Outboard DACs

At times of late, it seems Salisbury's Naim Audio is wilfully courting controversy. It's been causing ripples with the brand's faithful fans ever since it launched its all-in-one Mu-so systems and second-generation Uniti products. It wasn't that these arrivals were on a mission to make hi-fi simpler for all, eschewing the tweakery and 'black magic' once suggested as a prerequisite for realising its true potential – no, what broke the usually calm surface was the fact the Naim logo, for decades lit in green, had turned white. Cue Naim aficionados fanning themselves like Edwardian grandes dames with a fit of the vapours.

After collecting an EISA Award last year for a complete headphone system featuring a stack of four mini-sized separates – the Staccato, Tradutto, CH-Amp and PSU-3 [HFN Oct '22] – EarMen has doubled back with this minimalist ST-Amp. This is a book-sized, do-it-all unit combining a DAC and dedicated headphone amp, aimed at head-fi enthusiasts looking for a quick and effective path to high-quality desktop listening. So while the ST-Amp moniker might suggest it's simply a more affordable alternative to the aforementioned CH-Amp, it's really a different beast altogether.

Given that most of today's digital components seem to be multifunctional – streamer DACs, DAC/headphone amps and the like – it's unusual to find a product as simple in its operation as its design. Yet that describes the latest arrival from German manufacturer SPL, the £2499 Diamond DAC, available in silver, black or red like all the company's products. A back-to-basics DAC? Well, almost...

The product catalogue of Hong Kong's Lumin, neatly divided between four network players, three network transports, and one-off power amp and streaming amp options, deserves the description 'small but perfectly formed'. That would also be an apt way of looking at its T3, a network player/DAC possessing a neat, easy-to-accommodate design and a feature roster designed to satisfy the needs of the performance-hungry streaming audio enthusiast. In essence, it takes much of what's offered by Lumin's flagship one-box P1 [HFN Jul '22], but trims the spec. (and size) down to a price point of £4195, almost half that of its bigger brother.

ARose by any other name? As has happened in the past, Korean manufacturer HiFi Rose has launched a new version of an existing model – in this case its RS250 network player – with worthy specification changes and a suffix to set the two apart. But there's a mild inconsistency here, for when the company upgraded the RS150 [HFN Jun '21] to the current version, due to a DAC chip change forced upon the company by the 2020 fire at AKM's semiconductor plant in Japan, it became the RS150(B), selling for £3899, but the revised RS250 is now the £2349 RS250A, available in either silver or black finishes.

Many manufacturers building tube-based products seem to prefer retro-nostalgic designs but Slovakia's Canor is one of the few that favours a more modern, progressive aesthetic. It not only produces tube amplifiers but also integrates line-level tube stages into source products, such as the CD 2.10 CD player [HFN Apr '21]. The partnering DAC 2.10 also marries an output stage containing four Electro-Harmonix 6922EH triode tubes with a digital mainboard, the latter equipped with a pair of ESS9038Q2M DACs. Otherwise this is a dyed-in-the wool 'legacy' DAC with no network or wireless functions and a fixed rather than variable output. So that large rotary is not a volume control…

At first glance, one might wonder why Matrix Audio felt any need to update its Element X network DAC [HFN Jan '21], the latter receiving our 'Outstanding Product' tag at £2795. However, look at this new X2 model and – while it's still conceptually the same, with a broad retention of technology from the ESS ES9038PRO DAC to the Crystek clock – it's clear much has also changed.