Post by garbulky on Jan 25, 2012 3:51:19 GMT -5
I'm a fan of long drawn-out reviews, so stick with me if you're interested. If not, long story short, going from an Asus Xonar Essence ST, I noticed more detail. Great resolving detail. If you don't have a DAC, listen at regular volumes or louder, buy it right now. The main con for me was that at very soft volumes, something was missing, where the xonar essence didn't have this issue, however I couldn't pinpoint what it was. This DAC is a very good bargain at this price. USB is limited to 48 khz. I hesitate to call this DAC outstanding as I haven't heard a more expensive/higher quality DAC to compare. But it is the best sound I have ever heard and to my ears it is outstanding. If you get it, give it some time to break-in. (I know some of you are going 
YMMV)
For those who wish to retire before this is over/ kiss your partner one last feeble time and just want the meat, bypass everything and go to the LISTENING SECTION. ;D
Okay, so here we go.
The scarce amount of reviews of the XDA-1 I've managed to find, few reviewed it in a way that gave me enough information to purchase this unit.
I also noticed there hasn't been a single review of somebody upgrading from a good quality soundcard like the Xonar Essence ST to the XDA-1, or from someone running it from a low to mid-range headphone amp (Xenos 3HA). A lot of people are like me. They have got their first taste of good sound and are sitting on the fence regarding a DAC. I hope this would help. These are the main reasons for posting this.
First a little bit about emotiva. Having had some experience with them with their UPA-2 and their customer service, I have to say they are pretty first class. With their products and reading some of the open, honest responses from Lonnie on the forum, and actually talking to them, they are truly rare. They are honest even when it makes them look bad and they don't spin it. I've never seen another company do that.
These guys are not out to screw you. They seem to genuinely care about putting out quality products at really good prices. Unfortunately looking at the sad demise of the UPA-2 it seems these fantastic intentions have backfired on potential customers that just aren't used to somebody underselling their products!
The DAC shipped same day of my order. It arrived double boxed and solidly packaged.
A note about fedex. Last time they delivered the UPA-2, they left it with my neighbour , while I was waiting for them outside my front door. They failed to leave any kind of note on my door informing me. Luckily my neighbor was trustworthy.
This time, there was another hitch, fedex delayed the delivery for a full business day (according to the web status) than it would have actually taken. The code word was "on delivery truck for delivery the next business day." This would have resulted in the DAC being delayed for the weekend if I hadn't gone heck no and driven out there and asked that they get it off the truck. That's not emotiva's fault but ugh...
The build quality is good. Solid metal all around. Annoyingly it's very slightly narrower than the UPA-2 on which I stack it on. The aluminum remote is a real star here. It is a bit on the wide side, has a great heft to it and will absolutely not be mistaken for a cheap plastic remote. Due to its weight, during the zombie apocalypse, it would be a great defensive measure. Even the buttons aren't cheap rubber. I can't tell if they are hard plastic or metal, but they are solid and give an audible click every time they are depressed. Even my wife who is not as audio inclined kept talking about the remote. It's weird; for a week, everyday, the remote came into the conversation. The volume buttons are of a different shape than all the other buttons and they are on their separate line, indented inward. This subtle detail allows you to easily tell which buttons are the volume buttons without looking at it. It's hard to explain but the design is just right. The main con is that to change the battery, you have to unscrew the back face. The back face also is slightly different. It has little feet on it, and a machined look to it.
Initial impressions were unimpressive. The bass felt mushy and weak. I contemplated sending it back. But I could already tell by the great mid-range detail that it wasn't quite ready. After leaving it playing music, the next day things improved. And then it just kept improving every day for about a week and a half until it seems to have evened out. It could be that I was sick at the time but somebody else on this forum had a similar experience. Needless to say, the initial impressions were nothing to go by. I'm not a massive believer in breaking in for non-speaker components, but this appeared to require a break-in.
Features: The features were nice and they all worked exactly like you would imagine it to, if you've never owned one of these. An analogue input would have been nice but for me, it wasn't a big detriment, except that my wii cannot experience the magic.
The USB capability and the pre-amp was the biggest draw for me as my listening is through my laptop. There were no drivers to install. I just stuck it in, setup foobar on WASAPI and that was it. Having a USB DAC also bypassess the main windows volume control in windows 7 which is nice as it's another component that needn't be there in the chain. It also does work on 64 bit windows 7 and runs WASAPI fine.
