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All in all, no matter where I’m looking at, I see a higher attention to the smallest details and a lot of care. SMSL used 2 x 24 Watt ultra-low-noise power supplies, those are encapsulated inside a metal shell and as with all THX AAA designs, the electrolytic caps are not sitting in the signal path, but are used for power filtering and storing for the purest possible signal path. This will be a much shorter chapter as pretty much all the newest DACs are already very impressive when it comes to repelling mains noise or any other type of noise. Connecting it to a clean sounding headphone amplifier as Benchmark HPA4 while driving a pair of ultra-sensitive IEMs didn’t elevate the noise floor, as FiiO FA9 sounded as if both units were turned off completely. Forget about a noise floor, as those were dead silent even at close to maximum power. Using it in my loudspeaker setup as a DAC and preamplifier combo, driving directly two AHB2 power amplifiers didn’t add grayness or hiss into the mix. KEF’s UNI-Q drivers are notorious for being sensitive to noise coming from downstream equipment, but again nothing could be heard even after approaching them closely. I’m glad that a passive or active power conditioner wasn’t even needed with such a unit, I’ve tried a Plixir Elite BAC400 and then a BAC1500 and it sounded absolutely the same with or without them.
S.M.S.L M400 Digital to Analog Convertor (DAC) - SHENZHENAUDIO
I have a SMSL M400, SMSL SU6, and Audio Gd Master 7 (2021 version with 8pc of PCM1704) and a Audio Gd R7 (discreet resistor ladder DAC 2017 version). The SMSL DO400 is the first to use a new design which makes the screen “floating” and puts it on the corner in the left hand side of the front. This is quite a drastic change compared to previous models such as the DO300 or the DO200 MKII where the screen was in the centre or slightly off-centre. This seems to be a trend currently as Topping appears to be adopting the same type of design on their latest products. I have to say, and this is 100% down to personal preference, that I am personally not a super fan of this placement of the screen, as a more central position would make it easier to read it if you don’t have the device on the dead centre of your desk, but again others may find it to their liking so it’s really down to personal opinion (and also to where you place the unit on your desk!). There’s a Bluetooth receiver on board that supports the nicest Bluetooth codecs available right now as SBC, AAC, AptX, AptX-HD, AptX-LL, LDAC and UAT. Its antenna works as a wireless signal booster and its operating distance should be around ~10 to 15 meters, depending on how many walls are in between the sender and receiver (D2). I have MHDT Balanced Pagoda on the same chips and it plays neither DSD nor PCM above 192K (as stated in specs). When I convert DSD in Foobar to PCM, of course it plays.Sending music from my smartphone that was connected to streaming services as Qobuz and Tidal worked as a charm and LDAC codec sounded almost indistinguishable to its wired connections. Bottom line is that D2 worked well with all Bluetooth senders, but it performed better with those that support BT 5.0 and LDAC codecs. Compared to the SMSL’s SU-9, D1SE sounds smoother despite carrying more detail. The SU-9 feels more analytical after A/B’ing both of them side by side, however, the detail retrieval capability of D1SE is superior and the tonality of the D1SE feels more natural, organic, and effortless. Let’s take a closer look at it. Low Full-sized headphones: Hifiman Susvara, Hifiman Arya, Audeze LCD-4, Erzetich Phobos, Erzetich Mania, Kennerton Wodan, Magni, Gjallarhorn, Vali, M12S, Quad ERA-1, Ollo S4X Reference, HarmonicDyne Zeus The DAC in the D1SE comes with a slight sound color adjustment option via the integrated DSP. SMSL included this feature in their menu and labeled the setting as ”Sound Color”. In my opinion, this setting has a more distinct effect on the sound signature and can be used to slightly tune the device according to your preferences. There are 3 options here excluding the Standard setting. Rich, Tube & Crystal. A big portion of its face plate is surrounded by a sheet of tempered glass, under it they hid its infrared sensor and of course that beautiful LCD screen. To its right there are two buttons that lets you choose 6 digital inputs and the one below it lets you choose your desired output. Its volume knob doesn’t wobble, it offers a decent physical resistance and it doubles as a menu navigator. It’s easy to use and you can access all its features from there or better yet – you can use its metallic remote from afar.
