chav-n

The Cambridge Audio CXA80 is what you would call a neutral, transparent amplifier that does not seem to impose any character on the music. One should be serious about hi-fi when getting this amplifier because cheap cables are forbidden here, both interconnect and power ones, otherwise you get grainy, fatiguing, or even muddied sound that this amplifier will not create by itself. Stereo imaging is of high caliber. When fed by a decent external DAC, the amp produces a soundstage that will defy the dimensions of small listening spaces, in both width and height. Detail is ample and the sound never gets harsh regardless of volume, with sufficiently good recordings. The integrated DAC does not do justice to this potential. The two optical and one coaxial inputs are only usefull at low to medium listening levels. Above that quality drops dramatically. The USB input does not suffer from this problem and is generally the best digital input but is still no match for the external DAC. Aside from the smaller soundstage, in high volumes the top end will sound fatiguing. You can also add a Bluetooth dongle to the amplifier, which is connected in the back plate and uses an internal to the dongle antenna. It is paradoxical, but despite sporting no less than 5 digital inputs, you need an external DAC to go with this amp. Regarding analogue inputs, there are 6 including a balanced one. They are navigated with 4 buttons. The balanced input is selected by pressing the A1 button twice, at which point it lights orange instead of blue. Returning to A1 from another source keeps the balanced input selected. The mobile input in the front auto-selects itself when detecting a connection and the A4 input button again lights orange instead of blue. It provides a lot of extra gain, and I can drive my speakers to clipping from my budget smartphone's weak output. The extra gain also makes the sound fuller, so this is the best input when I want to connect my phone to the amp for some reason. The tone controls produce a shelving curve as was measured elsewhere, they are not the kind that boost a single note. A nice touch is the mute button on the amplifier, along with the A/B selector and the tone defeat. There is exceptional clarity and detail when playing at low volumes, owning to the high quality volume pot which also provides fine control for low volumes with way more distance available compared to less expensive but very popular amplifiers. One of the highlights of the product's features in my opinion. The amp will have no problem controlling the low notes and completely integrating them with the rest of the audio spectrum for mid-range standmounts with 6-7 inch woofers. Even when you crank the volume up, every sound from every instrument stays in its place. When playing songs that do not feature lots of bass you will notice that the CXA80 does have a sound after all, a slight "tape sound". If you are familiar with cassette players this will add a nostalgic element to the music, especially if the music is also of previous times.

The VA rating of the secondary windings of a transformer is defined as V_rated*I_rated*PF. The power factor is less than one in linear power supplies and the larger the capacitance of filter capacitors the lower the PF value. So, it's not a good idea to reduce ripple as much as possible with filter capacitors as this has the effect of reducing available power. Ofcourse, amplifier transformers are overdriven all the time but overdriving produces waveform distortion, which is probably a contributing factor to the rising slope of the distortion curve when it approaches rated power. Am I missing something?

The Marshall Major II is a 99db/67Ohm headphone and the Zen Air Dac drives it like it's nothing without needing a power supply or extra gain (power match button). Voltage-intensive loads are handled better than current-intesive loads apparrently, even if the delivered power is greater. The Sonorus II are 6 db more sensitive which means 4 times less power for the same SPL. Avoid low impedance headphones with this one then. Don't even think of using your phone charger or a run-of-the mill wall-wart: You get all the power you want but also extra digital sheen/shrillness/harshness depending on the power supply (tried 3 different phone chargers, 2 of them aftermarket + the wall-wart of Zen Blue). The iPower is way ahead in terms of SQ, a linear power supply may be even better. But if you want to stick with a $99 budget for the DAC/Amp, use a 67+ Ohm headphone. Personally I prefer the asthetics of the plastic case, the metal casing seems to emphasize the small size ☺️. The volume control is logarithmic, which means that there is a lot of power to use after the 12 o'clock position and you have more distance to use in the silent range too. I consider the volume control one of the strongest points of the Zen Air Dac. The quirks on music playback are a real bummer though. Creating perfect drivers for audio in Windows has been a challenge even for sound card veterans like Creative. It is certainly fixable, but it might take long ... In conclusion, this device falls short from a perfect score, I wouldn't consider it a bargain, unless of course you start spending on extras ☺️.

You can use this with a powered USB hub. I bought one today with 10W max output power. Ifi states on the product web page that you need 2.5W DC power for the claimed headphone driving power. A powered USB hub gives you the option to use one cable into the Zen Air Dac with an iSilencer - or a Jitterbug in my case - and kill two birds with one stone: filter the EMI from both your source and the power supply with one filtering device. The combination with the iPower - no USB hub - still gives a cleaner sound though.

