Has anyone heard the Audioquest Dragonfly?

I started a thread nearly 2 weeks ago, "Any other AQ Dragonfly Early Adopters out there?"

I've been dinking around with a Dragonfly since Sept. 17 with my new MacBook Pro. It's a pretty cool gizmo and incrementally improves the sound over the analog output when playing iTunes. The Dragonfly opens up other possibilities, however. I downloaded Audirvana, which can take advantage of the Dragonfly's various sampling rates. I got some improvement by using Audirvana to change the upsampling of iTunes rips to 88.2Khz instead of 96Khz. There is an even bigger improvement when using the Audirvana player to play 24/96 FLAC files from HDTracks. It's also a nice little headphone amp and makes headphone listening more enjoyable.

Still, my primary music source is a turntable, and although the Dragonfly improves the sound of iTunes from my MacBook, it still doesn't have the organic ease I get from vinyl. But then, I don't know of a digital playback system at any price that does. The hi-res 24/96 and 24/88.2 FLAC files from HDTracks close the gap more. And the Dragonfly combined with Audirvana (for Mac) or JRMC (for Windows) is the most economical way to get into hi-def FLAC downloads.

Given that I've become such a vinyl junkie, I'm not sure whether to keep the Dragonfly or return it to use the money toward upgrading my phono cartridge. If you're a digiphile, I can't see a downside. It's a great little product with lots of versatility, both from its compact form factor and the many capabilities built into it, some of which can only be brought out through 3rd party software.

Johnnyb53, I remember your thread but the Agon search engine does not recognize the word Dragonfly (or whatever the problem is) and could not find your thread - which is pretty pathetic imo.

I fing it interesting that you are not especially interested in keeping the Dragonfly, I thought you liked it pretty well in your thread.

I think the fact that you need a miniplug to RCA adapter is a pretty big downside to the Dragonfly though I have not heard one.

my two cents...

Can you use the Dragonfly just to stream internet radio? Does i-tunes have free streaming? How about playing CD's on your computer to your Stereo?

Interesting device, and unfortunate that they would use a picture of a damselfly rather than a dragonfly as the logo in their literature.

09-30-12: Zeal
Can you use the Dragonfly just to stream internet radio? Does i-tunes have free streaming? How about playing CD's on your computer to your Stereo?

Whatever you can use your computer for for music, you can use it with a Dragonfly.

I don't know the procedure for a Windows machine, but on a Mac the only difference is that you plug the Dragonfly into a USB port, then open system preferences to Audio and select Dragonfly as the preferred output device. If you don't want system warnings and email notifications to come through your stereo, designate all other system sounds to go to the internal speakers.

Then plug your stereo into the analog output of the Dragonfly instead of the computer's analog headphone output. Whatever you can play on your computer will come through your stereo, whether it's iTunes, streaming radio, or a high-def player playing WAV or FLAC files. The difference is that the computer's digital audio datastream will be decoded by the Dragonfly's asynchronous USB DAC rather than the computer's internal one.