Review and Measurements of Hifime UDA38Pro DAC

[amirm]

hey, I've said clearly before, don't buy these toys, now you (pural) wasted Amirm's money

sinners, apologize to Amirm, and do more homewroks

I very much appreciate your sentiments but I don't want anyone to feel guilty about suggesting gear to me. It is through the finding of bad apples that we appreciate the good ones. I usually order gear when I am personally convinced it is a good idea so I am part of the guilty parties anyway.

 

[andreasmaaan]

@amirm have you still not heard back from them re: a refund?

I got a refund on the basis that I "didn't like the way it sounded", so unless they've changed their attitude there should be no problem getting your money back from them.

And if they care about PR they should also be scrambling to either send you a non-defective replacement or address the problems you measured if your unit was not defective.

 

[Krunok]

@amirm have you still not heard back from them re: a refund?

I got a refund on the basis that I "didn't like the way it sounded", so unless they've changed their attitude there should be no problem getting your money back from them.

And if they care about PR they should also be scrambling to either send you a non-defective replacement or address the problems you measured if your unit was not defective.

You probably missed that post..

https://audiosciencereview.com/foru...ements-of-hifime-uda38pro-dac.4064/post-95518

 

[andreasmaaan]

You probably missed that post..

https://audiosciencereview.com/foru...ements-of-hifime-uda38pro-dac.4064/post-95518

Aaaaahhh....

 

[amirm]

I have asked them for permission to open mine. That way I can see if there is an issue with the external power, assembly, etc.

 

[PuX]

I bet it was not damaged. how could this even happen in shipping, there are no moving parts...

it's just really bad.

but hey, i could be wrong.

 

[Bhargu]

The current consumption may have been due to regulator shorting out or something. It was a quick glance though so I may have missed a decimal point on the display. Right now it just shows zeros for amps used.

It could be using more power in external power supply mode than the USB mode. After all, the Vrms is going up by around 1.1V (as per the specs, I think you measured it at a lower value).

 

[Bhargu]

I bet it was not damaged. how could this even happen in shipping, there are no moving parts...

it's just really bad.

but hey, i could be wrong.

@amirm did say that the volume control was crooked or the knob was jammed against the chassis. It necessarily doesn't have to be a damage during shipping. Could have happened between QC and packaging. Still, a bump is not really going to damage an IC, but a hard enough force on a PCB could cause issues. I also don't think such high distortions would have gone unheard by any of the positive reviewers. It could also be an expectation bias on the part of those reviewers. The blog post on their website shows they have worked on the design for many months. So I don't think that they got lazy and implemented some older design on a new DAC chip. I wasn't expecting D50 like performance, but this is clearly unacceptable for any price.

Whatever the case, the simple fact that this unit made it past the QC stage is troublesome. As someone else pointed out above, if one person got such a bad piece, anyone can. Hifime needs to provide an acceptable explanation for this. These distortions are at a level which even subjectivists can't justify. I do agree that a unit can malfunction. It can have manufacturing defects which go unnoticed at QC or have components that fail after QC is already done. It is true for every manufacturer and every machine. Hifime seems to have an excellent policy on handling such cases. Still, as long as they can't vindicate themselves, they are suspect.

 

[Bhargu]

I had high expectations for this unit. This is disappointing.

FYI, I don't think that anything is bad just because it is Chinese. Also, I don't think $$$ == Quality. Even here, I hear that tone ever so often. Even after some impressive measurements from some relatively cheap pieces. On most of these 'Audiophile forums', chi-fi is used in derogative tones. This forum has already successfully proven that nation of origin is not proof of quality. So, it would be good for the general atmosphere of this forum for the regulars to be truly objectivistic. Leave your biases and look at the facts. Accept them for what they are and appreciate the quality where there is. Accept the flaws and discuss it rather than start trashing it. If someone trash-talks about Amir (on other forums) be sensible in your conversation and avoid going down to their level (ie. don't pick up the pitch-forks ). This is one of the best places right now to have a proper conversation about audio gear without all the trash talk and personal attacks. Let us all maintain that.

 

[wushuliu]

I own this dac and have spoken highly of it. I don't know if this particular one is defective but I will say that I played around with basic distortion testing with an emu 0202 and, yeah, got somewhat similar looking results when volume is turned all the way up, though IIRC noise was much lower from 1.8v or so down. That said I have owned the IDEA, the DA3, NX4 DSD, D50, and many other dacs over the past few years and I preferred this one of the lot overall. Not by a big margin but it hits my personal preference. All listening tests with afore-mentioned were done with 2-channel setup and Senn 599s. This dac was acquired after a big move and has only been used with the 599s (grumble). And I compared directly with the D50. IOW, I am sure I will fail any credibility test with the folks here but I didn't listen to it out of a vacuum. I never heard any crazy distortion, or busted bass. Sometimes I fed it into a cheap JLH headamp with the volume cranked all the way up and again, no distortion. It sounded great. Let me add that I had high skepticism going in as my previous experience with a Hifime dac was just brittle and harsh. I had no such issue with this dac. Now there ARE some nagging questions I have about this DAC, but sound quality is not one of them.