S.M.S.L - SHENZHENAUDIO S.M.S.L - SHENZHENAUDIO
There isn’t much to say about them design wise, one is smaller and one is bigger, one has 6 Watts on tap and one is doubling that number, one has a preamp output and SH-9 doesn’t have it. SP400 is pretty much a dual-mono version of SH-9 and it costs twice as much too. Apart from that, their UI is the same, I/O is the same, they look almost the same too. This is basically it, a very simple and straightforward graphical user interface. Most of these settings are set and forget, with the exception of the Gain setting which will be used more often. HPA4 can sleep tightly now, as Benchmark implemented a lot more features, which I did mention in its dedicated review. Up to this point, SP400 is the fourth THX-AAA-888 based headphone amplifier on the market, but it is the first one having four modules instead on two. In simple terms, this is the first quad-mono AAA-888 amplifier available and the first true balanced input to output amplifier, so I should definitely hear an improvement over the SH-9 and who knows, maybe over the HPA4 as well. If you lived in a man cave for the last three years or so or never heard about them, THX AAA modules are reducing harmonic, intermodulation and crossover distortion by 20 to 40 dB by offering a true to life, realistic and fatigue-free listening experience. It accomplishes that by using a patented feed-forward topology to null conventional distortion and noise levels, resulting in the world’s most linear amplifiers. THX AAA allows the amplifier to reach its maximum power without any kind of distortion that would normally appear in traditional amplifiers. DPLL Bandwidth – 15 positions, 7 is the default one. A lower number will provide a better jitter (noise) rejection, I left it at its default position
Leave a Reply Cancel reply Did you like the review? Let me know! Please note that you should write in English, as comments in other languages will be deleted. Thank you! When I’m getting new toys to play with, I would always pop their hoods, as good audio starts with good PCB design and component selection. I would follow their signal path, finding some cool ideas, simplified/overkill digital or analog sections, sometimes small mistakes, but always suggesting a few things. Opening it up was a difficult task, as several ribbon cables are holding its PCB in place, so I took just a small glimpse of what’s inside. Carving three rooms in its aluminum case, a huge one for its power supply section, one for digital and another for its analog section, already suggests that SMSL went slightly overkill with this one. All their past doings that were tested around here as SU-8S, SU-9, M200 and M500 were decent to quite good, but D1SE presents its performance in a different light, as everything comes and goes away in a very effortless way. After digging a bit more and detaching a few ribbon cables, it seems that SMSL combined a few OPA op-amps with discrete components…how interesting. This isn’t exactly an op-amp based output stage, it’s more like a hybrid and it all comes together now. I get it why there is more air, why there’s more weight and fullness in my music, while completely bypassing all the listening fatigue. Those discrete components can be usually spotted in upper-class equipment and I’m glad we’re getting those at such an affordable price point. This is a combo for those who want to take the smoothness of the D1SE to the next level. When combined with the D1SE, SGA1 offers a sound that is mellow, smooth, and musical. The details are not as present as with the combo above and rather presented subtly. The mids are vivid, smooth, and pure. The bass feels lighter and the treble region feels slightly smoothened. Overall the combo offers a pleasurable listening experience for the followers of the musicality cult. SMSL VMV D1SE vs. SMSL SU-9 The funny part is that on the inside, the analog section of SP400 is looking exactly like a double version of SMSL SH-9, here is a picture of them side by side that will tell you more. You can clearly see double power supplies, its power filtering doubled, you can spot four THX modules instead of two, the number of analog relays remained the same: 9 relays for the headphone amp section and 2 additional ones for its preamp section – that were missing on SH-9. Having a twice as big power supply and analog section, resulted in doubling its power output, from 6 Watts on SP200 and SH-9, SP400 is now offering a staggering number of 12 Watts per channel in 16 Ohms! That is a lot of power and it is currently the most powerful THX-equipped headphone amplifier on the market.
