GUSTARD A26 DAC MQA Dual AK4499EX AK4191 With Streamer/Renderer XMOS DSD512 PCM768K MQA384K IIS Balanced Audio Decoder Black

Product Information

The newest silicon no longer has an internal delta-sigma modulator, meaning that an additional chip will be needed for that specific task. Hifiman Susvara was used the most part, followed by Meze Elite, Kennerton Rognir and Sennheiser HD800S. The ticks and tocks were so easy to spot, those weren’t small nuances or micro-details anymore, those became way too obvious, way too easy to pick-up and focus my attention onto. I found it impressive with speedy tunes and it was equally impressive with mellow and relaxing music.

I’m pretty sure their vast experience in building amplifiers was put to good use in their digital-to-analog converters. While this might sound like an easy task, most resistor ladder DACs weren’t like this, getting mellow and slow sounding for the most part. For a few hours, I immersed myself in my musical paradise, filling my heart with joy at the thought of testing yet another top-of-the-line Gustard-made D/A converter. com repository key has expired, run the following lines before ssh into R26: gpg --no-default-keyring --keyring .

In this regard, I could swear that I’m listening to a chip-based converter via A26, as all of them had these traits.

Note that different companies measure differently and we are well past the point of solid-state DACs having any practical noise perceivable to the human ear. While R26 isn’t that sharp or precise in its stereo image, it is considerably deeper and wider sounding. Gustard went overboard at every step of the way, starting with the power supply, digital and analog sections.While I can tune its tonality back and forth with cables and additional electronics, there is no way I could tune its realism and lifelike lucidity. There are also more familiar parts here including the XMOS XU216 USB bridge as well as an STC Micro STC15F2K60S2 microcontroller. Going from left to right, we have analog line out via single-ended RCA and balanced dual 3-pin XLR allowing you to connect the A26 to any device accepting analog audio inputs, such as a headphone amplifier or an integrated amp for speakers. If you want the absolute best it has to offer, then use it with integrated amplifiers or with dedicated preamplifiers, followed by a power amplifier (or two). A26 was always refined and velvety, preserving the soul of the music as no other chip-based converter did to this day.

In a loudspeaker setup, it worked as a Streamer and DAC, followed by a Chord Ultima 3 preamp and by a Chord Ultima 5 power amp.

These are honestly more alike than different, their tonality is similar, yet different at the same time. While this is not one of the cleanest and transparent records I’ve tried of late, it just steals me every single time I am listening to it. I will never hail things that don’t deserve it and while I can talk dirty about its uninspired case, its mediocre web-page and shoddy translation, but it rocks really hard when it comes to simple things as playing back your music collection.

I knew going in that the Gustard A26 is a premium product that has quite a few tricks up its sleeve but even so I was not ready for the size and heft of this thing.

In that box a high-quality gold-plated USB cable can be spotted, a warranty card, an after-sales card, a power cable, a bigger Bluetooth antenna to the ones I’ve spotted on SMSL and Topping units and a nicer looking remote control. Fresh power tubes and NOS driver tubes for my Trafomatic Primavera arrived a few days ago and as you can imagine, headphone listening came first but don’t you worry, it was used in an equally impressive stereo setup, getting a complete picture about its performance. It’s not a secret to anyone that channel crosstalk Nowadays you can easily get resolving sounding units without spending a fortune, but only a small portion of such units will sound transparent.