of course I measured directly on the 9038Pro pins using multimeter.
if you don't believe me you are welcome to try.
I understand it's hard to believe --- that was my first reaction to this as well.
another hard to believe fact is they also installed a thermometer behind the 9038pro,
adjusting thd compensation parameters in real time depending on the temperature change, to fix their thermal
issues.
you can tear down any of their 9038pro implementations such as su-9 after the very initial m500.
it's located on the back of their PCB.
The m500 mkiii product flyer says this time it solves the stability issue.
"The 3rd ES9038PRO circuit design has a surprisingly low distortion of 0.00006% and is more stable;"
So perhaps the summing i/v design remove the need for thermal compensation.
> If that's not the case, that would be really stupid and you could have also taken a 9038Q2M, wouldn't have made much of a difference.
SMSL's result clearly shows each channel of the Pro has much lower noise than Q2M.
Also take a look at their competitor's product:
DM7
https://www.tpdz.net/productinfo/862560.html has 130dB DR on each of the 8 channels
D10s Balanced
https://www.tpdz.net/productinfo/666141.html only has 125dB.
mentioned in ESS datasheet as well (129db vs 132db for each channel)