AudioQuest Dragonfly 1.2 DAC Review

Patrick takes a look at the AudioQuest Dragonfly 1.2, a high-quality digital audio converter.

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Closed Caption:

Tekzilla Bites! We're feeding your tech hunger
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High quality digital music? You might think
Neil Young invented it... his PonoMusic kickstarter
is closing in on $6 million to build the first
round of young's portable PonoPlayers to put
"studio master recordings" in your ears
... but the truth is you can run high res
music today... and for lot less cash...
I've talked about portable audio players from
Astell & Kern and Fios in the past..
let's talk about this:
AudioQuest's DragonFly...
Like the Pono player, it plays it all, MP3
to 24-bit/192kHz FLAC files ... thank HDTracks!
dragonfly glows green 44.1kHz, blue 48kHz,
amber 88.2kHz, magenta 96kHz
64 level Analog volume control... many digital
volume controls can butcha sound quality
Quality built in headphone amp,
can drive powered speakers, preamps or receivers...
The big deal, tho is the audio quality...
that comes down to build quality... this thing
is dense, like mercedes dense....
all that is to serve the
24-bit ESS Sabre DAC, or digital to analog
converter...
start w/ your lossless audio files... or the
pandora feed...
Asynchronous Transfer Ensures Digital Timing
Integrity
--your mac or pc doesn't induce jitter, mess
up the timing... which brings error to your
audio files
Two Clocks Enable Native Resolution Up To
24-bit/96kHz
--the less bad math that happens to audio
the better it sounds.
So... how does it sound?
Really good. Spacious. Airy. Classic recordings...
Sinatra, Elton John, Ray Charles... you can
really feel the instruments, the space between
em, the room...
cymbals and the high end was sweet.... and
sweet is a funny word to apply to a ride cymbal
in RATM song... low end was tight, punchy,
nuanced...
and, frankly, you'll notice if you're listening
to a poor recording or a crappy 128kbps mp3....
you really want lossless tracks... maybe not
192K/24bit FLAC albums from HDTracks ... but
I'd want at least 256K or lossless audio from
CDs...
You'll want to
run this critter in hog mode... it'll happily
run w/ itunes, but you'll get the best sound
of out something like foobar, decibel on macs,
or jriver media center on windows in 'hog
mode' ... you want the DragonFly and ONLY
the DragonFly touching your music...
and you'll want a great set of headphones,
or a solid speaker and amp combo...
tons of info on digital audio up on Audioquest's
website...
The Dragonfly 2.0 is $150, and nearly as awesome
DragonFly costs $100... it sold for $250 when
it launched a few years ago!
Got a favorite DAC, set of headphones, or
question about audio? Post it in the comments,
or tweet @Tekzilla, or email tekzilla.com...
for more Tekzilla Bites, subscribe at tekzilla.com
or youtube.com/tekzilla
I'm Patrick Norton... thank's for watching!