USB connected amp for headphones or speakers.Denon’s first stand-alone USB-DAC / Headphone AMP promises to dramatically improve sound quality from PCs, consoles, media players and set top boxes to quality headphones or speakers.
The digital-to-analogue converter DA-300USB USB-DAC / Headphone AMP gives Hi-Fi sound to stored music libraries and internet streamed tunes (from PC/Mac) at the same quality as Denon’s Super Audio CD players, connected via USB-B port.
The DA-300USB has the same Advanced AL32 Processing and high precision 192 kHz / 32 bit digital to analogue conversion technologies, as Denon’s top end players.
The amp also improves the sound quality of other devices, including media players, CD and DVD players, TVs, set top boxes, Apple TV, and consoles. Digital inputs include USB-B, coaxial and 2 x optical inputs.
It supports any digital audio format that can be played from a computer’s media player – MP3/MP4, AAC, ALAC, WAV and FLAC HD (up to 192 kHz / 24 bit) and DSD (the native file format for Super Audio CD; in 2.8MHz and 5.6MHz resolution).
It costs $799 and goes on sale next month.
The computer recognises the DA-300USB as an external sound card, completely bypassing its own lower quality audio electronics.
The handy unit is ultra compact, and measures 17 x 17 x 5.5 cm. It can be positioned either horizontally or vertically (clip-on stand) supplied, sitting neatly beside desktop or Hi-Fi system.
The OLED display shows the selected input, headphone volume and input signal resolution.