I managed to take up three of the inputs and the switching is fast. Having multiple digital inputs helped clear up a lot of cables.
We no longer had to switch cables everytime we changed between the Playstation 3 and the laptop. The trigger capabilities that synced via a regular stereo cable with the UPA-2 meant we didn’t have to turn it off at the end of the day. Mute function was also great. No fooling with the windows volume control fumbling for the keyboard from the couch. I must have gained a few pounds just because of all this! Speaking of which there is a loooooooooot of control with the volume control. You can go very soft or very loud.
Setup:
This was tough, because the increased detail and soundstage on the XDA-1, made my axioms very sensitive to speaker placement and toe-in than on any other source. I had to make several adjustments over the course of a week to get the soundstage and the center right. This is not the XDA-1's fault. It is just that good.
My equipment:
Mostly everybody here is familiar with the emotiva UPA-2 or a similar emotiva amp, so there isn't much to say other than Im still stunned by the power and detail this thing is capable of.
The axiom m80 v2's needs a little more introduction. It is axioms flagship towers deceptively priced around a grand. Per pair it brings twelve drivers, 800 watts (advertised) - 1400 watts (tested over seven straight days) RMS capability, 6 ports, and a relatively tight frequency response +/-2db where it matters most, and +/-3db elsewhere. These are nice speakers that I would recommend to anybody who will listen. They are also well reviewed and won a few awards. One reviewer said it held its own well against the gallo ref's and even bettered it in bass response though the gallo's won overall. It can be compared to certain Swans and Paradigm speakers. All that to say, this speaker is good enough.
Listening:
Let me get the con out of the way: This DAC begs to be turned up. The more you turn it up, the better it sounds. I thought this was something to do with the digital volume control losing sound information as it's turned down and my ears recognizing this, but everytime I tried to test out assumptions along this theme, they kept being proved wrong, so I will leave this one alone. I will just say, the more you turn it up, the better it sounds. However, most of the time, I have to listen at very low volumes, so this did become a small issue for me. I thought it was me until my wife remarked about it not sounding the same at soft volume. This is the only place that I felt the Xonar did better at - reasonably low volumes that most people wont be listening at. On the Xonar, there was no such issue. At normal listening levels with the XDA-1, this is not a problem . There that's it. Everything else gets better from here on. Onto the meat.
The DAC is very transparent. The amount of detail it pulls out of a song is a LOT. At the start, I had a little trouble adjusting to the sheer amount of new information I heard on familiar songs. It was a little overwhelming at first! Most songs I listened to, there was something completely new that I don't remember hearing before. I definitely go that wall of sound thing going - with depth. The soundstage feels wide as well.
I was afraid the resolving capability would ruin poorly recorded material. But I was surprised that Red hot chili peppers was enjoyable when before on the xonar, it's poor audio quality made me cringe and I had to turn them off.
Another facet of transparency wasn't just the detail. I meant transparency. I hesitate here as I hate coming off sounding like a snake-oil salesman. When a voice sings, it all sounds right but you could imagine you can also see behind the voice even if nothing isn't playing directly behind it. The best I can describe it is that it sounds airy. Even Johnny Cash's deep gravelly voice which came out thick gravelly, great, and transparent to the background. Even when he distorted the microphone, the distortion played in the air on the soundstage as the mixers had put it, transparent. This is the point where I was really impressed.
Instruments carried a lot of weight. Bass extension went very low. This thing does have dynamic range at least on par of the essence or more. Instruments are able to be behind my tv but also come out to my face in the living room. For somebody that was forced to have to use the laptop analog out for sometime, there was a big grin on my face. A significant point is, I was used to having a center and L/R stereo and little between. Not so anymore. There's audio everywhere. There is this airiness and roominess I sense that's hard to describe. It's like stepping into a TARDIS
Mp3's even at 128 Kbps sound really nice on this system but CD's and losseless FLAC's were noticeably better in detail, dynamic range, ambience, and (uncolored) warmth. Below 128 k though, things start to get quite bleh.
Pandora web radio surprised me by being more enjoyable than on the xonar.
The bass on eagles live in concert sounded better balanced and less bloated than I'd experienced before. Before I thought there was excessive bass on the recording.
