[YULONG Audio]

After participating several CanJam events in 2019, we want to maintain a regular dialogue with HeadFi users, so we decided to start a thread on our DA10. Feel free to raise your question or, if you are an user or audition our DA10 in shows or shops, share your impression with us. So Here we go.

YULONG DA10 is our latest reference grade All-in-One DAC/Amp/Pre for Personal Audio application. It is designed around AKM’s Premium 32-bit AK4497EQ DAC chipset and incorporated our YULONG JIC (Jitter and Interface Control) System, a digital audio technology that will perform digital audio receiving, low noise clock synchronization, FIFO buffering and Dual PLL in our proprietary FPGA solution.

The analogue section is fully balanced design with Class A headphone amplification offers exceptional driving capability and natural sounding. The DA10 measures exceptional well, and it also sounds stunningly refine and musical because we have devoted a lot of resource to fine tune the audio performance through repeated audition and modifications.

Highlighted Features

• Proprietary high precision low tolerance YULONG JIC (Jitter and Interface Control) System, optimize data integrity de-jitter, minimize digital artifact and enhance digital signal quality
• Design around AK497EQ DAC chipset with industry-leading 32Bit/768kHz and DSD512.
• Widely recognized XMOS XU208 solution with customized (with license) Thesycon driver to enhance sound quality and stability.
• Choices of 3 digital filters and three SSM (Sound Signature Modes) to fine tune your system for different music genres and personal preference.
• Fully balanced design, low impedance DAC line output, high current preamp and headphone amplification.
• 99 steps Microprocessor controlled analogue volume for Preamp and headphone output to maintain stellar dynamic range.
• Fully discrete, JFET input, constant current biased, DC coupled Class A headphone amplification for outstanding driving and handling capability.

The Suggested Retail Price of YULONG DA10 is $1,200
For more detail please refer to our Website.

Technical Specification

You can purchase the DA10 from your local YULONG dealer, or from online shop of Shenzhen Audio or Audiophonics if you are in Europe

 

[YULONG Audio]

YULONG Audio designs and manufactures high-end audio products with special focused on All-in-One products for home and personal audio since 2009. We combine leading-edge technologies,rigorous engineering principles, exquisite craftsmanship, and the passion of audiophiles into our R&D process, deploy all available resource and expertise to deliver products that sound good, measure well and function reliably.

Our Story

YuLong Zhang, our Founder and Chief Engineer, is a talented, experienced and persistent engineer. He built his own DAC and amplifier back in late 90s and gradually turned his hobby into lifetime devotion. Over the years, YuLong has gathered musician, mastering engineers, electronic engineers and dedicated audiophiles into his team, playing different roles in R&D, product refinement and production management. The team also actively involved in sponsoring and using YULONG equipment to facilitate on-site setup for live music and musical software events. The team learned and developed hand-in-hand, established solid understanding of music and music reproduction, and providing check and balance opinion during the long and winding audio tuning process.

We shall continue to develop new skills and technologies, and deliver All-in-One products that enable audiophiles and music lovers to engage in their beloved music. In addition, we shall remain cost competitive. Our reference products are relatively affordable, and we constantly adopt our technologies to our DA-ART products, a sub-brand we created to serve the younger generation.

Our Proprietary Technologies:
High Precision Low Noise JIC (Jitter and Interface Control) System

This is our proprietary FPGA solution to enhance audio performance by optimized data integrity, de-jitter and minimized digital artifact before the digital audio signal transmits to the DAC chip. Our FPGA will convert the input audio signals into low-jitter I²S bit-stream, apply FIFO input buffering while synchronize with the built-in femtosecond oscillators. The system will then pulled in and locked the signal by a dual PLL. Our FPGA will distribute and synchronize the signal and then output high quality low-jitter I²S bit-stream through FIFO.

Our Engineering

We only have few items in our product line up because right from the very beginning, we want to differentiate ourselves from consumer electronics manufacturers and trail-and-error product developers. We know we are relatively small and with limited resources, if we want to deliver high quality products,we need to plan carefully, stay focus, and eliminate our mistake as early as possible, that's where our Engineering expertise comes in.

We adopt a purist approach to design our audio circuit instead of copying the public reference design. We invest in various professional testing instruments so that we can identify the weakest link in our design instead of collecting beautiful data to impress consumers. We take power supply design seriously and make no compromise at implementation instead of using cut corners solution to drive down the cost.

Our Audition and Refinement Process

Purse for High Fidelity is an attitude, developments of high-end audio product is much more so. YULONG fully aware that technologies and measurement result is necessarily but not sufficient to ensure our products perform well in different applications, so we always include iterations of audition and design refinement cycles in our product development process, starting from our reference home audio systems to a wide selections of headphones.

We have devoted significant space and resource to develop audition facilities, and we conduct several months of weekly audition meetings before we finalize the audio design of a new product. Our core team members and guests will listen to our products thoroughly and compare with different benchmark equipment in detail. With persistence and diligent, our audition practice becomes many a mickle makes a muckle, and the accumulated refinement are nothing short from significant.

 

[YULONG Audio]

YULONG DA10 Reviews

John Grandberg (@project86) at HeadGear

That changes here, with DA10 sounding competitive with the best I've heard in this price class and even beyond
the DA10 nonetheless does everything I could possibly ask for in a $1200 unit. Anyone looking for an all-around performer in that price range (and beyond) should give it serious consideration.

Headfonics

The reference sound of the Phi seems to pair well with the DA10 smoother, slightly denser timbre and weightier low-end.
I am also not 100% sure you will need another amp to pair with the DA10 unless you already have a great one in your setup and you want to bring some of that DA10 flavor to your system.
The integrated balanced headphone amp on the DA10 has more than enough power and a good level of transparency for modern and classic headphones, both low and high in impedance, to sound very good indeed.

