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SMSL 400 AKM 4499 DAC, new toy.

sq225917

sq225917

Bit of this, bit of that
It's not even mine and I'm writing about it so you know it must be good.

I'm running in mrdogs SMSL 400 dac for him, bless him. It's one of the first commercial dacs to use AKMs new TOTL dac chip and it comes from a mid tier chinese hifi brand best known for their headphone amps and dacs.

Its a modest box, the display is ok, the multifunction volume button is a little plasticky and the xlr output run hot as hell at 5.3v. It does bluetooth, havent tried it, it does i2s over hdmi, havent tried it, it handles full mqa unpack, not going to try it, and it does a variety of pcm data rates which I am using via usb.

The usb input uses the latest xmos 216 card, it doesnt suffer from clicks and ticks that my Brooklyn did when my macbook would poll the mouse and trackpad, so far it has been utterly rock solid and frankly a joy to use. iTunes works perfectly, not tried Audivarna yet.

Soundwise it's simply mega, top to bottom, utterly free of digital edge or glare with a real sense of fluidity and ease about it. I've been too busy enjoying it to bugger about with settings and stuff.

I have a Soncoz SDG1 arriving tomorrow, designed by the guy who did the Khadas Tone Board. Should be interesting to see how they stack up as they both put up mega numbers when measured over on Audio Science Review.

Pics and stuff to follow.
 
Output not temperature !

World class leading specification measures, it's up with £3 to £9K competition for £ 690.00. Some will say that these measures are all below the level of human hearing and thus cannot make a difference - well something does.
The Soncoz is around £ 290 cheaper, no MQA :) but measures a few dB higher, should be a good shootout. The Soncoz has the ESS chip while the SMSL has the new AKM 4499 chip.

Some have complained that the cardboard box is the wrong colour and they don't like the font on the display.
Gotta love this hobby. :)
 
Of course we have not tried it with a proper mains cable yet, imagine what the figures might look like then.:rolleyes:

Though we have some £ 5.95 USB cables coming to try...
 
Been wondering if the Soncoz SDG1 is a good step up from my Khardas Tone Board.... but silently betting myself it wont sound any different in my (budget) set up. Have zip all interest in the numbers but very interested to hear your musical impressions.
 
adamdea said:
Wow it still manages 120db snad even dialled down to 4v. But not one for darrenyeats bearing in mind the output impedance

https://www.audiosciencereview.com/.../smsl-m400-balanced-usb-mqa-dac-review.13732/
Click to expand...

I am not sure that all the fuss about the output impedance and "removal" of a buffer stage on ASR is justified. The design is an exact copy of the recommended IV/LPF circuit for balanced out in the official datasheet. The ESS datasheet for ES9038Pro recommends an IV/LPF circuit with an even higher output impedance. The AK4499 datasheet is freely available on the net.
 
sq225917 said:
I have a Soncoz SDG1 arriving tomorrow, designed by the guy who did the Khadas Tone Board. Should be interesting to see how they stack up as they both put up mega numbers when measured over on Audio Science Review.

Pics and stuff to follow.
Click to expand...

Looking forward to your subjective impressions of this.

The other AK4499 DAC worthy of attention is the £450? just released Gustard A18 with almost as good technical measurements.
 
misterdog said:
Lower distortion and noise = more music. :)
Click to expand...
Yea... I get that... but I think I'm right in saying that dacs have been producing levels of distortion that is way beyond the resolution of our ears for some time now.... So where are we going with even better measuring chips sets?
Also... all the Croft ( two pre amps) and audionote kit ( two dacs) I've had has measured terribly but sounded ace...
So nowadays I only trust my ears, ageing though they are.I think there is more to this than the numbers.
But I do hope you enjoy your new SMSL 400. I love new kit :)
 
It was mainly the chip which caught my eye. A 32 bit 4ch switched resistor DAC chip.

https://www.akm.com/content/dam/doc...dio-dac/ak4499eq/ak4499eq-en-productbrief.pdf

A summary here, though for the Topping D90.

The star of the show is obviously the newest and highest performance DAC chip by AKM, the AK4499 that Topping put inside it. This is a Very special chip and I will explain you why.

First of all, it is the first commercial DAC chip that challenged the mighty ESS 9038 PRO and surpassed some of its specs.

Secondly, AK4499 has the biggest die-size/surface area of any chips made by AKM. If you are into computers, you probably know how important is the die-size of a CPU or GPU, a bigger size means it will have a higher performance and, in the process will consume way more electric power. Same applies to DAC chips, as strange as it might sound, bigger DAC chips means better performance and much higher power consumption.

