Khadas Tone Board DAC - cheap, yes....

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charmerci

Khadas Tone Board DAC - cheap, yes....
« on: 24 Sep 2019, 04:44 am »
So I bought one based on recommendations here. I was letting it play trying to get to 100 hours break-in, hoping the high end harshness (I'm sensitive to that) would go away. Suddenly the thing simply stops playing. The Khadas team says it's "sensitive to momentary USB instability." Seriously, for $100 bucks? A loose circuit board that will be sensitive (to vibration) in a sound system? Other people have suggested another USB-C cable. I just bought it. To return it, you have to send it back to China too!
Sorry - NOT recommended!

https://forum.khadas.com/t/my-tone-board-just-stopped/5404/8

wushuliu

Re: Khadas Tone Board DAC - cheap, yes....
« Reply #1 on: 24 Sep 2019, 06:02 am »
Sorry to hear that. Pretty sure I didn't recommend it! It's just another typical ESS dac based on the cheaper mobile chips that somehow became the flavor of the month. Now I don't hear so much about them.

Sensitive to USB? Lol, just like the ODAC, another pinnacle of perfect objective performance.

I've been wary of USB-C since I had some issues with my Sabaj DA3's connection as well as my cell phone charger. There seems to be a lot of very crappy quality USB-C cables in the market.

JohnR

Re: Khadas Tone Board DAC - cheap, yes....
« Reply #2 on: 24 Sep 2019, 08:13 am »
What is this month's flavor...?

slash71

  • Jr. Member
  • Posts: 92
Re: Khadas Tone Board DAC - cheap, yes....
« Reply #3 on: 24 Sep 2019, 09:06 am »
the tone board I think is an affordable-fi, assembled on top of a  VIM3 with Roon bridge endpoint installed  it sound excellent.. pure DSD flavour for my ears!
I'm sorry for your issue  , 100bucks ? anything  cheap,   open an rma I'm sure to be worth the effort..

charmerci

Re: Khadas Tone Board DAC - cheap, yes....
« Reply #4 on: 24 Sep 2019, 11:14 am »
Sorry to hear that. Pretty sure I didn't recommend it! It's just another typical ESS dac based on the cheaper mobile chips that somehow became the flavor of the month. Now I don't hear so much about them.

Sensitive to USB? Lol, just like the ODAC, another pinnacle of perfect objective performance.

I've been wary of USB-C since I had some issues with my Sabaj DA3's connection as well as my cell phone charger. There seems to be a lot of very crappy quality USB-C cables in the market.

ODAC - I've had one for years, plugged and unplugged it  over a 100 times and had no problem with it. Sounds OK. Small and convenient.


Gosh, maybe I should have saved my money and just used the ODAC.....

wushuliu

Re: Khadas Tone Board DAC - cheap, yes....
« Reply #5 on: 25 Sep 2019, 07:55 pm »
What is this month's flavor...?

No longer paying much attention now that my Soekris (re)build is complete. I do see that SMSL has a spiffy ES9038Pro DAC with XMOS 216 (upgrade from 208) w/MQA all for just $400. So that sounds like a contender, at least until something even cheaper appears by year's end.

ttan98

  • Full Member
  • Posts: 541
Re: Khadas Tone Board DAC - cheap, yes....
« Reply #6 on: 30 Sep 2019, 03:41 am »
No longer paying much attention now that my Soekris (re)build is complete. I do see that SMSL has a spiffy ES9038Pro DAC with XMOS 216 (upgrade from 208) w/MQA all for just $400. So that sounds like a contender, at least until something even cheaper appears by year's end.
SMSL model is: SMSL M500 DAC MQA ES9038PRO ES9311 XMOS XU-216, US$399, any reviews yet?

charmerci

Re: Khadas Tone Board DAC - cheap, yes....
« Reply #7 on: 30 Sep 2019, 04:22 am »
Oh yeah, the engineers on the Khadas site thought it was a problem with the board and not the cable, so I had to send it back to China at a cost of $15.
Sounded pretty good while it did work.