This is a review and detailed measurements of the Black Lion Audio White Sparrow DAC. It is on kind loan from a member and costs US $1,999.
EDIT: while there is one seller for this product, it appears to be a very old model that is discontinued.
This is kind of an old school look which is probably fine for it target market of professionals. I guess lack of USB connection goes along the same lines:
I appreciated the built-in AC power supply.
Black Lion Audio White Sparrow DAC Measurements
I started my testing with S/PDIF connection:
Very surprised to see such a jungle of spikes around our main tone which likely indicates jitter. There is also power supply noise which may be the source of said jitter (or some of it). I should note that on power up, one channel had much more distortion which pulled SINAD down to 90 dB but it climbed up after 1 minute of warm up.
Make sure ground loops and such were not responsible, I switched to AES digital for the rest of the tests:
I didn't expect distortion to improve but strangely it did a bit. Using this value we get a bit above average ranking for all DACs tested:
Lowering the output did result in slightly better performance:
Company raves about dynamic range and their claim passes my test:
This is a very quiet DAC but unfortunately it is held back by distortion:
What a shame. Linearity is perfect:
But jitter is not as we predicted:
DAC filter is slow which will cause some problems with the test after it:
But why is there a rise in distortion at lower frequencies???
Sparrow Headphone Output Measurement
I set its output level to max and got this strange result at 300 ohm:
What on earth is going on here??? The one channel is just broken.
Fortunately at lower impedance it performs much better:
Conclusions
What a mixed bag here. We have a very quiet DAC but distortion that is all over the place. Rarely, if ever, have I seen an ultra low noise DAC with high distortion. Needless to say, we can get desktop DACs at much lower prices that run circles around it.
I can't recommend the Black Lion Audio White Sparrow DAC. You can do so much better for less even though there are some redeeming qualities in there.
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As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.
Any donations are much appreciated using: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/
EDIT: while there is one seller for this product, it appears to be a very old model that is discontinued.
This is kind of an old school look which is probably fine for it target market of professionals. I guess lack of USB connection goes along the same lines:
I appreciated the built-in AC power supply.
Black Lion Audio White Sparrow DAC Measurements
I started my testing with S/PDIF connection:
Very surprised to see such a jungle of spikes around our main tone which likely indicates jitter. There is also power supply noise which may be the source of said jitter (or some of it). I should note that on power up, one channel had much more distortion which pulled SINAD down to 90 dB but it climbed up after 1 minute of warm up.
Make sure ground loops and such were not responsible, I switched to AES digital for the rest of the tests:
I didn't expect distortion to improve but strangely it did a bit. Using this value we get a bit above average ranking for all DACs tested:
Lowering the output did result in slightly better performance:
Company raves about dynamic range and their claim passes my test:
This is a very quiet DAC but unfortunately it is held back by distortion:
What a shame. Linearity is perfect:
But jitter is not as we predicted:
DAC filter is slow which will cause some problems with the test after it:
But why is there a rise in distortion at lower frequencies???
Sparrow Headphone Output Measurement
I set its output level to max and got this strange result at 300 ohm:
What on earth is going on here??? The one channel is just broken.
Fortunately at lower impedance it performs much better:
Conclusions
What a mixed bag here. We have a very quiet DAC but distortion that is all over the place. Rarely, if ever, have I seen an ultra low noise DAC with high distortion. Needless to say, we can get desktop DACs at much lower prices that run circles around it.
I can't recommend the Black Lion Audio White Sparrow DAC. You can do so much better for less even though there are some redeeming qualities in there.
-----------
As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.
Any donations are much appreciated using: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/
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