Woke up as early as 4AM and started testing the NAD Wireless USB DAC 1.
Associated gears:
Sonus Faber Toy Monitors on B&W S2 stands
REL T5 subwoofer
Cambridge Audio 550A Integrated Amplifier
Macbook Pro
Van den Hul 3T RCA
Chord Silverscreen Speaker wires
Various High-res files from Audiophile Voices, Focal, Chesky, Jennifer Warnes , Toto etc.
Likes:
Ease of installation. Just plug it in, you're ready to go. No need to install any drivers or additional software.
Compact size(easy to hide from the wife's questioning eyes)
Compatibility on both Mac and PC
DAC works even when playing movies
Dislikes:
It's a 24/192 DAC but the USB dongle downsamples everything to 16/44(CD Quality)
Impressions:
As I mentioned on my previous post, I kinda felt it just made the volume louder. It is a positive thing though, because it means less THD from the amplifier because you don't have to crank up the volume that much to get your desired loudness. This should actually result to a cleaner sound.
The sound? It has that typical warmish sound associated to NAD with a good amount of bass weight. I have a lot of high-res files. It plays them, but I don't appreciate the downsampling of my files. I feel it lacks the open-ness of the Musiland 01 I own. I also felt that the sound is a bit laid back, good for folks who loves a relaxed sound, but for me, I associate it to being slow. I am a fan of high dynamics, slow does not work for my taste.
Overall, in what it does, it's a bargain for it's price of P15.5k SRP.
Credits:
Thanks to sir Rex of Watts Hifi for letting me audition these.