Surprised there's no love for E1DA here on Linsoul, so I am piping up: I've owned the Powerdac2.1 now for about a year with frequent usage. I had intended to buy a HipDAC or a tubey desktop something but after using for about a week I haven't looked back.
I've got an old Marantz with 1/4" out, a couple sound interfaces w/ built-in DACs, a Fiio BTR3k as my mobile mainstay, and decades of experience with higher end home stereo and car stereo gear as comparison. The PowerDAC is my go-to amplifier when I'm in the mood for a bit of volume and active listening.
Sources: qobuz + spotify and a few FLACs over laptop and android.
I'm an EQ freak and have some 20 different pairs of headphones and IEM. The ability to save presets on the device is fantastic and you can really tailor the profile to anything. Average phones can be cleaned up, good phones will shine. The app is brilliant and simple to use, and I've never had a single issue finding the BT connection.
* Balanced output - most of my IEM have balanced cables of average quality and the detail on display here is incredible. Texture for jazz, crunch for metal, rich expressive vocals for opera. There is a great deal of detail on offer, so much so that with bright phones ambient noises in live recordings can become bothersome and send you towards the PEQ to quieten them down.
Out of the box sans preset is pretty much dead neutral running toward thin, which is where you need the starting point to be. If you're the type that wants color out of the amp, the "wet" slider is probably the only EQing necessary. Just adding a touch of warmth into the lows and it sounds great out of the box. However, you can fiddle with a full PEQ and dial in exactly what you want and there's no need to adjust it ever again.
* Unbalanced - still plenty of power here to drive most modern over-the-ears phones. Works fine with my cheaper AKG K240, K52, and Shure SRH840. I find that it loses a bit of the sound staging and depth for classical but otherwise is unnoticeable for 99% of my music. Same good technicals just less output.
Cons / Surprises:
1) I highly recommend a USB noise filter for laptops. There will be static and hissing at very low volume levels since the circuitry is pretty simple in this device. Less of an issue on mobile as the output tends to be a lot cleaner than cheap PCs. Might not be an issue on a Mac.
2) sometimes when swapping between balanced and unbalanced modes, either the device, your source, or both can get temporarily confused and one channel will cut-out. Restarting my laptop and the DAC does the trick, but when it happened the first time I thought it blew up. Nope! Just a small glitch, and it's been very reliable otherwise.
Given the cost of this device it's well worth it, and you have a small rig that sounds as good as those costing several hundreds more.
~~ BIG FAN ~~
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