Article: EMM Labs DA2 Reference DAC and PRE Stereo Preamplifier Review

[barrows]

I have always heard great sound out of EMM labs gear, so i would expect no difference with these components.  Thanks for sharing your impressions Chris.  But I do take issue with this statement:

 

"...The world's first 16xDSD signal processing..."  This is rather mis-leading.

 

For example, the Mola Mola Makua preamp/DAC and Tambaqui DAC both oversample to 100 MHz and 1 bit before conversion happens via a dual mono discrete DSD DAC section, 16xDSD is 45.1584 MHz, so Mola Mola is converting at twice the rate of EMM Labs in their DACs.  While this is indeed nit picking, I feel it is important to acknowledge that there are other components out there doing DSD conversion at similar, or even higher, rates.

 

In any case, I would expect superb sound from the EMM Labs pair.  Do you have any more details on the volume control in the preamp?  Is it a discrete resistor ladder type controlled via software, or perhaps an on chip resistor ladder type (not necessarily a bad thing, BTW, there is one chip in particular that does VC very, very well), just curious, as with the DSD converters often we need to sue an analog VC.

 

Oh BTW, I LOVE the DSD version of "Wish You Were Here" from Analog Productions, just fantastic here as long as you turn it UP!