Something that surprised me is that we recorded a children's classroom performance on an awful inbuilt mono mic on a cheap camera. When I say awful mic, I mean it. So I assumed that I had easily maxed out what could be extracted out of it using the Xonar by now. But when I played it on the XDA-1, I heard some semblance of a soundstage and a tiny bit of depth! The kids voices had that airy quality you can see through. How on earth it was able to do that, I don't know. Even my wife remarked on it!
Jazz and band: Brass instruments are just great on the DAC. You can just bask in all that dynamic blaart. The timbre of the brass instrument is readily clear. Sizzle and flair was present with Danny Elfman's Chicago soundtrack especially with the cymbal and brass. The piano was also another surprise. It was better reproduced here than on the Xonar. This is something that impressed me.
I had recorded myself playing a song on a baby grand piano on a poor quality input but a good microphone and decent preamp. It was set in a 25X25 hall with good acoustics . The mic was put near the bass side of the piano.
On the Xonar, I heard good midrange and bass detail but not as much detail on the treble keys. I assumed this was because of the positioning.
Well on this DAC I could hear the treble fine! I can hear the entire instrument. And more importantly, the piano was a mono recording. But listening to it now, it's coming out (don’t lynch me) in sort of stereo around the center! I assume this is tricking my ears due to the fantastic soundstage it's portraying the mono-recording in. Other details like the pedals being pressed and the entire dampening system moving came through clearly. I could hear the aircondition system engaging and then blowing softly.
Blu-ray audio sounds equally good. Unfortunately due to the lack of onboard dolby and dts decoding, the PS3 has to act as the decoder and then pass the PCM onto the DAC. This doesn't appear to degrade the sound quality in a noticeable way. However, due to HDCP restrictions(?), the audio is downsampled (well) to 48khz.
For rap: Jay-z's Empire state of mind came out in all its unforgiveable poor dynamic range and though detail was preserved, it was not listenable. Not the DAC's fault.
Gorillaz Clint Eastwood was nice for what it was worth. The recording doesn't have a whole lot of treble in it, something I didn't realize before. I did immediately recognize an instrument I hadn't noticed before (a piano in the right speaker).
Warren G - regulate and what's love got to do with it sounded very nice with solid bass, mid-range and treble.
The bangles: video killed the radio star came alive with lots of detail and a rocking bass guitar. The female vocolist sounded quite nice.
Pomplamoose is a terribly underrated band which has good recording quality for a home setup of two people. My favorite band for some time. Their recordings pose a challenge to reproduction due to the amount of different types of unusual instruments used and Nataly's somewhat nonchalant voice. The XDA-1 had no trouble here.
Country: Willie Nelson when the roll is called up yonder, at the very beginning there is a guitar which had ridiculous placement. It came right straight out into my living room.
Classical: Listening to Pachelbel's Canon, a version which was challenging to my previous audio equipment revealed so much dynamic range I was constantly lowering the volume! I have to leave that one as I couldn't fairly critique it because of the ridiculous dynamic range it had. Maybe that's a job for another...house in a rural countryside.
Rock: Stairway to heaven. Led Zeppelin: Oh man. This was very nice. Silky smooth. The Dolly Parton version also revealed good detail and powerful dynamics. And her voice - Man!
BEATLES: Something I didn't realize till the Xonar was just how well recorded some of the beatles songs are. The untrained voices of the vocalists really add a touch of magic to the whole thing. I noticed new details in sgt pepper and strawberry fields in the orchestral band music which was very clear. I didn't understand why they had the long bits at the end, but now I do. The vocals also came out nicely.
Headphone listening:
Simply put, my long time headphone amp Xenos 3HA could not keep up with this DAC in terms of quality and appeared to color the sound. Some detail was lost, the bass was weak, the treble was less airy, and the soundstage, was not as nice. So, I won't say anymore as it wouldn't be fair to this DAC. It's a pity as I was excited to find out how much better the Senheisser HD600's would sound. But this is a testament to both the DAC and the UPA-2 resolving capabilities.
Comparisons
Is the XDA-1 worth upgrading from the Xonar? I was very happy with the Xonar. However, as it was sometime ago that I got to listen to it, I couldn't say for sure. I can tell you this DAC is easily as good as the Xonar essence ST. Most likely it is better. I am hearing all these new details and instruments in songs, but my memory is not concrete and I can't tell for sure if the xonar was able to reproduce it as well.
I had the choice of going back to the Xonar or getting this. I chose this and I know it was the right choice.
