It competed admirably in this lopsided match-up, and I was hard pressed to hear any differences on a variety of my more strenuous test tracks. While not a totally fair comparison, I did run it side by side with a reference-class Class A headphone amplifier to see how it fared. In fact, I was VERY impressed by the D1 sonic performance. On all the tracks and with all the headphones that I tried it with, the D1 gave impressive performance that indicates a top-notch design and implementation.

OPPO HA-1 DAC/Headphone Amplifier, Courtesy OPPO, Home Theater Shack Sponsor.Firestone Audio Cute Beyond Headphone Amplifier, Class-A Output Option.FiiO E17 Portable DAC/Headphone Amplifier.FiiO X3 Portable DAC/Headphone Amplifier/Media Player.OPPO PM-1 Planar-Magnetic Headphones, Courtesy OPPO, Home Theater Shack Sponsor.Beyerdynamic DT 880 Premium 250-Ohm Headphones.Asus G74SX Laptop, Intel I7-2670QM 2.2 GHz, 16 GB DDR3 Memory, Windows 7 64-bit, Room EQ Wizard, foobar2000, Reaper DAW.The D1 and USB cable can slip into the supplied protective pouch and into a corner of a carry-on bag and follow you anywhere. Since the compact D1 is USB-powered and has a headphone output, it can easily double as a portable DAC/Headphone Amp. It showed up readily in my foobar2000 configuration panel.

I plugged it in and was listening about a minute later. With optical input, all sample rates are converted natively. With USB input, sample rates higher than 96 kHz are resampled to 96 kHz for conversion. The compact D1 makes use of a simple driverless design, with optical and USB inputs on the back, along with RCA line outputs, and a 1/8 inch headphone jack output, power switch/indicator, and volume control on the front. Its $169 price places it as an attractively economical entry with promise of high performance. True to pattern for Audioengine's offerings that I have reviewed, the D1 is compact, built tough, looks sharp, and is simple to use. The company that specializes in computer audiophile products has given us an easy-to-use, inexpensive 24-bit DAC that can handle the full range of common PCM bit depths and sample frequencies.

Audioengine brings us the D1 Premium 24-bit DAC with Headphone Amplifier output.

Audioengine d1 dac hd 598