Hi-Res Lossless Music CX Pro USB C to 3.5 mm Audio Adapter HiFi 32bit 384KHz CX31993 Dongle Headphone Amp USB C DAC Compatible with iPhone 15 Pro Max Plus, Galaxy S23 Ultra, Pixel 7 iPad Air Mini

This is one of 6 CX31993 dongles I've purchased. A couple of those were also CX31993/MAX97220 DAC/dongles. It's also the first one I bought and I fell in love with it. That started the hunt for the best CX31993 dongle.The quality appears top-notch. No flaws spotted on the connector housings, jacks or gold-plated connectors. The twisted wire cable looks nice, seems strong and is nice and flexible.The sound on it is amazing. The soundstage is wide for sure, but it's also deep, and picking out individual instruments, voices, percussion and details are easy. It also has a great sense of "air" throughout; the sound is never congested.I don't know what's more amazing, the fact that this great sound comes from such a small package, or that this great sound comes at a cost less than a meal for two at a fast-food restaurant!Of all the dongles I own, and the chips that power them, the CX31993 is my favorite so far (for sound qualities mentioned above). This cable's implementation of the chip is as good as any, and actually sounds better then any of the other brands I've tried. What's the reason? I dint know - cabling? Materials used? Whatever it is, it works, and at this price, it's a no-brainer. Get it!NOTE: The manufacturer has a newer model of this DAC/dongle listed, with gray connectors, sturdier looking cable and, at this time, a couple of bucks cheaper, but to me it does not sound as good as the one in this review.

I reviewed this DAC by listening tests, inspecting the USB traffic, and profiling with an oscilloscope. Yep, it does receive 384kHz at 32bits, although you may be hard-pressed to find audio recorded at that quality.The signal appears quite clean when viewed on the oscilloscope-the filtering is good, notably better than the same from my T480. The Thinkpad's output is my personal baseline for consumer audio, and this manages to beat it, so it earns the check in my book.The sound feels bright but not aggressive, has a and the adapter can throw a LOT of bass before starting to feel muddy. It has a slight V-shaped curve, (1.2dB Stdev) which means the listening experience is pleasant, but it doesn't alter the sound much.The adapter comes in a metal tin surrounded by cheapo foam. I can't complain, it got here in one piece. I'm happy that it's not that terrible stamped plastic that hurts your hands almost as much as the environment.The housing feels nice (it is real metal) although the cable feels floppy and unprotected. I added some heat-shrink tubing to hopefully serve as stress relief, but if it does break before I lose it, I don't think I'll be particularly upset. The value is good, it's definitely worth the $12 that I paid for it.

Well made great price.

Played on Focal Clear Open Back Headphones for testingImpedance 55 ohmsSensitivity104dB SPL / 1mW @ 1kHzFrequency Response More information 5Hz - 28kHzResponse, Crispness, Voices, echo and acoustics from a large room are outstanding for something this tiny. HOWEVER, it does not live up to the QUAD-DAC the LG v60 flagship phone had that was out 3 years ago. So this device falls short on current tech comparisons at this small of a form factor. The bass on focal clear's was never (loud) to begin with so as for what these normally listen as they work well but doesn't slam or bump loud. Overall SQ, 6/10. Bass response 5/10, Brightness of the songs from Techno, rock, and country seems to lack that strong Vibrancy of a stronger pre-amp. You could say at times it feels like you go from a 320KB Mp3 to a 128KB mp3 in quality. Listening to older swing, jazz, and older music that has noise, airy response in the background, room acoustics and such, is where this excelled as it fit right at home. Response is going to vary on power demand of headphones and smaller earbuds may respond better to that smaller ohm/power draw which will definitely help in sound reproduction. Again my headphones are quite large for such a small device. It works but I'm not asking the world of it. There is a reason there are phone sized DAC's that cost 600-900$. You get what you pay for. This is all your going to get for something this small.

Lasted a little under a year, but was solid while it was operating.

Yeah, I used the Big A word - which rhymes with another word beginning in A and ending in E. I don't like flexing my good hearing on people, but we exist in a very strange society where high quality sound or clean electricity costs a lot of money.This little USB-C digital to analog dongle has shocked me. In a tiny package, only using power from the device it's connected to (smartphone) in this case, it delivers a clean 384 KHz / 24-bit signal.384 KHz is patently overkill, but most "audiophiles" are looking for the top end because of the noise filtering properties of the hardware, and generally speaking, a piece of kit which can pull the entire top end of a sine wave won't destroy the middle at any amplitude (below 48 KHz, where everything important matters). Pure sine wave versus pulse width modulation, if that makes any sense. I'm one of those crazies that can actually HEAR the noise :/I've got a $1.6K setup for monitoring at my desktop through headphones, and I'd be damned if I could tell the difference between the DAC-AMP stack and this little thing.It's $15 as of this writing. Buy it and don't look back. Holy hell.