NuPrime IDA-8
Other equipment used:
DACs: NuForce HDP, NuPrime uDSD, Wyred4Sound DAC-1, Peachtree X1 (spdif bridge) and a couple pro audio dacs from Focusrite, Native Instruments, Behringer, and Echo.
Amps: Carver, Sansui, Harmon Kardon, Yorkville, Yamaha, a lot of Brystons
Speakers: Paradigm, Yorkville, Behringer, Peavey, Peterson, Centrance
Headphones: Hifiman HE-6, Sennheiser HD25-13 and HD650, all balanced, STAX SR-007
The IDA-8 is the latest offering from NuPrime, following in the footsteps of its pricier big brother the IDA-16. Lately, NuPrime has been making a push to expand it's catalogue in home hifi gear and the IDA-8 is their entry into the “let's do it all for a reasonable price” category.
Straight out of the box, this is a pretty little thing. Sleek and black and yet still discrete enough to hide on the shelf. The design aesthetic is carried over from their progenitors, though c'mon, there are only so many ways to design a box unless you're spending $$$$ on fancy casework. No, this here is a just a plain metal case, with a beveled front edge to display their name, and a black anodized surface. It's not a full out custom tailored tux, but everyone can appreciate a nice clean suit. The surface has a matte appearance and a texture somewhat like a chalkboard. It doesn't pick up fingerprints or scratches, but running your nails across it will in fact produce that spine tingling sensation.
Now before you get started, check the voltage selection switch. Unlike most products that have the voltage selector at the rear next to the power switch, this one is on the underside near the front of the amp and is very easy to miss (see pictures in the next post). The default is set to 230V (because feeding it a voltage lower than expected is safer than the other way around).
Getting started is rather straightforward, though if you're a knob like me I didn't read the manual and couldn't figure out how to turn the thing on... it turns out I had to hold the power button for a few seconds. Anyhow, feeling like a doofus once I got that sorted out, it's really self-explanatory. Press the left knob for power, and turn it to select inputs. Press the right knob to mute, and turn it for volume. The display is a very rudimentary dot matrix type showing 4 digits. The first two show: C1, O2, U3, E4, or A5, which represent coax, optical, usb, bluetooth, and analog respectively. It kinda bugs me that bluetooth isn't B4 instead of E4, but that's the ocd talking. The last two digits on the display are simply volume ranging from 0-99.
The volume is digitally controlled rather than through a standard potentiometer. It allows for some very fine control over 99 steps (essentially acting like a stepped attenuator). My only annoyance with this setup is that you can't spin the knob too quickly, otherwise the changes don't register. It's not a big deal, but for someone used to being able to turn a knob to drop levels down quickly, it takes a minute to adjust to that, no pun intended. A very nice feature here is that when switching between inputs, the IDA-8 remembers your volume setting for each one. As well, when you un-mute the volume ramps up gradually instead of jumping back the previous position. Nice little touches there.
In terms of heat, the IDA-8 does get warm to the touch, but nowhere near anything that could be considered hot. After playing music for a few hours and using a cheap laser thermometer, I measured 35°C at the front of the amp, and 40°C at the rear. Taking off the cover, I got between 45-50°C depending if I was hovering over the heatsinks or not. Toasty, but not hot.
The IDA-8 has all the connectivity options that you'd expect of a modern day integrated amp. It has the full suite of digital inputs (usb, coax, optical), a bluetooth dongle (more on that in a second), and one analog RCA input. On the output side there's an analog RCA (volume controlled, post pre-amp) and of course your speaker outputs.