Well, it is. In my opinion this is a very fortunate case of cheap-fi that can easily be transformed to mid-fi.

This appears to be a killer product: If you have sensitive headphones you can forget about dac/amp stacks! The thing is, the power supply issue is left as an exercise to the user. You do need something like an iSilencer to clear off the EMI from your PC/laptop. An iPower will not solve the ΕΜΙ issue, you need that for smooth sound at high volumes. I already owned a Jitterbug and an iPower so it was easy for me to experiment. They bring the performance to a completely different level. Clear, crisp sound at any volume and the "ifi sound" coloration to a minimum. I am using the Final Audio Sonorous II (16ohms, 105db sensitivity). On my PC I have to be playing an extremely low level (only 1 and -1 in the binary wav file) 60Hz tone all the time or else the dac skips the first half second of every song in my playlist. Not all genres play well with this quirk.

This is a very popular DAC/Amp, suitable for desktop, laptop and smartphone use. It is limited to 96KHz/24bit sound which might be a disappointment to some, but if you can live with that, this is a serious device that can compete with higher-priced products. Its sound is decidedly non-neutral, what I found particularly interesting is that even in the most melodramatic pieces it manages to inject some excitement. The bass notes are particularly fast and clear which contributes to such a feeling. There is a sense of ample detail too, which is in disagreement with its modest price. This is achieved through increased high frequency noise though, which can easily be observed in the THD measurements one can find online. Despite that, there is no glare, grit or anything negative coming out of this, just the good stuff! It drives my Final Audio Sonorus II (16 ohm) very convincingly, although for high volumes you certainly need a dedicated amplifier. This is only reason I am not giving the 5 stars that are otherwise deserved. USB power affects it a lot, the sound in my Dell laptop is quite hazy, not at all on my desktop system, which is a little counter-intuitive. The cleanest sound comes when used with a Dragontail on a smartphone. As luck would have it, my laptop has a USB-C port and when connected through the Dragontail the Dragonfly Red shines again! From an EMI perspective what happens here is that the usb termination does not go inside the laptop this time, so the received interference is greatly reduced. You should expect everything here sound-wise that is standard nowdays from quality dacs in the $100-$200 range, like an open soundstage, distinct placement of instruments and good transients along with ample detail that was mentioned before. Excellent tonality as well. As a testament to the quality of this device, if used as a DAC in a revealing stereo system, the result can rival the setups found in Hi-Fi shops. For under $10,000 systems at least ☺️

A few years ago Tom's Hardware published an interesting article where a few PC+headphone hi-fi solutions where compared, with the dac+amp combination being the controlled variable. The 4 competing candidates were "Benchmark DAC2 HGC", "JDS Labs O2+ODAC Combo", "Asus Xonar Essence STX", and "Realtek ALC889" implementation of the Rampage III Formula motherboard by ASUS. The conclusion was that "anything above $2 buys more features, not better quality". The motherboard I'm using is the lowly "760GA-P43 (FX)" from MSI, sporting the Realtek 887 audio chipset. My first move towards better audio was with the Marshall Major II headphones. After a while I decided I had enough of the low-quality of the mother board audio so I upgraded to an ASUS XONAR DG, being very satisfied for a short while until I started visiting hi-fi shops and realizing how far behind hi-fi this sound card is. To make a long story short, I ended up using Final Audio's Sonorus II cans with the AQ Dragonfly Red dac. At some point I had to upgrade my power supply, and i chose the EVGA SuperNova 550 G3 because of its extremely good voltage regulation, just to see how it would affect the sound coming out from the motherboard and the sound card. The results were phenomenal: the clarity of sound approached dragonfly red levels. Surprisingly, the Realtek 887 chipset in the motherboard produced a very neutral sound, while the ASUS sound card had obvious coloring. Then I decided to go for the FiiO A3 to see what effect a dedicated headphone amp would have, combined with ATLAS interconnects. Now the linearity of the Realtek 887 is better than that of the dragonfly red and I am speachless. The dragonfly red has an obvious edge in terms of details and texture though. Anyway, the point here is that, yes, motherboard sound can be phenomenal if you have a power supply with extremely good regulation (which, in tomshardware circles, is taken as a given for any midrange gaming setup) and possibly a cheap dedicated headphone amp. The conclusions of the tomshardware article are completely false, especially if you consider the cost of the upgrades/additions in my case. Unfortunately hi-fi is not cheap, at least not dirt cheap, and us "subjectivists" are not necessarily delusional when we do not like the sound of a certain setup. Reason: a great many variables affect hi-fi reproduction.