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ALO International Headphone Amplifier & DAC Review

2013-01-29
hey guys how you doing today we have a new brand new review for a ello audios new international DAC and headphone amplifier combination in one tiny little package you may not be able to tell from this initial shot here but the size of this is actually a hair smaller than what they usually do for their components which is really great considering they have packed a lot of great stuff into this there's a balanced input and output for this as well as a 24 96 DAC that plugs through a USB connection into your computer it also has single-ended inputs and outputs which is a great thing to have for a headphone amplifier it's portable on the go and the battery life is supposed to be really good with this thing I can tell you from handling it that's quite heavy so if that's any indication of how much battery is in there I think you should be good pretty good I actually really enjoyed this unit both through the single-ended and the balanced inputs it has quite a bit of power believe it or not for its size it really powered my Odysseys LCD 3 headphones with no trouble whatsoever and inversely it also does a really great job with in-ear monitors the lowest setting there's a three gain setting of low medium and high the low setting actually delivered a really nice black background for in-ear monitors that means that there will be no hissing no background noise at all so you can lay that canvas of music beautifully over nothingness which is really kind of a trouble spot for a lot of different headphone amplifiers they work really well with the big stuff in big headphones but when it comes to powering little guys they just have too much background noise so this is not an issue with this amp at all which is great the size is smaller and the knob is really great too I the fit and finish of this particular unit is is outstanding I really like the sheen the the texture of the unit it feels really solid in the hand as far as the overall sound goes for this considering the size I've really enjoyed the bass impact the bass slam the overall feeling of the bass is really good tight and accurate sounding the dynamics across the board were very impressive as well a real sense of lively kind of accurate realism came through very good to this amp especially considering the size as you can see here the back it is does charge from a separate wall wart charging is not available via the USB al says that this actually helps with the sound quality and that it's not drawing directly from another source it's just relying on the battery supply from my experience that particular notion has paid off in terms of quietness additionally the DAC does not draw power from the from the computer or whatever device you're connected to which is different than rates Samuel audios intruder which actually draws additional juice from the DAC so it is separate from it that way the other main difference between the Ray Samuels intruder is that this jack goes up to 24-bit 96 Hertz whereas his tops out at the CD the highest level of CD quality 16 and 48 Hertz overall I really enjoyed this piece I hope you guys get a chance to check it out it sounds really good even though the price points a little bit on the higher side at $600 it's definitely kind of pushing the envelope forward as far as what we can do in the portable realm so it's really great stuff thanks for watching guys if you have any questions feel free to hit me up in the comments section and file a channel if you can thank you
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