Gadgetory

hey everybody this is brian at audio hood we have a very special edition today the 12 portable decks reviewed this is an updated version of another video 9 portable decks reviewed which you can see the link right here if you click on that link it'll take you to 9 portable decks reviewed which has a wider range of other ones this is an update to that we got a couple more decks and so are up to 12 total here on the portable front the only deck that's the main that's our benchmark is the dumb the Dragonfly right here this one was included in the previous video I'm kind of just using it as a little bit of a benchmark for these the prices for these specific DAX we have the HTR micro streamer here it comes in around 180 this one is 250 then this is one that did appear in the last video called the dragonfly by AudioQuest it's a really good DAC for 250 this is the I Phi eye DAC that comes in around 300 and this is the alo international that is 600 so I have them online to buy price here in order I've decided to include the audioquest dragonfly as our point of reference in this video it does a pretty good job for 250 dollars and it kind of gives you an idea of where things go from there up and down the first deck I'm going to start out with here is portable powered by USB it's called the HTR micro streamer as you can see here it is quite a tiny design one of the more smaller decks out on the market today you can see that it's even it's about twice the width of the Dragonfly but not much wider this one does connect with a USB cable however not it doesn't have the straight up tip that the dragonfly does to pull up directly and so it does require a separate cable so it is different from the dragonfly in that regard like a dragonfly which also has the dragonfly color changes to indicate file you can see here the file size is located along here with writing and that it lights up on the side there so this one does actually let you know what file size you're driving into this the DAC here you also notice the difference from the dragonfly here with them there's actually a line out and a headphone out so they're separated whereas the dragonfly combines those two functions into one thing and it complicates the output and how it interacts with the software just a little bit so that might be a bonus the Meridian explorers the same way the other new deck that's out it has two separate jacks which I prefer so you don't have to mess with it on the software side too much it's a little bit more plug and go but you know it works either way with this streamer it aligns pretty much with the price once again along these lines performance is not as shiny and crisp as the rest of these decks however I did notice a very distinct upgrade from the headphone jack in my apple macbook air laptop so it's not the best performer of this punch but there is a value to it in that it is an upgrade from your standard headphone jack on a computer which can have a noisy background but most importantly the resolution was just a lot better and is very good in terms of matching for in-ear monitors and more low sensitivity kind of headphones it didn't quite have the power or the other drawbacks but didn't quite have the power to drive really too hard to drive headphones as you can see from the size it's not meant for giant full-size headphones it will work but it's not ideal so if you start to get like really really high impedance hard to drive headphones this one is not the perfect match fat so those are the two main drawbacks but then again it's the cheapest of these three and like I said before I definitely found it to be an upgrade from just a standard headphone jack so that's pretty cool it's pretty exciting a great way to kind of dip your toe in the water if you're looking to just kind of see what happens when you do this and also with the extra line out and indicators those are two big pluses in my book I like that in a deck as I said the Dragonfly here is a benchmark for everything else we have on here it is 250 and it offers really good value for the price and is obviously one of the great performers because of that single output through that Jack that also provides a headphone amplifier as I said before this dragonfly light here will actually change colors depending on what file resolution you send to the device which is also pretty cool because it's not as blatantly obvious as this is kind of more of a subtle fun thing because the colors change so I think that's a great not too good design once again that you can I'm gonna put the link up here to show you the full review with the other nine Dax where this is included in that so you can get a little bit more details there in regards to the scope what's out there now in the middle here you can see we have the I Phi DAC called the ID AK it's a little bit larger in size it's the largest one I have here but it is powered and it's important to mention too that both of these are also powered and including this one through the USB port which I find to be a nice kind of almost a definition of portable in my book because if it needs a wire it's not it really knocks it down on how mobile it can be so this one same deal poor power completely by this the signal comes to there the power comes to there very cool a little bit bigger has three indicator lights here these do not indicate resolution however they do let you know if it's getting a signal if it's connected and it's powered up which is all nice to know on the front we have a 3.5 millimeter input for small headphone jacks the volume knob and then these two line level outputs so you can see we're kind of moving up the scale here in terms of what you can output these are more general RCA so if you're going to a stereo you won't need to have a separate adapter pretty kind of cool if you want to think about it like that the