I have one, it's a very nice DAC for the money. It was very close in sound to my Channel Islands VDA 2 that I have since sold. I bought it because I have an analog preamp and wanted both a remote digital hub for all of my digital sources and volume control. The VDA had better bass but the YBA is smooth and is articulate for a budget DAC. I bought it more for it's feature set, mainly for casual listening so I could have remote switching and volume.
I ended up selling the VDA because I found myself listening to the YBA most of the time. Build quality is excellent, better than you would expect. It is made from a block of billet aluminum. Looks like it should cost more. Metal remote. I was told it is made by Shanling, I guess they are the majority owner of YBA now. Only downside is it can only accept 16/44.1k over USB. It will accept up to 24/96 toslink and 24/192k over AES/EBU and Coax. Also it doesn't display sampling rate. The volume is OK, now where in the league of the NAD or some other more expensive dacs but it can be used as a preamp with either RCA or XLR. I only used it as line level.
Unfortunately I brought home a NAD M51 to audition. That was a mistake, because I'm not bringing it back !
I will probably keep the YBA for the headphone stage or maybe to use in another room with a small set of powered speakers. I was going to trade it in or sell it but it's a great piece. If I didn't try the M51 I would have no regrets using it in my system for a while.
I ended up selling the VDA because I found myself listening to the YBA most of the time. Build quality is excellent, better than you would expect. It is made from a block of billet aluminum. Looks like it should cost more. Metal remote. I was told it is made by Shanling, I guess they are the majority owner of YBA now. Only downside is it can only accept 16/44.1k over USB. It will accept up to 24/96 toslink and 24/192k over AES/EBU and Coax. Also it doesn't display sampling rate. The volume is OK, now where in the league of the NAD or some other more expensive dacs but it can be used as a preamp with either RCA or XLR. I only used it as line level.
Unfortunately I brought home a NAD M51 to audition. That was a mistake, because I'm not bringing it back !
I will probably keep the YBA for the headphone stage or maybe to use in another room with a small set of powered speakers. I was going to trade it in or sell it but it's a great piece. If I didn't try the M51 I would have no regrets using it in my system for a while.