I own a hifime diy sabre 9018k2m usb dac and personally i think its a terrible recommendation for anyone! Dark, over bassy and congested sound. there is detail but its hard to find.
I would definitely disagree with you. I'm using the hifimediy 9018 in my PC going out to my preamp in my main system. It sounds balanced and very detailed. I am using a full blown system instead of headphones, but this thing was the best birthday present that I ever received!!!
No, they are driven by my Adcom GFA-5503 power amp. These are very large floor standing speakers (I think they currently retail for about $4400 a pair but you can find them much cheaper on the used market).
Are you using the DAC to drive the power amp directly? If so, and if you're using the original "non-D" version, the output may be on the low side, and/or there may be an impedance mismatch...
No - it's not going directly into the power amp. Dac is connected via USB to the PC - Analog out of the HIFIME 9018D straight to the analog in of my preamp (Yamaha Aventage RX-A3020) - Preout to my B&K Reference 200.7
I just picked one of these up. Overall I'm pretty satisfied with it. There is a lot of detail being revealed. It lacks some smoothness and is a bit overly granular, but these can be worked around. I'm pairing them with my Lake People G103S amp and I rotate between HD800, HD650, and AKG K7XX phones, mostly using the 800s. I was getting sharp treble but I was blaming most of that on the 800 sound signature which has the frequency spike somewhere between 6-8Khz. Sound was even on the AKG's and I had the usual relaxed treble on the 650's.
I love this DAC for various reasons - first of all, it is clean, precise and detailed. Secondly, it has got perfectly fine 0.5 dB per step volume control with ~ 256 overall steps. Thirdly, its output impedance is super low so it can also directly drive critical in-ears and full-sized headphones (however its output is somewhat too hissy for very sensitive in-ears).
Can anybody comment on differences between these hifimediy models?
I would like DAC only for my laptop and desktop to use it with an amp to power my T50rp. But I´m confused in how many variants there are..
HiFimeDIY Sabre ES9023 ($42) HiFimeDIY Sabre U2 Async ($59) HiFime Sabre 9018 USB DAC ($69) async ($90) the last two versions of 9018: -i and -D have built in amplifier afaik, which I won´t utilize much..
I am interested in async models, as they should be superior to non-async models.
But, other than differences in sample rates supported, are there any sonic differences?
I will highly appreciate any help, thank you.
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