TECHWEEK
Due to the shortage of production components Asahi Kasei Microdevices in table DAC / headphone amplifier Teac UD-505-X set chip ES9038 Q2M. Its predecessor, indexed UD-505, used AK4497. Otherwise, the novelty almost completely repeated the capabilities of the UD-505, which appeared 3 years ago.
The compact body occupies the area of an A4 sheet on the table. It contains circuitry in a “dual mono” configuration, there are also two ESS Technology ES9038 Q2M microcircuits – one each in the left and right channels. In particular, it helped to obtain a high signal-to-noise ratio.
ESS chips allowed the UD-505-X to work out the same DSD 22.5 MHz and PCM 32 bit / 768 kHz (at maximum resolutions via USB). In addition, the device is ready to receive audio signals via Bluetooth, and with support for Hi-Res resolutions. For this, in addition to the usual AAC and SBC, we used the LDAC and APTX HD codecs.
Four TEAC-HCLD buffer amplifiers work at the analog signal output in the new product, and in improved versions. To Teac UD-505-X, you can connect two pairs of unbalanced headphones at once using standard 6.3 mm jacks. In addition, there is a balanced 4.4 mm jack. Now these options are supplemented with another way of balanced connection – immediately to two 6.3 mm connectors. To do this, you need a special adapter or custom cable.
The cost of the Teac UD-505-X desktop USB-DAC in Japan was 138,000 yen – about $1200.
