Has any inexpensive Asian DAC manufacturer harnessed the ESS Sabre ES9038PRO Chip?

☝🏻☝🏻 Agreed with respect to the defective board being identified, the replacement of which gave better results on unbalanced outputs. As for other measurements, the SMSL VMV D1 DAC still had the ESS hump in the IMD-volume plot regardless of the board replacement. But even at $900 on discount sites, it’s a bit more than most sub-$500 DAC’s having that chip. 

Oppp Sonica DAC/Streamer. $799 MSRP.   No MQA.

I thought Oppo quit making digital equipment?

@celander 

Considering its a full mono implementation of the 9038Pro requiring one chip for each channel, Noratel PSU, Neutrik connectors, an up to date XMOS USB implementation, its a reasonable price and its casing was built with performance over pure aesthetics. It would have been nice if they could have figured out IMD issue as Bencmark had with the DAC3 HGC, but that unit also has an unbalanced issue in both samples. Still, even with that, its performance is still very good.

At the moment, only if the new AKM4499 could have the potential to match this result with a possibility of not IMD issue, and maybe we will see RME or SMSL produce a unit.

I have ordered one of the SMSL units via Massdrop and will run it through a subjective comparison to my NAD M51. That unit had also received a pretty solid result via Stereophile and number of other publications. I do expect a notable difference as the M51 is known to be relaxed and resolved player and the SMSL being a more involved sound. I will be running them through a pre to ensure both have a fair shake as the NAD has a superior digital attenuation system.

I do believe that we do honestly need to see clear measurements that these new far east companies are competent designers. That really should extend to all manufactures since we've seen some odd results from respected brands as well. SMSL does appear to be capable of engineering a high degree of performance.

The SMSL D1 is a reference level DAC when run via with balanced outs. Since my power amp is single ended only, I use the Cardas top of the line clear XLR/RCA adapter.... I preferred the D1 to the IFI IDSD Pro (too sweet and caramel like) and to the Chord Dave (too synthetic and unnatural), after two weeks in home comparison (thanks to Amazon and the D1 dealer in China who allowed for 30 days returns) in my particular set up ... I use it with its preamp out into the amp, but friend runs one as straight dac and its sounds just as tremendous in his very high resolution set up as well. There have been some kinks in its firmware thou, which sometimes are really annoying, but may be later production units have those ironed out. In any event its a tremendous achievement! I ve bought mine at $1300, so at $ 900 its gotta be the biggest value in today hi end audio, as it can compete with any dac at any price IMHO, if your set is revealing enough !