This is a review and detailed measurements of the HifiBerry DAC 2 HD. It was kindly sent to me by a member already assembled on a Raspberry Pi board. The DAC2 HD costs US $99 from company website.
Here is a shot of the full assembly:
Let's zoom into it:
As you see it is based on TI/BurBrown PCM1796 which seems to be a common DAC chip for these "HATS" (option boards for Rpi).
For testing, I streamed test files using my Roon player over Ethernet to it (hence streaming scenario). Test files have to be static in this situation so I can't show you any sweeps (e.g. IMD versus Level).
HifiBerry DAC2 HD Measurements
As usual we start with our dashboard of 1 kHz, streamed to the board at fixed/max volume:
Performance is not great. It is what we would expect a few years ago:
Specifications from the company indicate far better performance but with a fine print that they are performed at -10 dB so I tested using that condition:
This is much better but we are still shy of 108 dB they specify. I looked up the spec from TI for the DAC chip and they state this:
That is better than what I see at -10 dB yet TI spec is at full amplitude. So looks like the implementation is not nearly as good as what the chip company advertises.
Moving on, they say they have a low jitter clock and while I see no indication of jitter, there are other unwanted tones:
Dynamic range is OK:
Multitone test runs at less than full volume so shows off the better performance:
Conclusions
It is hard to get excited over this level of performance. For the same $99 you can get an external USB DAC which runs circles around DAC2 HD. Yes, it is convenient to have a small DAC that fits on top of the RPi but come on, let's not give up much performance to do that.
I can't recommend the HifiBerry DAC2 HD. I think it would be OK at $49 but not at $99.
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As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.
Appreciate any donations using: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/
Here is a shot of the full assembly:
Let's zoom into it:
As you see it is based on TI/BurBrown PCM1796 which seems to be a common DAC chip for these "HATS" (option boards for Rpi).
For testing, I streamed test files using my Roon player over Ethernet to it (hence streaming scenario). Test files have to be static in this situation so I can't show you any sweeps (e.g. IMD versus Level).
HifiBerry DAC2 HD Measurements
As usual we start with our dashboard of 1 kHz, streamed to the board at fixed/max volume:
Performance is not great. It is what we would expect a few years ago:
Specifications from the company indicate far better performance but with a fine print that they are performed at -10 dB so I tested using that condition:
This is much better but we are still shy of 108 dB they specify. I looked up the spec from TI for the DAC chip and they state this:
That is better than what I see at -10 dB yet TI spec is at full amplitude. So looks like the implementation is not nearly as good as what the chip company advertises.
Moving on, they say they have a low jitter clock and while I see no indication of jitter, there are other unwanted tones:
Dynamic range is OK:
Multitone test runs at less than full volume so shows off the better performance:
Conclusions
It is hard to get excited over this level of performance. For the same $99 you can get an external USB DAC which runs circles around DAC2 HD. Yes, it is convenient to have a small DAC that fits on top of the RPi but come on, let's not give up much performance to do that.
I can't recommend the HifiBerry DAC2 HD. I think it would be OK at $49 but not at $99.
------------
As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.
Appreciate any donations using: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/
And a raw SPDIF input. If you use HifiBerry OS you get quite a nice interface to configure it, but you can also use Sigmastudio if you like. You can also install the web interface on other distro’s. It was made by/with B&O people.
