Loaner Request: E1DA PowerDAC 2.1

https://e1dashz.wixsite.com/index/pdv2

A person on the internet brought the existence of this thing to my attention and when I peeped photos of the internals the drowsiness I was fighting off abruptly vanished. Claims that it "doesn't use a (conventional?) headphone amplifier" but can power headphones, measurements are eerily pristine (which of course was a red flag). The fact that it leans so heavily on granular DSP puts me off, but meh.

I saw during a cursory search that @Cspirou is aware of the brand and @nishan99 has had experience with one of their prior products. This is an $75 thing off AliExpress so hopefully isn't too much of a strain on the war chest. Might end up being something good for folks who don't want full stacks or to spend too much money? I'm genuinely curious to see what folks who aren't Zeos think of this thing (saw he has a video on it, I just scrolled past).

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I have powerdac 2. Not 2.1
Also I have e1da 9038s. I'm a fan of those products and consider them to be one of the best portable solutions.
I like sound of e1da 9038s significantly more, but parametric equalizer on powerdac and tons of various other tweaks on companion app are outstanding.
If you have particular questions I'll try to answer.

 

Honestly I'm just wondering how well these would do to power higher impedance loads because I saw someone casually saying that the PowerDAC was sufficient to power the HD6xx. Given me being active here you can imagine my incredulity

I've got a FiiO BTR7 for when I'm just not at my desk or away from home. It's got its issues in treble refinement but isn't absolutely terrible. Not sure if you've heard that to compare but I'm wondering how overall refinement on the E1DA is— I'm curious about the sound profile, whether it's leaning into that sterile, lacking nuance, etched treble sort of "transparent" sound or is actually rather well rounded and resolving of fine detail.

The plethora of DSP options was intimidating, how well implemented are those wet/dry sliders and such, they don't sound like bad free audacity plugins? Why is the 9038S preferable to the PowerDAC 2?

Sorry if this is a lot, just never heard of these and am rabidly curious

 

I've tried powerdac 2 only with low impedance headphones and i can desribe it's sound I can desribe as sterile and etched at the treble.
But e1da 9038s is sterile in a nice way - resolving and transparent where track demands that.
Also note - powerdac becomes very hot. It consumes a lot of power and barely could be run from phone. Not a portable device despite it's size.

 

Hmm, might retract my request for a loaner then since it seems like this is just more of what can be expected from a "vanishingly low distortion" device. I can definitely see how the extra headroom would be much appreciated in an ADC, but for pure playback it's just a fun little score to hit, no real translation to sound. "Sterile" in the sense that it gets rid of textures and fine detail in music? I was hoping that wouldn't be the case honestly, just so we have something different. Maybe there's a reason this hasn't caught on much.

 

Sterile in the sense - schematic. Can't describe better because of my limited english.
But companion app - something special.

 

@Lyander - Quite a bit of detail on the two '9038' units, including power output, sonic character, and options for tweaking the latter, here. The writer has threatened to review the PowerDAC too, but AFAIK hasn't yet done so.

Short version on the 9038s: very 'clean', but extra harmonics can be added to taste via the dedicated app.