Porta.Fi

The Yulong have tried to build a “balanced” sound without any move to cold monitor sound and without tries to get a tube sounding device.
For most headphones this device will bring their maximum in terms of resolution, textures, thickness and slam

Sound Perfection Reviews

The DA10 is by all accounts a reference sounding DAC/Amp, which I appreciate
The DA10 has handled every pair of headphones I have thrown at it with ease, and never has it sounded muddy or strained.
If you are looking for a nice, all-in-one unit that will power most headphones and offer a neutral and balanced sound signature you should definitely look in to the DA10.

Soundbsessive

I would call the overall sound neutral and laid back, never feeling out of place.
The headphone amplifier is clean, transparent, detailed.
The DAC is very transparent, in this sense, and very fluid, only slightly warmish, and can pair with any kind of headphones, without adding pairing conflicts.

The Hans Beekhuyzen Channel​

Porta.Fi​

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Reserved for FAQ, Reviews and Media

 

[selvakumar]

FInally you guys are in Head-fi as as active member

 

[Andykong]

My first contribution to HeadFi Forum is starting a thread for YULONG D200, that was all the way back in 2014 when I bought my Alpha Dog. I was interested in YULONG D200 and DA8 and planned to pick one out of the Duo. The D200 was just announced and was not available in Hong Kong, so I travelled all the way to YULONG's shenzhen facility and compared the D200 and DA8 in their audition room. That was the day I met Yulong, the founder and the mastermind behind the brand, and we have become personal friends after that.

I upgraded my Personal Audio System later that year and bought a D8 DAC from Yulong. I kept that as my reference DAC until I upgraded to Weiss DAC502, that was the longest staying audio equipment in my Personal System. I basically heard all the YULONG products in past few years and had numerous discussion with their team. When I set up my Personal Audio consultancy service, its just natural that we finally had a chance to work together on some projects.

I am glad that I finally bring YULONG to HeadFi forum. Our original plan was to meet with you guys at CanJam New York and maybe Singapore but looks like we have to schedule that to a later day.

Yulong tired many options in the early days, and then he finally decided to settle with ONE type of product only: compact size All-in-One. We are the All-in-One specialist and we shall stay in this route in foreseeable future. So anyone is looking for All-in-One solution, feel free to raise your need, suggestions or comments to our products, we'll be looking forward to share our passion with everyone.

Andy Kong

 

[Frank.]

DELETED

 

[Baten]

Looks very impressive. Only one thing, hoped for AK4499 instead of 4497

 

[kmmbd]

I've been using the Yulong Canary (the first gen) for over two years now. Apart from the high output impedance, it's a great DAC/Amp combo and absolutely perfect for driving high impedance dynamic drivers, esp the Sennheiser and Beyerdynamics stuff. I wonder what's the output impedance of the DA10 is, since with a lower OI it would be perfect for driving many sensitive IEMs as well.

 

[Andykong]

Looks very impressive. Only one thing, hoped for AK4499 instead of 4497

DA10

Looks very impressive. Only one thing, hoped for AK4499 instead of 4497

That's someone YULONG will be working on, but the question is, what should be the target price for a AK4499 based DAC/Amp with similar features and implementation?

 

[Baten]

That's someone YULONG will be working on, but the question is, what should be the target price for a AK4499 based DAC/Amp with similar features and implementation?

Thanks

I suppose a bump in price is expected if DA10 is $1200 I would expect newest to be $1350 (or similar). if you can do it on same price even better of course

 

[Andykong]

I've been using the Yulong Canary (the first gen) for over two years now. Apart from the high output impedance, it's a great DAC/Amp combo and absolutely perfect for driving high impedance dynamic drivers, esp the Sennheiser and Beyerdynamics stuff. I wonder what's the output impedance of the DA10 is, since with a lower OI it would be perfect for driving many sensitive IEMs as well.

Project86 stated in his review that the DA10 "pairs best with lower impedance cans ", and he used Sony MDR-Z1R, Meze Empyrean, and Fostex TX-00 as reference in his review.

As of IEM, Paul from Porta.Fi has used iBasso IT04, Noble Audio Khan, Campfire Audio Andromeda and Solaris, Unique Melody Maxon v3 and HUM Pristine in his review, and he concluded that "DA10 is rather powerful and can be used with most headphones, except for the most hard-to-drives. If the headphones require enhanced power, there is a balanced output that brings additional weight to lows, but it is very slight. There are no problems with IEMs, however you might want to use attenuator with the most sensitive models." We definitely recommend to add an attenuator such as IEMatch if you want to try out sensitive IEM with high power desktop headphone amplifier such as DA10, but that is a power output issue, not an impedance matching issue.

Thanks

I suppose a bump in price is expected if DA10 is $1200 I would expect newest to be $1350 (or similar). if you can do it on same price even better of course

Interesting suggestion, let's see if this is achievable with DA series when we complete our R&D process, hopefully within 2021 if things go smooth (well, we didn't have a smooth start this year ). The AK4499 is very demanding in terms of power management, we have to beef up the support circuit in order to implement the AK4499 satisfactory.

 

[Baten]

The AK4499 is very demanding in terms of power management, we have to beef up the support circuit in order to implement the AK4499 satisfactory.

I see. hope you guys can do it! Thanks for the replies
Take care!

 

[Andykong]

I see. hope you guys can do it! Thanks for the replies
Take care!

While you are waiting for AK4499 implementation, make sure you check out our DA10 if you happen to run into a demo in shows or meets. It might looks like a minimal rectangular box, but it has surprised a lot of show visitors in the past.

 

[Frank.]

DELETED

 

[Baten]

I guess a new gear from YULONG with single or dual AK4499 is on its way.

that's a great guess considering there is talk in the post right above you LOL