Emotiva XDA 1 DAC Any thoughts?


Live in the boonies and have to buy my equipment buy thoughts and reviews. If you have heard or own this piece your thoughts would be appreciated! Thanks!
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Owned one a few years ago, bought it new when they were 149.00. It's decent for that price, certainly better than the least expensive HRT inline dac. I think it uses an Analog Devices dac chip. It definitely isn't the last word in resolution but it sounds decent. Not hard or etched sounding but I think it only goes up to 96K. I had one for 6 months or so but sold it and bought a Wyred4Sound DAC. Night and day difference in sound quality.

I thought it was rather busy looking and the display does not tell you the sampling rate. I hated the bright blue lights on it. If you are stuck on Emotiva, I would look for the more recently discontinued XDA-2. It is much better sounding. The XDA-1 is at least a 3 year old DAC.
I had the XDA-1 as well. Notice I said had. With the Emotiva cd player and XPA amp, I found the end result harsh and etchy. It was Emotiva's first attempt at a DAC. They claimed it had lossless volume so I bought it to use as a digital pre. Later on they finally admitted it had lossy volume. I bought an Pure i20 dock to digitally connect my iphone to the dac. It was super bright, and unlistenable. I'd recommend Schiit or Cambridge or Parasound's new DAC.
I use the XDA-1 ($149) at work with my Audioengine A2 speakers and TIDAL lossless streaming. It sounds OK on those speakers but on better speakers, such as my home desktop KEF LS50's, the XDA-1 are not that good. I use the Benchmark DAC2 at home and that is a killer DAC for $2000.