SMSL DO300 | Headphone Reviews and Discussion - Head-Fi.org SMSL DO300 | Headphone Reviews and Discussion - Head-Fi.org
In some ways SP400 was better, in other ways HPA4 was better, but in a high-end loudspeaker setup there wasn’t a contest, as HPA4 was on another level altogether. D1SE had a different approach to music reproduction, technicalities were great, but not exactly spectacular…pointing me out towards the big picture. It was making me move to the rhythm of the music, I was feeling it with my body, it was more organic and more real sounding to me. With D90SE, I knew that there is a digital to analog conversion happening in real-time, while with D1SE I was just listening to artists crafting music in front of me. Maybe D1SE wasn’t as hyper-detailed and extremely correct in its math, but it was more pleasing to my ears. It was gluing musical notes with an invisible silk thread, it added more weight in the midrange, while gently rolling off the upper treble. With this particular headphone, D1SE shinned brighter, delivering an unforgettable experience. When I switched to a warmer sounding headphone like Audeze LCD-4, then D90SE was wining lost grounds, since it made those more coherent, pushing them closer to my linearity curve. While their frequency response was very similar without experiencing drops or rises, D1SE was inserting me in the middle of the action, I wanted to be part of that, I wanted to listen to more music and experience it from a different point of view. D2 is a true balanced DAC that offers a lower channel crosstalk via XLR outputs and when I’m switching to a headphone setup, the left to right soundstage is increasing in size, simply because both channels aren’t interfering with each other as much as they are doing via RCA. That is a non-issue in a stereo setup for obvious reasons, but with headphones you don’t want the sound from one channel leaking to the other and that is precisely why XLR outputs are sounding wider in a headphone setup. I want to outline that D2 will not increase or decrease the stage size of your recordings, if they were meant to sound big, they will sound that way and vice versa. The D1SE’s treble section is smooth and detailed at the same time. The treble is very clean, transparent, and effortless. It will never pierce your ears, no matter the pairing. The D1SE shows excellent control throughout the ranges and treble is no exception. The smoothness of the treble range contributes to the effortlessness of the sound and this provides a relaxed experience. The D1SE is very easy to listen to and enjoy. You won’t get tired of it easily so I’d prepare myself for long listening sessions. Instead, I’ll write about one of the most interesting delta-sigma modulation converters that passed through my hands in 2021. It sounded in such a way, that I’ve completely changed my preconceptions about this particular brand. Everybody knows Shuang Mu San Lin Technology by now or SMSL for short. I’ve covered most of their gear, starting with affordable and finishing with top-end units. Just months ago, I’ve learned that there is a sister company under their umbrella, calling themselves VMV Technology that releases only top of the crop that SMSL has to offer. One of their most valuable deeds was releasing a DAC that forced a new spin of competition among industry members.DACs: SMSL D1SE, Audiobyte HydraVox & HydraZap, Matrix Audio Element X, Gold Note DS-10 Plus & PSU-10 Evo, Gustard X26 PRO, Topping D90SE, Musician Aquarius When it comes to soundstage and depth, I couldn’t differentiate them in my headphone setup. Only when I moved to a loudspeaker setup and changed the voltage to 5V on D90SE, it felt like having a better grip over the low-end. It had faster decays and an iron grip over the sub-bass territory, which wasn’t as tightly controlled on the D1SE. For unknown reasons, from the land of delta-sigma converters, those that had ESS-Sabre chipsets were undisputed champions when looking at your music with a magnifying glass. Matrix Audio Element X stood out as being extremely technical sounding, so much so that I couldn’t part ways with it for about two years in a row. It just pushed all details forward, as if trying to get the attention of the listener. AKM based DACs can do that too, but only the ones carrying a flagship AK4499 with top components around it. As I’ve mentioned before, component selection around the DAC chip is extremely important and I believe SMSL did an amazing job in here, squeezing a higher dynamic range, making it the cleanest sounding SMSL DAC to date.
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