From the start, I can tell you that element X is again a pioneer in terms of feature set since not a single commercial DAC will offer the same quality-of-life improvements and features that element X is bringing to the table, all about that in a minute.
Considering that TA-30 is an all-tube design, I expected a slower and a mellower tonality, but xDuoo managed to impress me with a neutral, transparent, energetic and faster sound presentation. It borrowed some of the greatest stuff from solid-state amplification and added some tube goodness on top. Accounting for everything it does right, $710 seems like a small price to pay for the greatness that awaits.Â
I’ll be honest with you; I never tried any audio devices by xDuoo until today. They are quite popular around the internet, mainly their small and portable DAC and headphone amps are making lots of appearances here and there. Since there are a lot of reviews for their solid-state DAC and headphone amps, we decided to do a different one, we are reviewing their much underrated TA-10: a tube-based desktop headphone amp and DAC combo.
The headphone jack of modern smartphones looks like a beautiful forgotten dream and since no one wants to use outdated smartphones just for their headphones jacks, the audio industry needed to wake up from a bad dream and quickly adapt and develop a new type of product that a few years ago didn’t even exist: mobile DACs and headphone amp combos that could work perfectly connected to a smartphone. The requirement was pretty straightforward: it needed to be battery-powered, it shouldn’t drain the smartphone battery, it should offer a decent DAC chip and a clean, yet powerful headphone amp section.
The coolest product line in the SMSL family to us is their M line of desktop DACs. I’m quite sure you’ve seen at least once their latest designs with an elongated and colorful body. The super tiny and bus-powered M100 DAC to this day is praised as a very good entry-level DAC in the sub $100 category. M300 DAC added balanced outputs on the back and a much higher-end AKM4497 DAC chip was used for better performance.
Probably the biggest hype I ever encountered in the headphone kingdom was the announcement of THX AAA 789 headphone amp by Massdrop. People called it as the Holy Grail of headphone amplification, as an End-Game, shift+delete your head-fi account type of amp. Everybody dreamed about it and everybody wanted one. That is not because it was expensive, not at all, at only $400 it was among the cheapest balanced and powerful desktop headphone amp I knew about. Everyone dreamed about it because of the availability of that particular amp, the first batch was sold out in one hour I recon, the second batch sale lasted few hours and only the third one lasted a day or so. I am not that lucky by nature so obviously I forgot to pre-order one and put my hands on it. People were selling it on the used market at higher prices than MSRP! Its demand was much bigger than supply, the hype was real!
SMSL released a product line that is even friendlier with your pockets, which promises great performance at less than $250 per component. It is their S-8 line of which 3 products have been released so far: SU-8 Balanced DAC, SH-8 Balanced headphone amplifier and the DA-8 integrated amplifier that was upgraded recently to a new version, called DA-8S that I will be testing today.
If I ask you a few years ago about TOPPINGÂ you would raise your shoulders, however, nowadays it is a different picture as this brand also rhymes with good sound quality at very affordable prices. TOPPINGÂ took by storm the affordable audio market by releasing interesting desktop and portable units, their DX and D lines are still very popular among audio enthusiasts. When TOPPINGÂ released its highest performance D70 DAC not too long ago, it sent shock-waves in the audiophile community, it again raised the bar of what can be achieved with a modest sum of $500.
What a crazy and crowded year was 2019 for TOPPING. They were able to release not one, not two but three flagship DACs: the technical and serious DX7 Pro, its musical and playful brother D90 and the D70 that sits somewhere in the middle of those two. TOPPING didn’t forget their core fanbase and updated their 50 line and even added new affordable products, D50 was upgraded to D50s that made some nice quality of life changes for old-school loudspeaker enthusiasts, they added a much-needed A50 headphone amplifier and that must-have P50 external linear and regulated power supply that works with both of them.
Nobody believed single driver IEMs could sound as good as top-of-the-line multi-BA IEMs. That is until Sennheiser proved everybody’s wrong with the release of the single driver IE800 in 2012. It sounded so good that the IEM market changed forever, suddenly hybrid earphones made an appearance and other brands started embracing single driver IEMs. Today we will be testing an entry-level model of the Chinese manufacturer Moondrop Technology, that thanks to the unique color pattern on the IEM body and cable were simply named Starfield for obvious reasons.