Compared to the former AK4497 DAC chip, the pin number doubled from 64 to 128, the die-size increased and the power consumption increased as well. AK4499 is also the first AKM chip to be current driven and not fully voltage driven. It eats current for breakfast and implementing two pieces of it means dissipating a lot more heat, using a much bigger power supply and doubling all the components around it. In simple words, it would use a much bigger case and the final assembled unit would be double the price. Since Topping is trying to make high-performance DACs at affordable prices, for the moment a single AK4499 design made a lot more sense to them. Who knows, maybe sometime in the future, dual-AK4499 designs will be released from them as well. I hope that will happen sooner than later.Now, here is the interesting part: AK4499 is a quad channel design, meaning a single DAC chip can produce a true balanced output, a single AK4497 for example couldn’t do that. The clever part is that Topping used 2 outputs in parallel working as a single channel, by doing that they squeezed the best of out this silicon, I’m impressed.
Click to expand...

https://soundnews.net/sources/dacs/topping-d90-review-a-genre-master/

Speaking of eating current, the SMSL uses an internal SMPS - shock horror. My other DAC has a battery /super capacitor power supply the same size as the entire M400 DAC..
 
The smsl 400 uses two smps packs. The output impedance is no issue its fine into my bpbp, its even fine straight into my neurochrome monos, though normal listening level in this instance is 8db above zero, which is probably fine in terms of fully dithered 32bit digital volume, it just doesn't appeal. If the output impedance and lack of buffer bothers anyone they could add one of toms neurochrome -140db balanced buffer boards...

If do a more detailed write up of the sound once I've compared both the Soncoz SGD1 and the smsl
 
I am very interested to read this. I have the SMSL M-500, which is based around the Sabre flagship chip. SMSL dealt with the IMD issue, and it measures more or less as blamelessly as this new AKM implementation.

I'm only using it for PCM and at the moment single ended but it's really, really good. Showed my Young DAC a clean pair of heels with its even-handedness.

In retrospect, I'd prefer to have this new SMSL 400, partly due to documented quality issues with my model (mine has been perfect though). However, at this level I wouldn't be able to identify one from the other blind, so I'm probably done for the time being.

Interestingly, I did not like the sound at all directly into my power amp, I assume that I require a buffered output for my EWA class A.
 
Ess 9038 pro is 200 ohm output / 4 for stereo balanced, so really shouldnt need a buffer. I'd suspect the output is just too hot for the input stage on the esw?
 
It might be - I had given it zero thought. IIRC the ASR assessment showed something like 7v available at full chat from the balanced outputs!

I just can't believe how state of the art performance is so attainable at such low cost now.
 
Yup, these levels of performance weren't available from any dac five years ago at any price
 
I am a bit of a technophobe, so excuse my ignorance but I have a few questions, shoyld anyone care to answer.
Should I have cause for concern with the hot output of this dac if I run it balanced out into my Primare pre32?
The dac is MQA but only through its usb input. Is there a compatable network bridge that I can stream Tidal with?
I am new to streaming and currently use a Chromecast audio with rca analogue out to my preamp. Was about to go down rhe Bluesound node 2i route, but these new dacs look like they take things to the next level. Another advantage is that this dac would possibly upgrade CD performance, by using my existening player asca transport.
Thanks in advance.
 
So then, just unpacked the Soncoz SGD1 and had a little play with it. They're certainly more alike than they are different.

Feature wise the Soncoz adds a usb c and AES input, but loses the i2s vs the SMSL. The SMSL 400 has an alphanumeric display and numbers for the volume level whereas the Soncox has an illuminated icon based display and a variable illumination ring around the volume dial. The Soncoz has the better volume knob feel for sure, sold nicely damped, but I do prefer the numeric vol level display on the SMSL 400. Theres a bit of give and take as far and features go, very much take your pick.

Soundwise, I'll leave impressions for tomorrow once I've level matched them and had a good run through my demo tracks. So far I cant tell them apart, flicking from one to the other you think you have spotted some nebulous difference only for it to evaporate once I flick back.

They both sound very good, better than my rasp pi ian canada dac stack and that has had the kitchen sink thrown at it in terms of multiple ldo regs, lifepo battery power, supercaps and sota clocks. Quite an eye opener actually.

More to come, with pics, tomorrow.
 
Can’t wait for your next update.
Can the volume control be bypassed on both for use with a preamp?
 
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