The noise floor was very low on both. If I had to give an edge, it would be to the XDA-1 which was more black. The axioms are efficient speakers. If you put your ears right upto it you can hear a small hiss. But the cables are touching all other kinds of electronics and cables it shares space with.
The Xonar is a very musical card which can bring out lots of detail. This DAC has so MUCH detail, that sometimes you find yourself paying attention to the detail and soundstage rather than enjoying the music. (This is not a fault!)
I compared it to the PS3 analog outs. If you had nothing at all, the PS3's analog output is a bit better than other cheap sound output devices. It has some treble. It doesn't break up audibly in loud passages and has some bass extension. At times, it is capable of depth information.
But when compared there was just no comparisons. The treble on the PS3 was awful, muted. Slow transient attack was off, there was no proper soundstage or good depth, no transparency, no air around the instruments, no clear defined treble, muddy sound The audio was center channel, right or left channel and little in between, etc,
Compared to the Creative audigy 2 zs which I used to love, once again there was no comparison. Along with all the other things listed about the ps3, entire instruments and melodies were plain missing. The same can be said for the onboard laptop soundcard and pretty much anything I've listened to other than Xonar Essence ST.
What's crazy is that all of this is being said about something that cost me 250 bucks!! A good graphics card would cost me twice that and wouldn't last an year. This is in the zone of high end PC sound cards! I've gone through 4 soundcards before I got to this. Now, I'm just remorsefully thinking how much cash I would have saved if I just bought this at the start. How did they make a hefty standalone DAC with a pre-amp, balanced outputs and inputs, high quality remote, LED displays, and independent power supply for this price? My Xonar can be lifted on my pinky, this thing is much heavier. It's a solid piece of equipment.
One last thing before I close, for the person on the forum that couldn't hear a difference between this and the soundcard inbuilt onto his motherboard. Nothing personal, but I'm not sure what on earth happened there. If that worried anybody considering purchasing it, rest assured that this will 99% likely not happen to you as long as
1. you have decent speakers and
2. If your amp is an integrated setup (has a volume knob )- and has a poor pre-amp...it is bypassed (there are ways and usually it's very easy and takes a second to do and no tools or unscrewing anything).
For people without a Xonar but a decent soundcard (which isn't as good as the xonar) that are still contemplating what to do, PC sound card upgrade or this, there is really no question. The XDA-1 all the way. You will thank yourselves many times over. While you are doing that pick ANY emotiva amp and you can rest easy knowing you did the right thing.
If you made it to the end, I thank you for struggling through it! Good job. Pat yourself on the back. Feed the kids and dog. They are hungry ;D Please comment.
YMMV)For those who wish to retire before this is over/ kiss your partner one last feeble time and just want the meat, bypass everything and go to the LISTENING SECTION. ;D
Okay, so here we go.
The scarce amount of reviews of the XDA-1 I've managed to find, few reviewed it in a way that gave me enough information to purchase this unit.
I also noticed there hasn't been a single review of somebody upgrading from a good quality soundcard like the Xonar Essence ST to the XDA-1, or from someone running it from a low to mid-range headphone amp (Xenos 3HA). A lot of people are like me. They have got their first taste of good sound and are sitting on the fence regarding a DAC. I hope this would help. These are the main reasons for posting this.
First a little bit about emotiva. Having had some experience with them with their UPA-2 and their customer service, I have to say they are pretty first class. With their products and reading some of the open, honest responses from Lonnie on the forum, and actually talking to them, they are truly rare. They are honest even when it makes them look bad and they don't spin it. I've never seen another company do that.
These guys are not out to screw you. They seem to genuinely care about putting out quality products at really good prices. Unfortunately looking at the sad demise of the UPA-2 it seems these fantastic intentions have backfired on potential customers that just aren't used to somebody underselling their products!
The DAC shipped same day of my order. It arrived double boxed and solidly packaged.
A note about fedex. Last time they delivered the UPA-2, they left it with my neighbour , while I was waiting for them outside my front door. They failed to leave any kind of note on my door informing me. Luckily my neighbor was trustworthy.
This time, there was another hitch, fedex delayed the delivery for a full business day (according to the web status) than it would have actually taken. The code word was "on delivery truck for delivery the next business day." This would have resulted in the DAC being delayed for the weekend if I hadn't gone heck no and driven out there and asked that they get it off the truck. That's not emotiva's fault but ugh...
