![]() Looks great across the board with excellent sub-1Ω values. ![]() Stereophile's measurements of the original Dragonfly v1.0 showed a value of 0.68Ω and they listed "<1Ω" for the Red. The Dragonfly devices have been good for low output impedance from the beginning. Absent a low impedance load, I set the output of a 1kHz 0dBFS sine wave to 500mV, then measure the voltage drop across a 20Ω resistor, and solve for the resistance/impedance. The technique I use is quite simple and should be an adequate estimate. Output impedance is important to measure especially if you're going to be using low impedance ear buds and IEMs. ![]() The characteristic of the "ringing" confirms that we're also looking at a minimum phase digital filter like the Black and Red. An example where this might happen is if you keep the DAC at 100% and hook it up to your sound system pre-amp expecting clean 2.1V line-level output (AQ discusses doing this in their literature). This will result in distortion if you set the DAC at 100% and you're playing a lot of loud, compressed albums that hit 0dBFS. It's aiming for ~2.23Vrms at peak output but clearly not quite getting there cleanly. ![]() When set to the same Windows volume setting (no physical buttons on the device itself), this Cobalt is approximately 0.5-0.6dB louder than the Red. In doing so, we're seeing some clipping of the sine wave, and this has also affected the square wave peaks and troughs. Since I'm borrowing the v1.2 and Red from others, I figure that's good enough listening time to get a sense of which sounds better.įirst, since it's new, let me show you the retail box and contents of the Cobalt:ĭespite advertising it as 2.1Vrms output like the Red, it appears that the amplifier gain has been pushed a bit further when asked to play at 100% (I'm guessing it's the amplifier gain rather than at the level of the digital filter). Having laid out this structure, to be clear, as a "reviewer", I took turns listening to the 3 DACs with different music and headphones for about 3 days, a few hours each day, before capturing the objective results so I had some sonic impressions before seeing what the measurements looked like. As such, technical adequacy and fidelity IMO are much more interesting and significant than a company's history, who the "guru" was behind it, or to be honest, what the reviewer "heard" or probably more often than admitted, thought they "heard" I'd rather leave many of those items as sidebars. Objective results apply to us all, while subjectivity is the domain of the individual. There are often insights one can gain through disciplined objective evaluation one simply cannot get based on company literature or even just listening unless one were truly meticulous. If one is fortunate, maybe a sidebar or graphs at the bottom of the review for objective results.Īs a "more objective" audiophile, the typical sequence above is not how I would prefer to learn about a new product. Most reviews typically start with background on companies, personal anecdotes, people involved in the product, rationale, etc. I know this sequence appears backwards compared to how audiophile reviews usually are structured. As usual, I will start with building up the objective results and then later in the post, I'll talk about subjective listening impressions and broader ideas.
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