Listeners tend to consider an external digital-to-analog converter as either completely unnecessary or absolutely essential. If you believe bits is bits, you’re probably perfectly happy with the converter inside your smartphone, tablet, or computer. If you don’t, you likely have auditioned many a converter component with a seriously gimlet ear. Both tribes, however, can agree that the headphone amps in most smartphones, tablets, laptops, and desktops leave a lot to be desired when it comes to peak output, dynamics, and inherent sonic quality.
AudioQuest, a firm that made its bones selling high-end cables to folks committed to the differences therein, is a natural to provide a similar set of options in the portable DAC space. And indeed, its DragonFly line of miniature USB-Headphone amp/DACs has been so successful that the firm has added a third, the $299 DragonFly Cobalt,to the existing Black ($99) and Red ($199) versions. With a couple of distinctions, the new Cobalt follows the Red with a 24/96-capable ESS Sabre micro-DAC circuit and a relatively high-output headphone amp micro’d into a housing that looks like a nicely finished USB thumb drive. It has a USB type-A male connector on one end, and astandard stereo mini-jack output to connect headphones or a cable to a preamp or other “B-chain” component, on the other.
Those distinctions? The Cobalt uses a newer ESS micro DAC chip with a “slow-rolloff” minimum phase digital filter that AudioQuest claims to deliver more natural sound (both the Black and Red versions use fast-rolloff filters). The Cobalt retains the Red’s headphone amp (also ESS) but has a new microcontroller chip that’s said to reduce power consumption and increase processing speed.
この記事は Sound & Vision の December 2019 - January 2020 版に掲載されています。
7 日間の Magzter GOLD 無料トライアルを開始して、何千もの厳選されたプレミアム ストーリー、9,000 以上の雑誌や新聞にアクセスしてください。
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この記事は Sound & Vision の December 2019 - January 2020 版に掲載されています。
7 日間の Magzter GOLD 無料トライアルを開始して、何千もの厳選されたプレミアム ストーリー、9,000 以上の雑誌や新聞にアクセスしてください。
すでに購読者です? サインイン
The Big Clean
Chances are you probably do not think about the state of your electronic devices too often. Oh, you might think about all the upgrades you would like to make; where you would put those new tower speakers, or how a second or third subwoofer would really tame those bass modes in your room, or how much more cinematic a larger screen would be. Sure, you think about that part of your system. But how often do you think about the well-being of your system?
Planar-Magnetic Attraction
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Full-Featured 4K
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Party Animal
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It's the End of the World. How About Popcorn and a Movie?
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Bridging the Analog-Digital Gap on a Recliner
When I shopped for a motorized recliner, I rejected models with their own Internet Protocol address and built-in speakers. No need. I had already placed a smart speaker on an étagère beside the space where I had planned to put the chair. I'd have a smartphone in my hand and the room would be bathed in Wi-Fi.
BACK TO THE GARDEN
AN AQUARIAN EXPOSITION in WHITE LAKE, N.Y.
Big Sound, Small Price
DOLBY ATMOS, once a costly premium, is enjoying a surge of popularity across a range of new audio gear.
Classic Sound with Streaming Smarts
THE TWENTIETH century had its Roaring Twenties; welcome to the twenty-first's Streaming Twenties.
Stand and Deliver
IT DOESN'T seem all that long ago that SVS first entered the audio scene.
