Digital Drive

Posted by John Elison (A) on August 22, 2019 at 17:23:00

In Reply to: RE: Which $500 DAC to go with Node 2? posted by Cincinnati Listener on August 22, 2019 at 14:13:30

I recently bought a $3000 Mytek Brooklyn Bridge and it sounds awesome; the best sounding DAC I've ever owned. After buying the Mytek, I decided to buy a portable digital player, the $450 FiiO M11. Surprisingly, I think it sounds just as good as the expensive Mytek.

The FiiO M11 can function as an outboard DAC as well as an autonomous digital player. Additionally, it can access streaming websites on the internet via WiFi. It also has Bluetooth. It's simply an amazing digital player that supports PCM up to 384-kHz/24-bit and DSD up to DSD256. That's Quad DSD! Furthermore, it has two micro SD memory card ports with the capability to address up 4-terabytes of plug-in memory. Currently, I have two 512-GB Micro SDXC cards in mine. It has both unbalanced and balanced analog outputs. I bought a balanced interconnect so I could connect it directly to the balanced inputs on my Parasound Halo A21 power amplifier and its sound quality blows me away.

The thing I like best is that it's a totally self-contained digital player with the ability to store all my favorite Hi-Res digital music files in its extra large memory bank and the metadata is displayed on a one-megapixel touch screen. It's really an amazing component for its price. Of course, you'll have to spend about $710 total in order to equip it with two 512-GB memory cards and a balanced interconnect, but it is totally autonomous and it sounds awesome.

Here's what I bought:

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