S.M.S.L M500 DAC Headphone Amp Supports MQA decoding ES9038PRO D/A chip USB Uses XMOS XU-216 with Remote Control (Black)

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S.M.S.L

67 Total Products

S.M.S.L M500 DAC Headphone Amp Supports MQA decoding ES9038PRO D/A chip USB Uses XMOS XU-216 with...

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Sold by S.M.S.L

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A

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Pros & Cons

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Pros

Works perfectly with roon and qobuz. Plays mqa/lossless from tidal. Playing with hifiman he4xx, audio technica mx50 + tidal, amazon hd on mac.

Good soundstage. Impressive timbre and a very involving sound. A great paring with klipsch herritage headphones.

The ex5 has a higher milli-watt output but uses the 9038q2m dac chip. The dx7 has more front connector options.

Construction is good and the volume knob has a nice tactical feedback. The headphone section is nice sounding also. Sound quality is good- no buzzing or humming in the background.

It's volume output is fantastic, and drives headphones rated at 250 to 300 ohms with plenty of headroom to spare. Internal amplifier also sounds good. Only draw back is that you can’t disable the volume control.

Cons

Smsl has no customer service at all, and their warranty is meaningless. It's theoretically possible to update the firmware, but if you're on a mac, it seems to be completely impossible.

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Highlights

The AI used to provide these results are constantly improving. These results might change.

Quality

But it’s fine the sounds quality is just amazing

Im running an sacd hotel california through my sony 4k bluray player upbx800m2 into it over a digital coax connection as im wri... Read More

They totally knocked it out of the park with the m500 dacamp

In my experience which does not seem to be the experience of others schiit lacks quality control

Price

The dac is excellent for the price

There might be better but not at this price

Shipping

Because i wanted next day shipping and normally use low resistance dynamic driver headphones i decided to buy the m500

I can tell you amazon stuck to their nextday shipping it arrived the same day i ordered it

One of the additional things that sold me was that it was fulfilled by amazon with 1day shipping

Packaging/appearance

Just download the windows driver from the smsl website install and you are golden within minutes

Competitiveness

Overall this is a great buy compared to competitors

This is simply outstanding support and now based on this experience i feel that smsl honors their warranty and have no issues r... Read More

Ive tried schiit products however i have had very bad luck with them losing functionality for unknown reasons and having to replace them

Secondly the volume output of the amplifier is significantly lower than my smsl sapii pro unit although i did know this before purchasing

Overview

How are reviewers describing this item?
good, great, pro, quality and tidal.

Our engine has profiled the reviewer patterns and has determined that there is minimal deception involved.

Our engine has detected that Amazon has altered, modified or removed reviews from this listing. We approximate total reviews altered up to 31.

Our engine has discovered that over 90% high quality reviews are present.

This product had a total of 278 reviews as of our last analysis date on Nov 13 2023.