The bluetooth antenna is not technically built in directly, but rather added on via a usb dongle on a flexible snake to act as the antenna (the bluetooth port is not used for usb connectivity at all, it is merely the connector used). I actually like this approach, as built-in antennas often feel like a weak point that you have to be careful of when moving your gear around as us audiophile types tend to constantly do. The connectivity itself is very nice, though I did not test this one extensively. I was getting quite impressive range from my phone to the dongle. It managed across the house through three walls. I even went down to the basement. I don't live in a palace, but I think the range should be adequate for most people under normal use. The dongle method also allows you to use a usb extension cable to place the antenna in a better position if the amp itself is buried in your equipment rack
Also included are two remotes. They are shaped differently and use different batteries, but perform the same. I'm not entirely sure why they included two... perhaps one for the listening spot and the other to put near the amp. Either way, I'm not complaining about having a spare.
The Overall Sound
I had such a difficult time trying to wrap my head around the sound of this amp. At first I thought it was bright... but it wasn't biting nor hitting me in the way that bright amps typically do. After a while I thought it was due to greater clarity, which is partially true, but there was something else to it.
The best way I can describe it is in comparison to the NuForce STA-100. I found that amp to have an overall aggressive tonality, with an especially hard bite in the upper registers. The IDA-8 has a bit of that tone, but not quite as aggressive nor hard. It felt like I was putting on sunglasses, which I realize is an odd analogy but bear with me. When it's very sunny out, it can be hard to see. There's so much light that your eyes get a bit of an overload from all the glare. So you put on sunglasses which takes away that glare and you can see clearly again. Except now when you try to look at fine detail, it appears darker. You have to squint a bit because while you took out the excessive brightness, it was that same flare that brought the little things into the light.
So there's greater clarity and smoothness, but perhaps at the expense of a bit of resolution. It seems contradictory, but that's how it feels to me.
When I asked the designers about their design goals and choices they made regarding sound, as well as reading through onlin commentary, they had some interesting comments. While they designed the IDA-16 to be a “reference” sound, the IDA-8 was designed in consideration of the speakers that would most likely be paired with it in their respective price range. As a brief tangent, there's no such thing as a perfect amplifier. There will always be interplay and compromises between distortion, harmonics, the background noise, etc. You design to the best of your ability within your given parameters (budget, size, heat, etc etc), and the rest is a balancing act. So when it came to the IDA-8, they chose a particular sound which they felt was best. Now, understand that this is not to say they tossed measurements and numbers out the window. On the contrary, I've seen some of their numbers and graphs, and NuPrime has all the gear and know-how to design to amazingly good specifications (quantitatively, the IDA-8 is measurably better than the STA-100). What they did was take all those measurements and the balancing act, and in consideration of those elements choose the signature that they felt sounded the best. In other words, they design with their ears as well as their eyes. It's a bold move when most manufacturers simply throw numbers at their customers, and let's be honest now, most people don't really know what those numbers even mean. Now as to precisely what and how they choose that sound signature, well that's a trade secret.
DAC
Let's look more specifically at the dac portion by itself for a second. Now between the dac and the amp sections of the IDA-8, the amp is the real superstar. I found the dac perfectly serviceable, but not particularly astounding. I've owned or heard a good bunch of amps in the $250ish range, and this feels like an appropriate ranking for it. It is ever so slightly aggressive, like a yippy dog that wants to nip at your heel but doesn't do any real damage. Just enough to keep you on your toes and prance around.
Going through the chain from my laptop to a Schiit Wyrd, to the NuPrime uDSD, feeding coax and analog simultaneously into the IDA-8, the sound was very very similar. Switching to the coax was like adding another layer of depth, or rather it increased the depth of field so that a deeper length of the soundstage came into focus. Detail retrieval was ever so slightly better and gave a more textured, more tactile feel. On the other hand, width and air seemed better from the analog output of the uDSD; there was a lighter and more graceful touch there. Overall these are minute difference though. If you've ever tried comparing dacs, it's exhausting.
