Gadgetory

everybody I do an audio head here a a quick review of the Antelope zodiac silver DAC it does 192 24-bit through all of its inputs it also doubles as a headphone amplifier you can see there on the left that's the main output on the right you have a separate headphone volume control and two outputs this unit retails a little bit on the higher side it's around 1900 for the whole package it does come with some really nice cables including an optical cable in the USB cable so there's a couple of fun little frills that it comes with for that price but it is a little bit on the higher side the quality of the DAC is good - very good I really enjoyed I found it to be quite nuanced has a nice smooth texture to it but yet it's very refined it definitely competes with almost every other deck I have in in the lab as far as the headphone output is concerned I was very impressed it has great output keeps the same type of refinement in detail that you find in the deck throughout the chain so it doesn't fog up the amplification stage at all so that is that's impressive in and of itself for an all-in-one unit it's it's very sharp it's very articulate I would have to say that it leans a little more to the analytical than the warm side but that's not necessarily a bad thing it's on you know a little bit more of your your preference I think at some point but all together a nice all-in-one unit if you can afford it it's a little bit on the higher side it's not really huge it doesn't take up a large footprint which is also really nice I kind of enjoyed that it has a display that I very much enjoyed it tells the resolution of the input as well as acts as a volume control for the analog outputs in the back now this unit does have balanced outputs which is a nice feature something I would expect around this price range that are variable that can be controlled from the knob and unbalanced outputs those outputs can be Dru's sent directly to another powered amplifier if you want or even powered speakers separately so this unit in this session essentially run to kind of cut out the preamp stage and act as a preamp pretty efficiently I think that you know that's a great kind of way to keep things small and compact just like this unit is small and compact so just keeping things tidy not having too many units go all over the place for desktop applications but you definitely run it in the same manner with your AV rack you wanted to run things into it very nice kind of setup there the third thing that the display does is actually help you do this source selector so you can see what input you're going through and there are quite a bit of inputs digital inputs in the back for this more so than your usual deck may have so that's good to have kind of roll through the different options there so a very cool very compact all-in-one package if you're looking for something in the price range if you have the spare cash it's definitely one to evaluate and just kind of see if it's your flavor it's by all means if this thing was a hundred dollars everyone should have one so it's really fun it's a really great thing please subscribe to the channel if you're able and have a great weekend