The build quality is good. Solid metal all around. Annoyingly it's very slightly narrower than the UPA-2 on which I stack it on. The aluminum remote is a real star here. It is a bit on the wide side, has a great heft to it and will absolutely not be mistaken for a cheap plastic remote. Due to its weight, during the zombie apocalypse, it would be a great defensive measure. Even the buttons aren't cheap rubber. I can't tell if they are hard plastic or metal, but they are solid and give an audible click every time they are depressed. Even my wife who is not as audio inclined kept talking about the remote. It's weird; for a week, everyday, the remote came into the conversation. The volume buttons are of a different shape than all the other buttons and they are on their separate line, indented inward. This subtle detail allows you to easily tell which buttons are the volume buttons without looking at it. It's hard to explain but the design is just right. The main con is that to change the battery, you have to unscrew the back face. The back face also is slightly different. It has little feet on it, and a machined look to it.
Initial impressions were unimpressive. The bass felt mushy and weak. I contemplated sending it back. But I could already tell by the great mid-range detail that it wasn't quite ready. After leaving it playing music, the next day things improved. And then it just kept improving every day for about a week and a half until it seems to have evened out. It could be that I was sick at the time but somebody else on this forum had a similar experience. Needless to say, the initial impressions were nothing to go by. I'm not a massive believer in breaking in for non-speaker components, but this appeared to require a break-in.
Features: The features were nice and they all worked exactly like you would imagine it to, if you've never owned one of these. An analogue input would have been nice but for me, it wasn't a big detriment, except that my wii cannot experience the magic.
The USB capability and the pre-amp was the biggest draw for me as my listening is through my laptop. There were no drivers to install. I just stuck it in, setup foobar on WASAPI and that was it. Having a USB DAC also bypassess the main windows volume control in windows 7 which is nice as it's another component that needn't be there in the chain. It also does work on 64 bit windows 7 and runs WASAPI fine.
I managed to take up three of the inputs and the switching is fast. Having multiple digital inputs helped clear up a lot of cables.
We no longer had to switch cables everytime we changed between the Playstation 3 and the laptop. The trigger capabilities that synced via a regular stereo cable with the UPA-2 meant we didn’t have to turn it off at the end of the day. Mute function was also great. No fooling with the windows volume control fumbling for the keyboard from the couch. I must have gained a few pounds just because of all this! Speaking of which there is a loooooooooot of control with the volume control. You can go very soft or very loud.
Setup:
This was tough, because the increased detail and soundstage on the XDA-1, made my axioms very sensitive to speaker placement and toe-in than on any other source. I had to make several adjustments over the course of a week to get the soundstage and the center right. This is not the XDA-1's fault. It is just that good.
My equipment:
Mostly everybody here is familiar with the emotiva UPA-2 or a similar emotiva amp, so there isn't much to say other than Im still stunned by the power and detail this thing is capable of.
The axiom m80 v2's needs a little more introduction. It is axioms flagship towers deceptively priced around a grand. Per pair it brings twelve drivers, 800 watts (advertised) - 1400 watts (tested over seven straight days) RMS capability, 6 ports, and a relatively tight frequency response +/-2db where it matters most, and +/-3db elsewhere. These are nice speakers that I would recommend to anybody who will listen. They are also well reviewed and won a few awards. One reviewer said it held its own well against the gallo ref's and even bettered it in bass response though the gallo's won overall. It can be compared to certain Swans and Paradigm speakers. All that to say, this speaker is good enough.
Listening:
Let me get the con out of the way: This DAC begs to be turned up. The more you turn it up, the better it sounds. I thought this was something to do with the digital volume control losing sound information as it's turned down and my ears recognizing this, but everytime I tried to test out assumptions along this theme, they kept being proved wrong, so I will leave this one alone. I will just say, the more you turn it up, the better it sounds. However, most of the time, I have to listen at very low volumes, so this did become a small issue for me. I thought it was me until my wife remarked about it not sounding the same at soft volume. This is the only place that I felt the Xonar did better at - reasonably low volumes that most people wont be listening at. On the Xonar, there was no such issue. At normal listening levels with the XDA-1, this is not a problem . There that's it. Everything else gets better from here on. Onto the meat.
The DAC is very transparent. The amount of detail it pulls out of a song is a LOT. At the start, I had a little trouble adjusting to the sheer amount of new information I heard on familiar songs. It was a little overwhelming at first! Most songs I listened to, there was something completely new that I don't remember hearing before. I definitely go that wall of sound thing going - with depth. The soundstage feels wide as well.