After a couple hours, I could feel some fatigue settling in. It is a common occurrence I find with virtually all new dacs these past couple years; they generate a feeling a heaviness or pressure. The sound draws you in and there's an immediacy that calls your attention, but after a while it feels like too much; like a sort of digital hash. I have older and cheaper dacs that don't have nearly as much detail or technique, but they seem to offer a more relaxing (and lazier) listening experience. Six of one, half a dozen of the other. There's a lot of hooplah right now over why modern dacs may seem so “vibrant”, but I don't want to get into that or name any names. In any event, the IDA-8 dac is tempered somewhat compared to others, which is a good thing. The heaviness feeling I mentioned only comes after a long listening session. The effect is more pronounced on headphones; less so with speakers.
Moreso than the dac chip used (not officially listed per company policy, but you can find it if you dig a bit online), the IDA-8 does have an FPGA implementation which by all respects will have a far greater impact on sound than the individual chip. It is after all the entire supporting structure and (in a manner of speaking) tells the dac chip what to do.
I did not notice any particular differences between coax/optical/usb inputs that I couldn't attribute to placebo. Note however that my primary usb-spdif bridge is the NuPrime uDSD which likely has similar hardware to what's inside the IDA-8, so I wouldn't expect things to be radically different there. I did also use the Peachtree X1 spdif bridge to feed the IDA-8 (both coax and optical), but again could not differentiate to any significant degree. If I had to choose based on a preferential gut feeling that I can't quantify, I would go with the coax.
In the long run, I did find the pairing with some of my external dacs to sound better than the internal one, but it's a long process of experimentation. My favourite was the Echo2usb, my least favourite was the Wyred4Sound DAC-1 (somewhat ironic, as the W4S is significantly more expensive). The IDA-8 internal dac sits happily in the middle somewhere. You *could* go spend tons of time and money searching for the match that suits your ears, but then why did you buy an all-in-one integrated? If you're going to play that game, you should start with separate components from the get go.
A note on the drivers and usb input:
NuPrime ASIO driver installation is simple and straight forward. My only blip (and this is easily a computer issue and no fault of NuPrime, but I mention it for full disclosure) is that when the computer goes to sleep, it looses connection and does not re-establish on wake-up. I have to unplug the usb cable, turn off/on the IDA-8, then replug the usb. The blip is not consistent, so sometimes it works just fine on wakeup, sometimes just relugging the usb cable is enough, sometimes just turning the device on/off is enough, sometimes I need to do both.
*I repeat* this is a computer/usb/windows issue, maybe I have it worse than most, I get this with most manufacturers. Actually the only devices I have not had this issue with is my Traktor and Echo dacs, which are both pro audio/prosumer companies.
Preamp
A touted feature of the IDA-8 that sets it apart from it's bigger brother the IDA-16 is its discrete class-A preamp. Everything that comes out of the IDA-8 (both the speaker outputs and analog outputs) will pass through the preamp section. Although I hate to play on the stereotype of class-A, it does feel as though this particular implementation imparts a slightly warm tone to the music. It trims away some of the “digital” feeling from the dac to give a smoother sound. Again, that's a good thing.
The volume control is very nice. As I mentioned earlier, it is digitally controlled with 99 steps in 0.5 dB increments, essentially acting like a very fine stepped attenuator with only a single thin film resistor in the path. Switching inputs is as simple as pushing a button or turning the knob, and each input remembers its previous volume setting. This makes it much easier to volume match components when testing out different configurations and inputs. My only gripe with the volume is that the manual knob can only be spun at a certain speed. Go too fast and the changes won't register. Considering that you can press to mute though, it's really inconsequential. A nice feature coming out of mute is that the volume ramps up gradually rather than immediately jumping to the previous setting.
Of course being class-A, this does generate some heat. The right side of the amp (where the preamp circuit is located) is a touch warmer than the left. It's a negligible difference.
My only nag with the preamp is that it is not the quietest that I've ever heard. But this is only in the context of “I'm sitting next to my high efficiency speakers with my ear right up to the tweeter” situations. Practically all amps and preamps these days have vanishingly low levels of noise. The fact that the IDA-8 is not the lowest I've heard still puts it in the rather negligible category. Chances are if you're running some super high efficiency full ranger and horn, then you're probably running a low power SET tube amp or something like that anyways.
