Which means you might think twice about whether it’s suitable for your ‘portable’ purposes. Its dimensions (30 x 66 x 129mm) and weight (240g) mean it’s far from big or heavy in and of itself, but there’s no denying it’s bigger and heavier than almost any smartphone you care to mention. Much like the Chord Mojo we’ve already discussed, the EarMen TR-Amp is a cuspy product.
Which, when you have another glance at that price-tag, is probably just as well. In fact, the iFi iDSD Diablo could well be all the DAC you’ll ever need. No recording is too dense, too complex or too tricky to wrong-foot it. It’s controlled, it’s insightful, it’s tonally impeccable and, above all else, it’s musical. Its powers of analysis - the way it peers deep into a recording and returns with every scrap of information - are staggering, and it has the sort of dynamic headroom that can make the distance between ‘very quiet’ and ‘very loud’ very wide indeed. No matter if you want to put an intense rocket up the sound of your smartphone, your laptop or an entire music or home theatre system, the iDSD Diablo is talented enough to make your hair stand on end. Which is just as well, because it’s one of the best-sounding DACs around - at any price. Yes, we’re stretching the limits of the word ‘portable’ here, but because the 25 x 72 x 166mm iFi is a) battery-powered, b) weighs 330g and c) is supplied with a nice little carry-case for it, the iDSD Diablo qualifies for a place on this list. The EarMen Sparrow, then, is further proof - as if any were really needed - that it's not the size of your DAC that counts. heck, even something as fundamental as volume gets a boost. Detail levels, the definition of the soundstage, the extension and control of bass sounds. Even the cables it’s supplied with look and feel quite expensively braided.īest of all though, is the fact the difference the Sparrow can make to your smartphone-derived sound is out of all proportion to its, um, proportions. So good luck trying to find audio files or headphones it’s not compatible with.Īnd even though it’s hard to make a product of these dimensions seem like value for money, the glass-and-steel construction make it feel good too. It can handle most digital file types, from PCM and DSD to DXD and MQA, and it’s got both 3.5mm unbalanced and 2.5mm balanced headphone outputs.
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So the M-DAC nano makes an awful lot of sense.Īt a trifling 8 x 22 x 42mm, the EarMen Sparrow is hardly a burden to carry about - but despite its negligible size, it’s full of the right stuff. The headphone amplification of smartphones is improving at a pace best described as ‘glacial’. The headphone jack is going the way of the dodo.
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It supports Bluetooth 4.2 (with aptX, aptX Low Latency and AAC codecs covered), which is more than enough to squeeze extra performance from a portable player. You’ll get eight hours of playback under regular circumstances, and a still-respectable six hours with upsampling turned on too, and the Audiolab will drive headphones as demanding as 3000ohms with 7.5mw of power. An ‘F’ button on the unit enables 32bit/384kHz upscaling, bringing critical clarity and depth to your source’s sound. In effect, your headphones have a wireless connection to your phone, with a dedicated volume wheel on the M-DAC nano. It’s about as simple as a gadget like this can be: just connect the Audiolab to your smartphone or MP3 player wirelessly, plug a pair of wired headphones in and away you go. Don’t be fooled by the tiddly dimensions - the M-DAC nano is a powerful, pocketable piece of audio excellence.Ī portable headphone DAC and amplifier at a reasonable price, it’ll boost the audio performance of any device with Bluetooth connectivity.
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