S.M.S.L M400 MQA Audio DAC, AK4499 Chip Full Balanced Hi-Res Decoder, APTX-HD Bluetooth 5.0, Support MQA decoding DSD512 32Bit/768kHz,Coaxial Optical HiFi Music USB DAC XMOS

Product Information

If hard to drive planar magnetics are not on your daily menu, then SH-9 would be a better choice, since there is little to no difference between both siblings with desktop dynamic headphones or with easy to drive planars like Erzetich Phobos and Kennerton Wodan. Do note that SP400 can also work as a dedicated preamp in a loudspeaker setup and I totally get it why one might want the SH-9 and others would pay twice for a more powerful and feature package device. It is still expansive sounding and fully covers the frequency response, but it didn’t want to brawl in the octagon with some other converters as X26 PRO by Gustard for example.

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Midrange had a natural and a life-like timbre, something that is highly usual for ESS-Sabre based converters. While there is as much treble information presented in a very clean way, it never becomes a burden in long listening sessions.It supports up to eight channels, which means you can actually have a truly balanced setup with a single chip. Susvara was a different animal altogether on SP400, the biggest improvements happened in the bass region where SP400 was able to sustain much longer 20 Hz notes, there was a better feeling of a physical impact when bass notes were landing. It always offered the last drop of micro-details, if there are movements in the auditorium and that somehow made its way into the recording, you’ll be surely hearing that easily. Most THX AAA amplifiers have their noise floor undetected at any volume level, but will see how SP400 performs with ultra-sensitive loads very soon.

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It makes sense now why there’s a VMV A1 power amplifier that is being recommended for the D1SE, as it seems to work nicely with headphone based systems and with stereo setups alike. There isn’t much to say about them design wise, one is smaller and one is bigger, one has 6 Watts on tap and one is doubling that number, one has a preamp output and SH-9 doesn’t have it. Its case is milled on a CNC machine, I see rounded corners, a big screen and look at that metallic remote-control – it looks like an Apple designed product. Instead of resting on Laurus Nobilis leaves and catch some breath, SMSL went totally berserk by announcing in April 2020 that two higher performing headphone amplifiers are in the works.SP400 on the other hand is entirely a different animal, its quad-mono design and its close to zero channel crosstalk on the balanced output are leaving a huge mark on its sound-staging capabilities.