one. Several new products such as RE-242 iphone compatible IEM will coming soon. We will keep use HIFIMAN trademark for Hi-Fi market in the future. 
 
HM-101 USB DAC 
Order Link: http://www.head-direct.com/Products/?act=detail&id=113#
Price： 39 USD
 

 
 
 
Why we build HM-101 USB DAC 
 
Most modern computers have on-board sound cards, which provide relatively lean and cold sound. People call it "digital sound". Sometimes on-board soundcard have bad signal to noise issue so that customer can hear noise from sound card headphone output. Hifiman express HM-101 is a very small USB sound card ( as small as a matchbox) with headphone amp output and line output. We use one of the best sound quality USB D/A convertor chip Burr-brown PCM2702 as the key component in HM-101. We designed the headphone amplifer with the famous headphone amplifier chip TDA1308, with about 50 to 70 mw headphone output. HM-101 USB DAC can be used on both Windows and Mac. 
 
Spec
Frequency Response: 20 to 20k Hz
THD: 0.07%
S/N: 96 dB
Stereo Crosstalk: 78 dB
Headphone Amplifier Output:
62 mw at 36 Ohm
26 mw at 150 Ohm
Dimension: 36 * 60.5 * 13.8 mm
 

 

[JamesMcProgger]

unexpectedly cheap and tiny 

. I want to read some comparisons already.
 
Weird to see a portable standalone DAC.
 

 

[EpicPie]

Frequency range could be better imo, but for the price and size it looks great for the value.

 

[kite7]

Quote:

Frequency range could be better imo

You mean you can hear beyond those extremes?
 
Looks like a good product for the price, is it possible to show more pictures of the input and output?
 

 

[IMAWolf]

Lol, that's kinda unexpected..... Looking forward to comparisons with the DACs from Fiio.

 

[kiteki]

 
I'll review it when I receive it.
 
 
@ frequency range comment, if I remember correctly the datasheet for the DAC said 20Hz-20kHz +-0.3dB, I'm not sure if there's an actual limit at 20khz... but do you actually have files on your computer that extend above 20khz?

 

[BotByte]

Quote:

 
I'll review it when I receive it.
 
 
@ frequency range comment, if I remember correctly the datasheet for the DAC said 20Hz-20kHz +-0.3dB, I'm not sure if there's an actual limit at 20khz... but do you actually have files on your computer that extend above 20khz?

The major question is, can you actually hear more then what the 20-20,000 range is?
 
Eitherway, the DAC looks interesting for low impedance headphones with laptops or a budget desktop.
 
I'd like to learn about using it as a preamp. I'm still running off my MoBo sound interface here.
 

 

[kiteki]

 
Hey, it already arrived!!!!
 
And the great part is, UPS left it at 7eleven, so I went and picked it up now, at 2 A.M lol.
 
 

 

[JamesMcProgger]

Quote:

 
Hey, it already arrived!!!!
 
And the great part is, UPS left it at 7eleven, so I went and picked it up now, at 2 A.M lol.
 
 

what? is that usual? ... at least you can get a coffe now that you're there
 

 

[kiteki]

 
@BotByte, why specifically for low impedance phones?
 
Perhaps we can't hear above 20kHz, but there's information up there that causes unwanted noise in the range under 20kHz, which we have to get rid of with a filter of some sort, so a 10-100kHz recording is more pure, is my basic understanding.

 

[kiteki]

 
review in progress ...

 

[JamesMcProgger]

so it is a DAC + Amp combo....

 

[Mistertaz]

Need someone to compare it to the E7... or the upcoming E10...

 

[koolkat]

I'm super impressed by the Fiio E7. Great battery life, good DAC feature, amp is decent as well.
 
According to Kiteki's review, the HM-101s are great if you don't have a sound card. If you're not
looking for functionality and you just want a good substitute for your onboard audio, the HM-101
looks like a good option.
 
 
 
Quote:

Need someone to compare it to the E7... or the upcoming E10...

 

 

[dyl1dyl]

Haha, interesting. Hifiman continues to churn out products.