Emotiva Stealth DC-1 DAC/Preamp Review

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admin

Audioholics Robot
Staff member
If the Emotiva Stealth DC-1 DAC, headphone amp, and preamp does what Emotiva intends, you'll never hear it. That's right, the whole point is to get out of the way and let your source shine. The $500 price tag would be worth it for the DAC and headphone amp or the DAC and preamp alone but Emotiva gave you all three for that price.

That's amazing from a company that I thought was done amazing me. The Emotiva Stealth DC-1 - if it isn't on your Christmas list, you need to reevaluate your priorities. Highly recommended!



Read the Emotiva Stealth DC-1 DAC Review


Let us know if you'll be asking Santa to place one under the XMAS tree this year for you or a loved one.
 
ski2xblack

ski2xblack

Audioholic Field Marshall
Would like to see bass management in this device.
 
slipperybidness

slipperybidness

Audioholic Warlord
I think the $499 price mentioned in the article is temporary during the Emo Holiday Sale
 
BoredSysAdmin

BoredSysAdmin

Audioholic Slumlord
A bit expensive, yet this would be nice monitor stand for my desk (and allow me to use balanced connections to jbls :) )
Too bad I have already invested in AE-D1 (above mentioned Benchmark Dac1 is wayyyy to rich for my blood)
 
P

PENG

Audioholic Slumlord
I hope it stays at $499 long enough to compete with the upcoming Opp HA1.
 
ImcLoud

ImcLoud

Audioholic Ninja
I seen this at the emo even in boston, and its a really nice unit, they had it paired with a set of stealth 8's and WOW, very powerfull, it had a really nice balance of low, mid, high and all of it was quality sound, not mediocre bass and mids with nice highs but nice all the way through, the price is a little hard to swallow at $1900 {show price, not sure what they are now} for the monitors and the dac, but it would be hard to duplicate it for the money... Very very nice...
 
P

PENG

Audioholic Slumlord
Any pricing info on that yet?
No idea but I hope Emo would force them to stay below $799. Some are guessing as high as 999 or around the same as the 105. It does not have the disc drive and the associated video processing so I think it should be priced well below the 105.
 
haraldo

haraldo

Audioholic Spartan
Hmmmmm... Oppo HA1 for sure looks like a nice thing indeed :p
 
S

sharkman

Full Audioholic
No idea but I hope Emo would force them to stay below $799. Some are guessing as high as 999 or around the same as the 105. It does not have the disc drive and the associated video processing so I think it should be priced well below the 105.
On the other hand, I understood the Oppo will have analog input, and handling things right in the analog domain is not cheap.
 
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PENG

Audioholic Slumlord
On the other hand, I understood the Oppo will have analog input, and handling things right in the analog domain is not cheap.
I don't expect anything from Oppo to be cheap, just good value for the money. I do expect it to be priced below the BDP-105, okay maybe not well below but say a couple hundreds less would be nice. The 105 has full blown universal disc and USB player, 7.1 analog out, top notch video processing, network streaming, the same ESS DAC but it has two of them, one for 7.1 channel outputs.

Yes the HA1 has analog input but that shouldn't add much cost as it should simply bypass the DAC part, nothing more than that. I was actually thinking of biting the bullet and buy a second 105 for one of my two channel system until I found out about the HA1. Not because I think the HA1 would make my system sound any better but it will not make it look stupid to include a full blown 7.1 channel universal player just to be used as a USB player/DAC/preamp.

I know this thread is about the EMO so I am going to stop talking about the HA1 now.:)
 
Philth

Philth

Audiophyte
If that is truly a real time spectrum analyzer on that HA1, I'm going to find it hard to swallow that it will be competitive with the Stealth DC-1 on a price point. Sale or no.

Yeah, looking over the write ups, that thing is going to cost a lot more than their bluray players.
 
RichB

RichB

Audioholic Field Marshall
If that is truly a real time spectrum analyzer on that HA1, I'm going to find it hard to swallow that it will be competitive with the Stealth DC-1 on a price point. Sale or no.

Yeah, looking over the write ups, that thing is going to cost a lot more than their bluray players.
I have seen some hinted pricing but nothing to indicate that it will cost more than the Oppo BDP-105.
Time will tell. ;)

- Rich
 
RichB

RichB

Audioholic Field Marshall
The Oppo HA-1 Product Page has been updated:

A notable quote:

OPPO designs the HA-1 headphone amplifier with the same universal approach as our Blu-ray players. The HA-1 is a high performance headphone amplifier, and it doubles as an asynchronous USB DAC, a stereo pre-amplifier, a digital audio dock for mobile devices, and a Bluetooth audio transport.
Its fully balanced design and numerous inputs ensure the best in fidelity and versatility.
OPPO Digital - HA-1 Headphone Amplifier

- Rich
 
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AllanMarcus

Enthusiast
Nice review. Has anyone tried it with high end headphones?
 

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