I am not into the audio tribalism. I am not a fanboy. Though I don't care for the overriding opinions espoused here I do believe *some* data is better than none so in that regard the review is appreciated. Feel free to flame/armchair diagnose/snark away.

 

[amirm]

@amirm did say that the volume control was crooked or the knob was jammed against the chassis.

It was. I have seen it many times though. It may have been pushed in too far in manufacturing and they didn't check to see if it is sticking. I don't think it was damaged in shipping even though it comes in very cheap box and such.

 

[amirm]

I am not into the audio tribalism. I am not a fanboy.

First, welcome to the forum. And no need to defend your purchase. Until we confirm if my unit is typical of others, you may as well be right. I am hoping the company offers its own measurements, or another unit for me to test.

Alternatively, if you are in US and are willing to loan your unit to me, I could test it and see how it does.

 

[amirm]

OK, got kind permission to open the unit.

A few minutes of troubleshooting the regulator led to this:

Can you tell what is wrong? The pin was not actually making a connection to the solder pool below it! It is a polyswitch of sorts between the input B+ and the rest of the circuits. I just touched it with a screwdriver and I could lift that one side. A dab of solder cured that and the unit now powers using 12 volt input alone.

Alas, there is no improvement in sight. Using Toslink and external power I still get the same poor measurements:

The quality of the soldering is disappointing in this unit even beyond that solder joint. So there is still possibility of other manufacturing flaws in it. Too late to figure that out this late at night (1:00am here). I will look some more in the morning. Good night you all.

 

[έχω δίκιο]

I don't think that anything is bad just because it is Chinese.

I agree. Anyone who has ever opened up an iPhone has seen that Chinese firms can manufacture goods to the highest standards of quality.[1] They can also manufacture things that are horrible in engineering, materials, and build quality. China will build to whatever quality a manufacturer wants to pay for. And that's not just in electronics.

Also, I don't think $$$ == Quality.

It sure doesn't in audio electronics, as has been proven over and over again with tests published here.

[1] Let's not turn this into a religious war about Apple; I'm just referring to the quality of construction.

 

[CTRLM]

Well mine arrived today and got put into the chain:

Aries Femto>>MiniDSP DDRC-22D>>UDA38pro>>MF M6 500i integrated amp>>B&W 803 Diamond speakers.

I used the toslink input - there is no USB used in my setup. I thought I should give it a decent chance so I powered it with the Uptone LPS 1.2 on the 9V setting with the Uptone supplied SMPS and as there is no SMPS in or anywhere near my current setup, I ran an extension lead from the other side of my home from another electrical circuit to keep it that way!

So, impressions after unpacking and playing a diverse selection of music from rock to instrumental for a few hours:

Not surprising
1. The look & feel of the unit are exactly as Amir described.
2. The packaging is as spartan as you can get and no paperwork whatsoever.

Surprising
1. It worked! I was half expecting to get nothing out of it
2. This thing is LOUD using the RCA outputs and the volume knob at full. Using the same volume level on my amp that I use for other DACs with balanced outputs, it was still louder. Level matching to my Pavane by ear I reduced the Hifime volume about 1/8th of a full turn for my listening.
3. It's not the train wreck that I thought it would be, I'm not listening critically yet but it sounds decent enough out of the box without being anything special. Perhaps a little muddled in busy passages and sounding flat overall compared to what I'm used to (at up to 25x the price).
4. This doesn't sound like the ESS DACs I've had and heard before? Initially I would have placed it on the warmer side of neutral but even as it's playing in the background it seems to be opening up a little?

Anyway, it's early in the process and I'll keep it playing for a few days before coming to any real conclusions. The main aim of buying it was to compare a similar priced product to the D50 that is still making it's way to me.

 

[PuX]

btw volume knob being crooked is not very unusual, Schiit does it all the time: Fulla 1/2 and some edition of Magni all often have crooked knobs. they don't think it's a problem.

 

[amirm]

btw volume knob being crooked is not very unusual, Schiit does it all the time: Fulla 1/2 and some edition of Magni all often have crooked knobs. they don't think it's a problem.

Yeh, turned out to be just slide on type so it was pushed in a bit too far.

 

[Jimster480]

Holy crap! 14db SINAD? Unreal

 

[Ron Texas]

Well mine arrived today and got put into the chain:

Aries Femto>>MiniDSP DDRC-22D>>UDA38pro>>MF M6 500i integrated amp>>B&W 803 Diamond speakers.
...
Anyway, it's early in the process and I'll keep it playing for a few days before coming to any real conclusions. The main aim of buying it was to compare a similar priced product to the D50 that is still making it's way to me.

Nice system. I bet you have a high end DAC in the house already. Welcome to the DAC of the month club.

 

[amirm]

Final follow up on this.

The engineer who knew about this product was out last week. He returned and they did their own testing (using RMAA?) and while they get about 10 dB or so better performance than I got, it is nowhere near the advertised potential for the DAC chip. So they immediately issued a refund to me and gave me a US address to return the unit.

So I would give very high marks for customer service. The product itself however remains on the unrecommended list.