main difference between this one and this one and I will say this this one cost fifty dollars more than this the performance in the DAC is is more than a matter of opinion than it is necessarily a this one is better than this one they sound slightly different I think the Dragonfly has more of a unique sound but this one for the reef or the region it's in the three hundred dollar range the deck does perform at that level if not a little bit above I really enjoy the sound of this thing overall crisp clear the main benefit the main plus over the dragonfly first one is that the headphone output is much more this is one gain stage similar to these two but not this one this has three gain this is one gain stage and just the volume knob here so the drawback is also part of the plus in this case the plus is that it's got a lot of gain so it actually drives harder to drive headphones louder than the other these these other two even though it's close in price point it's got a lot of juice the downside to the one gain setting is that it doesn't matter so well with sensitive in your monitors so there's that it's a I wouldn't recommend this pairing for any air monitors this one does pretty fine and dandy even the in-ear monitors that's nice so there's not a lot of hiss these are better for in your Manos this one is definitely more for full-size monitors which if that's your thing it's gonna work out great it's a nice kind of clear clean sound overall between the day between the deck and the headphone monitor on this one so for the size even though it's a little bit larger I think it kind of works it's it's kind of like fits with a bigger head saw headphone size and also they do sell this is one of the products that has an appendage that you can buy for even more that actually has kind of like a small power conditioner for the USP where the power comes in and then it cleans up the power supposedly to it so there's a companion piece of this one that's kind of interesting that you could potentially stack on top to have a double stack on the far right here we have one of ALS newest entries and of this bunch it does cost the most but it's also my favorite pick of the bunch it comes in around $600 occasionally it'll go on sale for $500 but right now I do believe it's priced that's 600 for $600 this actually has quite a bit more features than the other three but then again it's you know almost twice the cost if not more than that this one has a battery supply inside of it the fit and finish is great on this thing I think it's very polished and nice I like the black quite a bit nice stylings nice knobs switches are solid nice design battery-powered USB input here but also you'll notice we have balanced input which is quite a different change for everything else not too many on the portable front have balanced inputs actually there's very few relative to how many others so that's a huge bonus if you're into balanced humor in something balanced into here now you'll see this is the input USB input and here's where you charge it on this side we actually have the input for single-ended which is similar to well none of these actually have that so there's another feature on this side you actually see a single ended input which is unique to this particular amp none of these other ones actually offer analog single and an input into them and out so this is more of a combination of a dedicated ham and import amplifier with a DAC which is you know pretty exceptional because it's way more versatile in that than these other three now you can see here in the front there's actually a three gain switch so we really start to gain a lot more versatility in terms of what headphones can be used with the three different gains that are available I did find in ear monitors this is matches extremely well within your monitors at the lowest gain setting actually clicks on here and on the highest setting there's you know quite a bit of gaming you can really drive almost any headphone with this so the versatility is there inputs and outputs it even has balanced headphone outputs I run with an adapter this to my LCD threes very very good I do believe that there is a difference between the single-ended and the balanced connectors here at least with the LCD 3 it seems a little more obvious to me as if it's your if it's better or not that I think falls more under terms of preference but for the most part most people I kind of talked to agree that the balance at least with the LCD 3 is kind of a fun thing to play with in terms of overall compactness you can see the size is even smaller than these guys this one's a bit heavier than the rest because of the battery that's included with it but overall really great dynamics on this unit I really enjoy it a lot the base impact is pretty slammin I think that the amp itself is a notch above the other three featured here and the DAC the DAC is is pretty good too it's definitely not the best I've ever heard but I think it's befitting of the of the amp that's in there so as for all in one package this thing's pretty spectacular as well but to me really that it's the headphone amplifier that shines the most on this puppy so it's pretty good but like I said $600 there's a lot of trunk which is a pretty big chunk of change to a lot of people so you know it might be something that is in your range or not if not there are many fine alternatives coming all the way down to the 180 so this is my one of my favourite portable amplifiers at the moment things keep coming in and going out as you can see we're up to you know twelve Dax right now so it just keeps coming and coming but right now this is one of my favorites here and it's not just for the amp it's I mean the balance the inputs and outputs are very fun to play with it kind of adds a little more color to the Hobby so that is what I have on tap right now