The Henry Engineering Matchbox II was loaned to me by a member for measurements and hardware teardown/review. I am not sure how well known this DAC is. It is targeted toward television broadcast world. It unusually has both ADC and DAC plus professional AES/EBU output (balanced version of S/PDIF). In that regard, it appropriately only has balanced inputs and outputs.
Retail price is fairly high for consumer market but appropriate for professional use at $479.
Specs are rather modest, stopping at just 48 Khz sampling and bit depth of 16 bits. Again, this is fine for video applications where 48 Khz sampling is standard and 16 bits sufficient.
Measurements
As always, my go-to measurement is 24-bit, 48 Khz J-test signal. I had not noticed that this device is limited to 16 bits when I did the testing so the 24-bit depth of the signal is lost on it. Indeed, that shows up in the measurements:
The Matchbox II is shown in red and in yellow, I have the Behringer UMC204 HD USB ADC/DAC ($79) using its balanced output just the same. Immediately we see a much lower noise floor for the UMC204. However that is offset by its anemic output resulting in 123 db differential between the noise floor and peak signal (NOTE: this is not the true signal to noise ratio).
The Matchbox II has far stronger output. It initially put out some +20 db of output. Using its adjustments I brought it down to minimum which was still higher than Behringer. Using the same measurement as above (not shown) the Matchbox II achieves 120 db. So fairly comparable to Behringer UMC204 HD.
Not so comparable is good bit of spurious spikes at many frequencies shown with red arrows. Some of these rise up as much as 20 db from noise floor showing less than ideal engineering. Compare that with the super clean output of the Behringer UMC204HD (yellow) and you see that much better can be done.
For another comparison, I fired up my newly acquired Exasound e32 DAC ($3,500) and compared it to the Matchbox II:
The Exasound runs circles around it, producing 140 db differential between its measurement noise floor and peak output (again, don't confuse this with signal to noise ratio). It is also much freer of spurious responses than Matchbox II.
Conclusion
From measurements point of view and specifications, there is little to recommend the Henry Engineering Matchbox II. It is limited to 16 bits and 48 Khz which in this day and age, is simply not acceptable. Its measured performance lags much cheaper DACs like the Behringer UMC204HD.
Its high output level though is nice as is the option of having AES/EBU output and full balanced input and output. I did not test its headphone output but it comes with one too.
In the next post, I will do a teardown of its hardware.
Retail price is fairly high for consumer market but appropriate for professional use at $479.
Specs are rather modest, stopping at just 48 Khz sampling and bit depth of 16 bits. Again, this is fine for video applications where 48 Khz sampling is standard and 16 bits sufficient.
Measurements
As always, my go-to measurement is 24-bit, 48 Khz J-test signal. I had not noticed that this device is limited to 16 bits when I did the testing so the 24-bit depth of the signal is lost on it. Indeed, that shows up in the measurements:
The Matchbox II is shown in red and in yellow, I have the Behringer UMC204 HD USB ADC/DAC ($79) using its balanced output just the same. Immediately we see a much lower noise floor for the UMC204. However that is offset by its anemic output resulting in 123 db differential between the noise floor and peak signal (NOTE: this is not the true signal to noise ratio).
The Matchbox II has far stronger output. It initially put out some +20 db of output. Using its adjustments I brought it down to minimum which was still higher than Behringer. Using the same measurement as above (not shown) the Matchbox II achieves 120 db. So fairly comparable to Behringer UMC204 HD.
Not so comparable is good bit of spurious spikes at many frequencies shown with red arrows. Some of these rise up as much as 20 db from noise floor showing less than ideal engineering. Compare that with the super clean output of the Behringer UMC204HD (yellow) and you see that much better can be done.
For another comparison, I fired up my newly acquired Exasound e32 DAC ($3,500) and compared it to the Matchbox II:
The Exasound runs circles around it, producing 140 db differential between its measurement noise floor and peak output (again, don't confuse this with signal to noise ratio). It is also much freer of spurious responses than Matchbox II.
Conclusion
From measurements point of view and specifications, there is little to recommend the Henry Engineering Matchbox II. It is limited to 16 bits and 48 Khz which in this day and age, is simply not acceptable. Its measured performance lags much cheaper DACs like the Behringer UMC204HD.
Its high output level though is nice as is the option of having AES/EBU output and full balanced input and output. I did not test its headphone output but it comes with one too.
In the next post, I will do a teardown of its hardware.