I was afraid the resolving capability would ruin poorly recorded material. But I was surprised that Red hot chili peppers was enjoyable when before on the xonar, it's poor audio quality made me cringe and I had to turn them off.
Another facet of transparency wasn't just the detail. I meant transparency. I hesitate here as I hate coming off sounding like a snake-oil salesman. When a voice sings, it all sounds right but you could imagine you can also see behind the voice even if nothing isn't playing directly behind it. The best I can describe it is that it sounds airy. Even Johnny Cash's deep gravelly voice which came out thick gravelly, great, and transparent to the background. Even when he distorted the microphone, the distortion played in the air on the soundstage as the mixers had put it, transparent. This is the point where I was really impressed.
Instruments carried a lot of weight. Bass extension went very low. This thing does have dynamic range at least on par of the essence or more. Instruments are able to be behind my tv but also come out to my face in the living room. For somebody that was forced to have to use the laptop analog out for sometime, there was a big grin on my face. A significant point is, I was used to having a center and L/R stereo and little between. Not so anymore. There's audio everywhere. There is this airiness and roominess I sense that's hard to describe. It's like stepping into a TARDIS
Mp3's even at 128 Kbps sound really nice on this system but CD's and losseless FLAC's were noticeably better in detail, dynamic range, ambience, and (uncolored) warmth. Below 128 k though, things start to get quite bleh.
Pandora web radio surprised me by being more enjoyable than on the xonar.
The bass on eagles live in concert sounded better balanced and less bloated than I'd experienced before. Before I thought there was excessive bass on the recording.
Something that surprised me is that we recorded a children's classroom performance on an awful inbuilt mono mic on a cheap camera. When I say awful mic, I mean it. So I assumed that I had easily maxed out what could be extracted out of it using the Xonar by now. But when I played it on the XDA-1, I heard some semblance of a soundstage and a tiny bit of depth! The kids voices had that airy quality you can see through. How on earth it was able to do that, I don't know. Even my wife remarked on it!
Jazz and band: Brass instruments are just great on the DAC. You can just bask in all that dynamic blaart. The timbre of the brass instrument is readily clear. Sizzle and flair was present with Danny Elfman's Chicago soundtrack especially with the cymbal and brass. The piano was also another surprise. It was better reproduced here than on the Xonar. This is something that impressed me.
I had recorded myself playing a song on a baby grand piano on a poor quality input but a good microphone and decent preamp. It was set in a 25X25 hall with good acoustics . The mic was put near the bass side of the piano.
On the Xonar, I heard good midrange and bass detail but not as much detail on the treble keys. I assumed this was because of the positioning.
Well on this DAC I could hear the treble fine! I can hear the entire instrument. And more importantly, the piano was a mono recording. But listening to it now, it's coming out (don’t lynch me) in sort of stereo around the center! I assume this is tricking my ears due to the fantastic soundstage it's portraying the mono-recording in. Other details like the pedals being pressed and the entire dampening system moving came through clearly. I could hear the aircondition system engaging and then blowing softly.
Blu-ray audio sounds equally good. Unfortunately due to the lack of onboard dolby and dts decoding, the PS3 has to act as the decoder and then pass the PCM onto the DAC. This doesn't appear to degrade the sound quality in a noticeable way. However, due to HDCP restrictions(?), the audio is downsampled (well) to 48khz.
For rap: Jay-z's Empire state of mind came out in all its unforgiveable poor dynamic range and though detail was preserved, it was not listenable. Not the DAC's fault.
Gorillaz Clint Eastwood was nice for what it was worth. The recording doesn't have a whole lot of treble in it, something I didn't realize before. I did immediately recognize an instrument I hadn't noticed before (a piano in the right speaker).
Warren G - regulate and what's love got to do with it sounded very nice with solid bass, mid-range and treble.
The bangles: video killed the radio star came alive with lots of detail and a rocking bass guitar. The female vocolist sounded quite nice.
Pomplamoose is a terribly underrated band which has good recording quality for a home setup of two people. My favorite band for some time. Their recordings pose a challenge to reproduction due to the amount of different types of unusual instruments used and Nataly's somewhat nonchalant voice. The XDA-1 had no trouble here.
Country: Willie Nelson when the roll is called up yonder, at the very beginning there is a guitar which had ridiculous placement. It came right straight out into my living room.