As a side note, the IDA-8 originally shipped with preamp outputs set at 3x gain. Newer shipments to my knowledge have been lowered to 1x.
Amp
Alright so let's talk about the amp now. I mentioned earlier that this is really the star of the show here. It packs a nice bit of punch in such a small chassis. I ran it through a stack of speakers at home from PA cabinets to bookshelves to DIY boxes. It did more than a respectable job on all of them. Granted, it struggled with the 18” subs, but that's what the subwoofer/preamp outputs on the back are for.
I would characterize the overall sound as “martini”. A little bit sweet, a little bit dry, smooth if you like it that way. Actually I don't drink, so I'm totally making that up. But really now, the sound is ever so slightly on the warmer side, with what feels like a tiny emphasis in the upper bass. Lower bass lacks the absolute punch of the 50+ lb monster PA amps I've got lying around, but grip and control is still there and satisfying as long as you're not trying to push it too hard. The mids and lower treble are the sweet spot; clear and articulate, with a good presence but without getting into that “airy” characteristic. The vocal ranges are prominent without being pushy. The upper registers are laid back, which contributes to that slight warm tonality.
If you listen to a lot of female vocalists, the IDA-8 is particularly well suited. I often find with those audiophile recordings that they have too much fuzz and air which creates an artificial sense of space and coolness. The IDA-8 brings it down from space into the present.
At very high volumes, the IDA-8 starts to lose control in the bass. It'll run just fine into a small desktop speaker with 6” drivers, and up to 10” it's acceptable, but try a 12” and it gets a little flubby. I'm pretty sure I'm driving it into clipping territory there, but it's an unfair test.
Possibly my favourite pairing was with the Centrance Masterclass 2504. They are a 4” full range coaxial driver and they simply sing with the IDA-8. I preferred the amp pairing over Centrance's own Dacmini PX which comes in a packaged system with the 2504. Well shoot, now what am I gonna do with the PX? The extra warmth in the upper bass helped compensate for the limitations of the 4” driver, and the richness of the mids flowed beautifully with the 2504 whose strength was already in the midrange.
A very interesting setup was using the IDA-8 as part of a bi-amped rig with a Danley Synergy Horn. A 1.75” tweeter at the throat of a 60° horn, with 3x5” midrange drivers mounted on the surface of the horn itself with the appropriate time/phase delay (passive network between the tweeter and mids). I find horns in general to be a bit shouty, but not so in this particular setup. Granted there was a lot of external processing going on, but there was a sweetness to the sound that I hadn't heard before. The moderately high efficiency of the horn also proved to be a boon, letting the IDA-8 work without straining and giving a nice sense of its character. It was truly a defining moment here for me. Now switching the amps around to put the IDA-8 on the 15” woofer in this rig... not so much. It was this little experiment here that leads me think a top + powered sub is the ideal arrangement for the IDA-8. Oh how I wish they had implemented a switchable high pass filter on the speaker outs somehow; that'd be perfect.
For years I had been using the diminutive NuForce Icon2 as a cornerpiece of my ever-rotating setup. As a mini integrated option, it was not the best amp nor best dac that I've ever had, but I kept returning to it for the sheer convenience that it offered. Eventually I “upgraded” the Icon2 with a better power supply and paired it with the HDP dac. Of course, by then my convenient little package was now a bulkier (but still somewhat compact) three piece stack. Even then, I experimented with other separates but kept returning to the Nuforce stack for the size and versatility. Well now, it looks like the IDA-8 may be replacing the stack as my new cornerpiece. That says a lot when I've been stubbornly sticking to my tried and true gear and viciously rotate through everything else. Let's be honest here: as an obsessive compulsive tweaker, there is no end game. Everything becomes a question of how long will this component stay on the shelf before it gets displaced, and the NuPrime here will last longer than most.
