My Video Review: When FiiO released their portable Q5S portable DAC and headphone amp combo some time ago, people that were serious about portable Hi-Fi were ditching their award-winning Chord Mojo and were jumping into the Chi-Fi bandwagon. Why would you do that you might ask. Mojo was noisy near …

My Video Review: A lot of people don’t know but in Asia often times audio engineers are working on multiple projects of different audio manufacturers. Remember the Musician Audio and Denafrips fiasco? Well, that is common practice in Asia and shouldn’t be considered as bad practice. If you check …

My Video Review: I have a pretty long history of reviewing Matrix Audio gear. My first ever review was for their beautiful New Mini-i that I’ve done in the July of 2014. I felt in love with its form factor, with its smooth clean lines and with its beautiful OLED screen. It borrowed some design …

My Video Review: One of the most mysterious DAC manufacturers from China is surely S.M.S.L Audio. We already tested some products made by them, more exactly 3 DACs, a headphone amplifier and an integrated amplifier. Funny thing is that most of them looked so different, that I would never guess …

My Video Review: About a month ago I’ve tested an affordable true-balanced ESS-Sabre DAC that also happened to be the best sounding entry-level unit I ever stumbled upon. Soncoz LA-QXD1 simply ticked all the boxes for me, it sounded marvelously close to mid-range DACs that I’ve felt the urge to …

My Video Review: I’m a curious person by nature and when a music making machine lands on my table, I usually try to understand it first. I would pop its case and I will follow the signal path from inputs to outputs. I would always seek limitations and compromises put in place mostly by cost, …

My Video Review: At the end of 2019 I was given the honors for a world-premiere Burson Conductor 3 Reference review, which changed the way I am looking at ESS Sabre-based DACs/Preamps and headphone amp combos. From linear, lean sounding and straight as a line in terms of frequency response, …

My Video Review: When an established audio manufacturer from China is releasing its newest flagship DAC, they are targeting not only its competition from the West, but more often they are aiming they own brethren from the East. Remember the waves Topping did with their D90 DAC? That happened …

My Video Review: When it comes to digital audio, the last two years were turbulent, restless but also exciting and rewarding. Few years ago, high-end digital audio meant shelving big amounts of cash, eating less pudding and more bread and water. Yet for the last two years or so, I’ve experienced …

My Video Review: I just counted that in the last 18 months I have covered slightly more than 45 digital sources on this website, somebody called me DACman privately over social media for obvious reasons. That made me giggle but also question myself if indeed there is a DAC problem buried deep in …