Article: Subjective: AudioQuest DragonFly Cobalt Review

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The objective review seems to show that their is no significant upgrade in SQ from the previous and $100 cheaper Dragonfly. Interesting that the subjective review is pretty much the same. 

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1 hour ago, Mike Rubin said:

Just for grins, I substituted the Cobalt for my Wyred 4 Sound 10th Anniversary DAC in my main system.  The cheap cable I used with the Cobalt probably explains at least some of the difference and the Cobalt generally sounded a lot thinner than the much more expensive DAC, but, on the whole, it sounded better than anyone ought to expect from a product of that size and price.  However - and this is a big “however” - it simply couldn’t play anything beyond 24-96 using my standard DLNA player.  It stuttered through those files.  I really wouldn’t recommend the Cobalt for a streaming system if you are heavily invested in hi-res, especially when there are decent uncompromised alternatives for not much more money.

 

There are certainly much better $300 DACs on the market if that's what you want. They aren't small like the Cobalt, which is why they sound better and the Cobalt is portable but not up to SQ snuff. The Cobalt is for laptop/portability use.  Miniaturization costs money.

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1 hour ago, miguelito said:

I disagree. There’s no difference in the chips used here vs elsewhere. Yes, they designed a motherboard to house the whole thing. Big deal.

The DAC chip is  a physically tiny part, and is irrelevant to what I wrote.
 

Yes, there is cost involved in getting a complete component built into such a small package. It's pretty basic - designing something very small that does pretty much everything that something larger does  with good quality off the shelf parts is almost always more difficult and more expensive.  It's true across the board in electronics.

 

DAC designers will tell you the chip is a very small part of the resulting sound. Two DACs with 2 different chips inside  from different companies can be made to sound alike.  Things like the PS and the analog output section make bigger differences. There are other, bigger $300 DACs on the market that measure MUCH better than the Dragonfly, and in all likelihood sound better. Those designers have fewer design constraints imposed on them by size and a lot more design options for problem solving. Easier to have quality power, shielding, internal isolation, etc. So they have an easier time getting good results if that's what they are trying for. 

The reason d'etre  for the Dragonfly is size and apparently Audioquest  is willing to compromise the results to get there, b/c they couldn't do better at their price points in that size format. They are using a high quality DAC chip, so why can't they get the results that other, better performing DACs do? Designers of desktop or tabletop DACs don't have that size excuse to fall back on, have many more directly competing models, and need to have better results if they want to compete. 

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33 minutes ago, Graham Luke said:

Which $300 DACs are better...?

Teacs can be bought for that price and are very good. Topping Dacs are also good.