It can certainly be interesting and fun to get an upgrade in systems sound with ‘affordable’ gear. What’s even more interesting is how we get used to that sound over time and then can upgrade to a ‘better’ sound over and over and over. I once felt I had an awesome system that seemed like it had a great hard to achieve balance of a couple key traits. I am a couple/few price points above that now and could not go back… But it is always fun to find that pleasing facsimile-of-reality that sings with the given gear. There’s always more…
Little Giant NOS DAC mini review
I bought this dac a few months ago from Aliexpress. It is a 47 Labs clone with a Philips TD1387 chip in non-oversampling mode.
It also employs a variant of the Pass output buffer, and utilizes a sole S/PDIF coaxial input.
When using this dac with my computer, differing levels of digital distortion were clearly present, with the best digital files having the least. The results were good to terrible.
But when I use my Carver MV5 cd player as a transport, I get much different and improved results.
Not only is the distortion reduced to a tolerable level, the sound is warmer and smoother, with a good soundstage and imaging.
I would also say that it is closer to analog than my old Micromega Stage 3, while providing more air and apparent resolution.