Tested in a real room. Never paid for.
Dapaba is hi-fi and home audio, reviewed, built and explained by one self-taught builder in a farm shop in southern Oregon.
The rules this site runs on
Every review here starts with gear that is actually in the house, and every number comes from a datasheet, a parts order or a log file. When there is nothing honest to say yet, the page says that instead.
- Reviews
- Only gear Andrew owns. No verdict until he has lived with it.
- Numbers
- Never invented. If it was not measured, it is not on the page.
- Money
- No paid placements. Buy links are disclosed and change nothing.
- Mistakes
- Kept in the build logs, with what fixed them.
A streamer with a quiet side
The Black Lion lite is a small Wi-Fi and Ethernet streamer built around an ES9038Q2M DAC. The trick is a gap across the board: the radio, USB and Ethernet live on one side, the DAC, its own 100 MHz clock and the output stage live on the other, and only isolators cross.
Design v0.1. The schematic is not captured yet, and the build log says so.
- Lyrion, AirPlay, Spotify, BluetoothSources
- ESP32squeezelite decodes FLAC up to 96 kHz
- Isolation barrierI2S crosses on a digital isolator
- ES9038Q2MRetimed to its own 100 MHz clock
- OPA1656Balanced to single-ended
- RCA and 3.5 mmLine outputs
- Analog supply
- LT3042 ultra-low-noise regulator
- Parts per board
- About $31 with the basic clock
The receiver that changes its own mode
The studio's Yamaha TSR-700 used to need a remote every time a movie ended and music started. Now a small Python script on the Mac watches which app is playing and tells the receiver, over its own local network API, to switch between Dolby Surround and All-Channel Stereo.
Try it: tick what is playing and see what the script would do.
What does hi-res actually buy you?
Pick a format. These are the real numbers behind the label, and whether the streamer on this site could play it.
On the bench now
Both are in daily use. Neither has a verdict yet, because neither has earned one.