This is a review and detailed measurements of the Auralic Vega DAC. From my quick search seems like this DAC was released sometime in 2013 but it is still current (about to be replaced?). It was brought to our local audiophile society meeting for me to measure so my time with it was very limited. As such, this review gets right to the point with measurements. Retail price as of this writing seems to be around $2,000 with the original cost of $3,500.
If you are not familiar with Auralic, they are a chinese company whose streamers are a fixture at audio shows. They have cornered the market for "high-end" audio streamers.
I have to say going into this review I just assumed this is an over-priced unit, surely with some faults. Read on to see if that came through.
Measurements
As soon as I fired up the dashboard measurements, I knew my bias was incorrect:
113 dB SINAD (signal above power of noise+distortion)? This is near the top of any DAC I have ever measured! THD is inverse of SINAD and likewise shows astonishingly low numbers.
The FFT spectrum of 1 kHz shows only a tiny blip of power supply noise at 180 Hz (more than 140 dB down). The distortions are all harmonic and likewise very low in level.
Likewise our jitter and noise shows little to worry about:
A couple of tiny bumps are visible but at levels below -130 dB, absolutely not an audible concern of any sort. Note lack of power supply mains harmonics all the way to the left.
IMD distortion was a bit less perfect:
We see the same mid-level distortion spike we have with Topping line of DACs. The Oppo UDP-205 heavily outperforms it here but otherwise, the rest of the response is very clean. No clipping is visible as we see with Schiit Yggdrasil where the distortion rises as levels increase to the right.
Harmonic distortion+noise (THD+N) was kind of interesting and quite concerning at first:
I did not know that the filter mode was set to "4." With that setting, there was a sudden and massive jump in distortion above 18 kHz. Response below that also had variable amount of distortion. Scope display (not shown) showed the amplitude of any signal above 18 kHz to be heavily modulated up and down!
Switching to Mode 1 filter made a massive improvement as you see in red. Now we are talking state-of-the-art performance.
Owner said that Mode 4 was recommended by a review he had read. Quick look shows this excellent white paper from Auralic on different filters: https://www.auralic.com/download/flexible_filter_mode.pdf
I think the cautions about using it with 44.1 kHz need to be stronger given what I measured. I don't consider that performance "high-fi," their subjective results notwithstanding.
I did test the unit at 96 kHz and the problem did vanish as they state.
Finally, the Auralic Vega passed our linearity test with flying colors:
This is how it is done folk!
Conclusions
For some reason I went into this review thinking the Auralic Vega would not perform well. Boy, was I proven wrong. This is near perfect execution. While you can get the same performance for less, if you have a preference for this brand, I recommend it without hesitation. Good job Auralic.
As always, questions, comments, corrections, jokes, etc. are all welcome!
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If you like this review, please consider donating funds for these types of hardware purchase using Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/audiosciencereview), or upgrading your membership here though Paypal (https://audiosciencereview.com/foru...eview-and-measurements.2164/page-3#post-59054).
If you are not familiar with Auralic, they are a chinese company whose streamers are a fixture at audio shows. They have cornered the market for "high-end" audio streamers.
I have to say going into this review I just assumed this is an over-priced unit, surely with some faults. Read on to see if that came through.
Measurements
As soon as I fired up the dashboard measurements, I knew my bias was incorrect:
113 dB SINAD (signal above power of noise+distortion)? This is near the top of any DAC I have ever measured! THD is inverse of SINAD and likewise shows astonishingly low numbers.
The FFT spectrum of 1 kHz shows only a tiny blip of power supply noise at 180 Hz (more than 140 dB down). The distortions are all harmonic and likewise very low in level.
Likewise our jitter and noise shows little to worry about:
A couple of tiny bumps are visible but at levels below -130 dB, absolutely not an audible concern of any sort. Note lack of power supply mains harmonics all the way to the left.
IMD distortion was a bit less perfect:
We see the same mid-level distortion spike we have with Topping line of DACs. The Oppo UDP-205 heavily outperforms it here but otherwise, the rest of the response is very clean. No clipping is visible as we see with Schiit Yggdrasil where the distortion rises as levels increase to the right.
Harmonic distortion+noise (THD+N) was kind of interesting and quite concerning at first:
I did not know that the filter mode was set to "4." With that setting, there was a sudden and massive jump in distortion above 18 kHz. Response below that also had variable amount of distortion. Scope display (not shown) showed the amplitude of any signal above 18 kHz to be heavily modulated up and down!
Switching to Mode 1 filter made a massive improvement as you see in red. Now we are talking state-of-the-art performance.
Owner said that Mode 4 was recommended by a review he had read. Quick look shows this excellent white paper from Auralic on different filters: https://www.auralic.com/download/flexible_filter_mode.pdf
I think the cautions about using it with 44.1 kHz need to be stronger given what I measured. I don't consider that performance "high-fi," their subjective results notwithstanding.
I did test the unit at 96 kHz and the problem did vanish as they state.
Finally, the Auralic Vega passed our linearity test with flying colors:
This is how it is done folk!
Conclusions
For some reason I went into this review thinking the Auralic Vega would not perform well. Boy, was I proven wrong. This is near perfect execution. While you can get the same performance for less, if you have a preference for this brand, I recommend it without hesitation. Good job Auralic.
As always, questions, comments, corrections, jokes, etc. are all welcome!
----
If you like this review, please consider donating funds for these types of hardware purchase using Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/audiosciencereview), or upgrading your membership here though Paypal (https://audiosciencereview.com/foru...eview-and-measurements.2164/page-3#post-59054).
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