Another excellent product. Smooth, uncolored, nothing stands out.. You can hear a difference between the two DAC chips. I usually go towards the ESS chips because of their more energetic, livelier sound, but I'm quite impressed with the AKM chip implementation. It is a bit smoother than the ESS and actually has good treble extension. It doesn't sound slightly muted in the treble region unlike most AKM chips.. At least to my ears. With my setup, I haven't reverted back to the ESS chip. But, I will eventually just to change things up. The only nit-picky thing I can think of about this DAC is when you display the VU meters, they seem to peg out and stay that way for a few seconds, every now and then before dropping back to normal and dancing like they should be.. Maybe a firmware upgrade can fix that?? Other than that, it's an outstanding DAC.