Classical: Listening to Pachelbel's Canon, a version which was challenging to my previous audio equipment revealed so much dynamic range I was constantly lowering the volume! I have to leave that one as I couldn't fairly critique it because of the ridiculous dynamic range it had. Maybe that's a job for another...house in a rural countryside.
Rock: Stairway to heaven. Led Zeppelin: Oh man. This was very nice. Silky smooth. The Dolly Parton version also revealed good detail and powerful dynamics. And her voice - Man!
BEATLES: Something I didn't realize till the Xonar was just how well recorded some of the beatles songs are. The untrained voices of the vocalists really add a touch of magic to the whole thing. I noticed new details in sgt pepper and strawberry fields in the orchestral band music which was very clear. I didn't understand why they had the long bits at the end, but now I do. The vocals also came out nicely.
Headphone listening:
Simply put, my long time headphone amp Xenos 3HA could not keep up with this DAC in terms of quality and appeared to color the sound. Some detail was lost, the bass was weak, the treble was less airy, and the soundstage, was not as nice. So, I won't say anymore as it wouldn't be fair to this DAC. It's a pity as I was excited to find out how much better the Senheisser HD600's would sound. But this is a testament to both the DAC and the UPA-2 resolving capabilities.
Comparisons
Is the XDA-1 worth upgrading from the Xonar? I was very happy with the Xonar. However, as it was sometime ago that I got to listen to it, I couldn't say for sure. I can tell you this DAC is easily as good as the Xonar essence ST. Most likely it is better. I am hearing all these new details and instruments in songs, but my memory is not concrete and I can't tell for sure if the xonar was able to reproduce it as well.
I had the choice of going back to the Xonar or getting this. I chose this and I know it was the right choice.
The noise floor was very low on both. If I had to give an edge, it would be to the XDA-1 which was more black. The axioms are efficient speakers. If you put your ears right upto it you can hear a small hiss. But the cables are touching all other kinds of electronics and cables it shares space with.
The Xonar is a very musical card which can bring out lots of detail. This DAC has so MUCH detail, that sometimes you find yourself paying attention to the detail and soundstage rather than enjoying the music. (This is not a fault!)
I compared it to the PS3 analog outs. If you had nothing at all, the PS3's analog output is a bit better than other cheap sound output devices. It has some treble. It doesn't break up audibly in loud passages and has some bass extension. At times, it is capable of depth information.
But when compared there was just no comparisons. The treble on the PS3 was awful, muted. Slow transient attack was off, there was no proper soundstage or good depth, no transparency, no air around the instruments, no clear defined treble, muddy sound The audio was center channel, right or left channel and little in between, etc,
Compared to the Creative audigy 2 zs which I used to love, once again there was no comparison. Along with all the other things listed about the ps3, entire instruments and melodies were plain missing. The same can be said for the onboard laptop soundcard and pretty much anything I've listened to other than Xonar Essence ST.
What's crazy is that all of this is being said about something that cost me 250 bucks!! A good graphics card would cost me twice that and wouldn't last an year. This is in the zone of high end PC sound cards! I've gone through 4 soundcards before I got to this. Now, I'm just remorsefully thinking how much cash I would have saved if I just bought this at the start. How did they make a hefty standalone DAC with a pre-amp, balanced outputs and inputs, high quality remote, LED displays, and independent power supply for this price? My Xonar can be lifted on my pinky, this thing is much heavier. It's a solid piece of equipment.
One last thing before I close, for the person on the forum that couldn't hear a difference between this and the soundcard inbuilt onto his motherboard. Nothing personal, but I'm not sure what on earth happened there. If that worried anybody considering purchasing it, rest assured that this will 99% likely not happen to you as long as
1. you have decent speakers and
2. If your amp is an integrated setup (has a volume knob )- and has a poor pre-amp...it is bypassed (there are ways and usually it's very easy and takes a second to do and no tools or unscrewing anything).
For people without a Xonar but a decent soundcard (which isn't as good as the xonar) that are still contemplating what to do, PC sound card upgrade or this, there is really no question. The XDA-1 all the way. You will thank yourselves many times over. While you are doing that pick ANY emotiva amp and you can rest easy knowing you did the right thing.
If you made it to the end, I thank you for struggling through it! Good job.
Pat yourself on the back. Feed the kids and dog. They are hungry ;D Please comment. 
