SMSL did tell me they were going into production on SU-8 again so not surprising to see it there.It is back on Massdrop now for lower price:
$199.99
https://www.massdrop.com/buy/smsl-su-8-dac#overview
I don't. They told me they were sending me one but nothing happened.Is it supposed to be ”fixed” the balanced output, do you know?
If you use the volume control in SU-8 then you won't be using it at max anyway. Even if you did, the distortion is 80 dB down so not a major issue.After seeing the Gala DAC showing some serious issue, I'm reconsidering this DAC.
Just have some questions:
Does the saturation mean that I just have to lower the volume a bit? (Hopefully, SMSL has adressed this issue)
What about that famous "ESS Hump", does this in any case spoil my listening experience?
Chanced upon what seems to be a newly released, dedicated headphone amplifier from SMSL that's specifically designed to match the SU-8.
Decent output ratings but as always, the output impedance is not listed ( which usually means its not good ... )
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/SMS...lgo_pvid=da8575fa-7c16-4ac4-974d-417449c4c480
I don't think the equalizer to be digital, wouldn't make any sense really, maybe it's a digital controlled analog, that would make more sense, or maybe it's some sort of harmonic saturation curves similar to those implemented in SU-8.. For sure I'll buy one once available in my country, although I'm really enjoying SU-8 unbalanced output to run my X2s headphones directly, for other headphones I'll be glad to give SH-8 a try, if it turns out to be half as good as the SU-8 for the price it will be a win!The specs aren't clear, it doesn't say if the power ratings are single channel or l+r, volume control seems to be digital (rhead like), but what's a bit worrying is that it has a built in equalizer, in a cheap unit like this such kind of processing may degrade sq (are they using ADC>DSP>DAC?).
Not the filters but the sound profiles (Rich 1 2 3, Tube 1 2 3 , Crystal 1 2 3) are custom harmonic distortion "curves" created by SMSL taking advantage of the THD compensation feature of the ES9038Q2M chip.I think this was touched on before in the review. The filters add distortion/harmonics? With no filter selected, the results are quite good. I'm curious if the filters are options with the chip itself. Regardless, the performance/features from this unit nothing else has at $200.