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Sound Cards [WTS] ESS SABRE ES9023 Audiophile USB DAC, A TINY DAC that you should NEVER miss!

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Spoilt
post Dec 26 2012, 12:39 PM

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Just got my unit today. Played around with it for around 2 hours and here is my initial impressions:

Build quality:
-Kinda hoping the heat shrink to be black. Yellow seems too flashy for me lol.
-After inserting the DAC, it seems a bit loose but it wont come out without some force. (I think the barebone-ness of the dac makes me feel it is less secure sweat.gif )

Sound quality:

When I first plug it in, I was surprised that the sound is sub par even when compared to my laptop audio. So I fiddled through the audio settings and found out that the DAC was set to mono output. Changed it to stereo then only the DAC comes to life.

Since you cannot control the volume using the windows volume control, I recommend using an amp to control the volume. I had to resort to using foobar's volume control because I did not bring my amp to work. Good news is that the volume on full load is loud enough for my klipsch S4. Whats even better that it does not have any annoying static noise that i usually get from my laptop's output.

Going through my library that usually consists of rock and instrumental songs I find that this DAC is amazing! drool.gif The instruments is crystal clear and the sound stage is wide. Now that you can hear every strum of the guitar or the double bass, every key in the piano is distinguishable. Bass is more punchy but not louder, highs are more prominent but not overwhelming, mids are more pronounce. I cant go back to listen through my laptop stock output..sounds so shitty sweat.gif

Overall:

For the asking price, the DAC is awesome bang for buck. Build quality is good, sound is amazing. cool.gif

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