Now, I'm also one of those oddballs with a Hifiman HE-6, which is a headphone known for being notoriously difficult to drive. Many users have run their HE-6's directly off speaker taps, and I'm no exception. In terms of sound, it is much more aggressive with headphones than with speakers, with more bite in the upper registers. Some of that is from the dac, but the amp accounts for more. Switching to my 600 ohm Sennheiser HD25-13, the sound reaches deeper than just about any other amp I've paired with it. That all said, I mentioned earlier about the noise floor from the preamp, and that does show through with headphones with the exception of the HE-6. Still, if you're one of those nuts like me, it's worth considering.
Interestingly, the IDA-8 is also a very nice match with my Stax 007 driving them through a Woo WEE transformer. In my case I also have a modded WEE to bypass the transformers on one of the outputs. The IDA-8 does not have enough voltage swing to bring it up to high volume, but for late light listening it is competent and provides an easy relaxed listening experience. I do however prefer it through the transformer outputs. It has a much more lively tonality and seems to bring out more shimmer and energy, especially in the top. It still retains that somewhat bright characteristic of the 007, but I feel like the warmth from the preamp simmers it down a tad. I would be very happy with this if it were my only headphone (Stax) setup.
Comparisons
1) My “reference” (ie: most familiar) stack for a long time now has been the Nuforce Icon2, later upgraded/paired with the LPS power supply then the HDP dac. Comparing the IDA-8 vs just the Icon2, it's no contest across the board. Against the upgraded stack, the IDA-8 still edges out in overall power and control. The dac capabilities in the IDA-8 are better, though from a personal preference I still prefer the tonality of the HDP.
2) NuForce DAC-100/HAP-100/STA-100: this was the big stack that I had a couple years ago. It was good, I liked it overall more than the Icon2 small stack, but ultimately it wasn't a big enough step up (aside from sheer power) for me to replace the small stack. The IDA-8 however solves many of the shortcomings I had with the big Nuforce stack. The primary thing was it no longer had that edginess of the STA-100 which I found too heavy after a while. It has a much nicer warmth to the overall sound, and the dac capabilities are more resolving than the DAC-100. Oh and you know what? The IDA-8 costs less than half of the Nuforce big stack all put together. and does the work of all three separates! No contest here.
3) Centrance Dacmini PX: Probably the closest direct competitor that I have in my possession. The PX is a similarly sized and priced box with nearly the same feature set. The PX lacks the bluetooth input option, but has a class-A headphone output in place of a class-A preamp. Overall the PX is smaller, and recent deals and massdrops have brought it's price lower which brings that in its favour. Sonically though, the PX is rather plain and boring when standing next to the IDA-8. It falls under the stereotypical “clinical” category, while the IDA-8 bounces all over “fun”.
4) Bryston: Not the most valid comparison, but the Bryston 2B is the closest purely “small” amp I have. In terms of tone, the 2B has comparable amounts of “warmth” but it carries much more “body” to the sound. Where the IDA-8 flubbed a bit with 15” woofers, the 2B muscles through. I also have a 3B and 4B which each respectively had more grunt in the bottom end and control for big drivers. However, each respectively also has a bit of the Bryston “bite” known in the older models. My 3B and 4B are 2nd and 1st gen respectively, while Brystons these days are into (I think) their 5th or 6th generation of amplifiers. In any event, I actually prefer my 2B over the others. For larger driver speakers, I'll lean towards the 2B, but for smaller bookshelf speakers I prefer the warm tone and flexibility of the IDA-8. It's not so much a matter of control with smaller drivers, but I get a better sense of finesse.
Conclusions
It's a gorram integrated amp with lots of power, a respectable dac, a host of connectivity, all in something roughly the size and weight of a textbook. It isn't a game changer in any singular category (though I'd give the amp section a hearty thumbs up), but it accomplished so much in a small chassis for a reasonable price. You will be very hard pressed to find a similar sized package with all those features. That's something NuPrime (and Nuforce before it) does very well, which is create a multi-talented product in a compact chassis at incredibly competitive pricing.
