* BEGIN PART 2*
Getting the DAC hooked up was easy enough. I purchased a 6 foot USB cable from amazon for something like 5 dollars, It is made by mediabridge and seems well made and features gold plated connectors. I do not believe in things like $150 USB cables. But, I dont mind spending 5 dollars for a nice one even though I have enough of the same type of cables laying around to stuff a horse with. Plug in the provided IEC power cable, plug in the USB cable.. I am using a windows XP machine and had already installed the Teac Driver but I did have to go through the prompts when plugging in the DAC for the first time to install the driver.
Using the Foobar2000 media player I was initially able to get standard PCM output pretty easily but the high resolution PCM and DSD eluded me for a little while. Eventually I was able to get it going and ran though all sorts of demo material I downloaded for free. One interesting thing to note is that each time you switch formats the Teac makes a relay click sound. What I think this is, is the output possibly switching off and back on while the DAC switches formats to prevent unwanted noise? To be honest that is just speculation.
Another somewhat annoying feature is that when you first turn on the unit, the display will blink USB READY and the LED to indicate USB input will blink until you play some material to switch the DAC from a standby type mode to the playback mode. A couple useful features of the DAC are the ability to turn the display brightness level or turn it off completely. (this only affects the actual display, not the input selection LED) You can also select if you want pin 2 or pin 3 hot with XLR output. And, Thank goodness it does not have blue LED's They might seem cool but really, I do not want to stare directly at the sun when I am trying to listen to music in complete darkness, You feel me? The display is a very unobtrusive shade of orange.
The volume control on the front panel controls only the headphone output which is rated at 100mw per channel into 32ohms. I have been able to succesfully drive Sennheiser HD-650 with the headphone output, and honestly I think it does a decent job at it. I rarely found the need to go beyond -20db but I also purchased the Schiit Lyr headphone amplifier and use that instead via the Teac's RCA outputs. The Teac's headphone output was a
huge upgrade over the onboard audio of my computer with the HD280's. I had never heard them sound so good, with such authority.
So far I have only used the USB input, I have not tried the two coaxial or two optical inputs, but with 5 different digital input options I think it is safe to say you will have 2 channel covered.
The "power save" switch on the back activates when the DAC has been sitting for half an hour with no signal it will switch it off and to turn it back on you must either switch the input knob, or turn the DAC off and then back On again. Not a very useful feature if you ask me, since it will not automatically switch back on when it recieved a signal again. But what do I know.
Inside the unit you will find all the electrolytic capacitors are 105 degrees celsius rated which is an upgrade over the typical 85 degree ones, you will also find some rather high end chips from the likes of JRC (musus) and TI (burr-brown) Here are a few internal photo's. My only gripe inside the unit is the cheap volume pot for the headphone output. I would have liked to see a nice Alps unit in there but, It is only the headphone output, The line out signals are not going though this component.
I suppose that this being an audio component I should talk about audio performance. I am not the type of person who is going to tell you how well the bass drum sounded on track X or how well the cowbell sounds on track Y because quite honestly when I read a review I find those sections entirely useless as they are purely subjective, I want to focus more on the hardware and actual use of the product. I will say this, The DAC with standard cd quality PCM files sound very good to my ears. With the Schiit Lyr and Sennheiser HD650's everything pretty much sounds like it is supposed to. I do not hear any real flaws. The tonality seems very balanced and music sounds very clean and I do not notice any background noise to speak of.
With High Resolution PCM and DSD both DSD64 and DSD128 music does seem to have a more natural quality to it than standard cd quality but I would also say that that may be mostly due to the fact those particular recordings are higher quality from the start. Without having the same exact recording in both formats it would be hard to say with any certainty. I really wish there was a bigger push for high quality recordings in the mainstream music instead of just audiophile recordings because I simply do not like "audiophile" music all that much.
Another comment I will make is that I have been hearing more and more flaws on recordings than I have in the past but here again, I purchased the Lyr and HD650 to go with this DAC so having such resolving headphones may be a major contributing factor here.
In Summation, I have been very happy with deciding to purchase the UD-501 over the other alternatives even though It is the most expensive of the bunch. I have been pleasantly surprised with the overall build quality of the unit, as well as the features and sound quality. I plan on keeping this as my primary source component for quite a while now that I can finally get high quality audio from my computer. It will be interesting once I am able to get my stereo back up and running to do a side by side comparison with the same track between my 3910 and the Teac playing FLAC or even DSD files.
I do wish that the headphone output had a little more oomph to it in order to drive some of the harder to drive headphones. You wont be driving any Audeze's with this but for most people I think they will find it to be entirely sufficient. Some other reviews had commented about the fact it does not include a remote control. Personally I do not know what use a remote would have for me with this product. I would not be switching sources enough to consider it a hassle to get up and move a knob.
Getting it to work with Foobar2000 did take a little playing with different settings,drivers and addons but eventually I did get it going. One other thing to note is that the DAC does not work like a computer soundcard where you can play multiple things at once and hear them all mixed together. At least in my setup it seems like If I want to watch a youtube video I have to stop my music player and wait a few seconds, or vice versa. This may have more do with the way I have it setup in my computer than the actual DAC.
If anyone has any questions please ask them and I will do my best to answer them. I think I have covered most of my thoughts on this product here but I may have overlooked something here and there.
Associated equipment:
Dell PC running Windows XP and Foobar2000
Schiit Lyr Headphone amp
Liberty Cable Z500 Digital cables (as interconnects)
Mediabridge USB cable
Sennheiser HD-650 headphones
also briefly connected to a 7.1 system via RCA outputs
