DAC Audiolab Q-DAC
Following on from the success of the M-DAC a couple of years back, Audiolab recently launched a stripped-down version with a slightly cheaper DAC chip and no rotary volume control or balanced XLR audio output sockets. Effectively a DAC preamp, the Q-DAC is very well specifi ed by the standards of the group, being built around the latest 32-bit ESS Sabre 9016 DAC chip, which runs at up to 24/192 resolution and sports seven adjustable digital filter settings. It has a good range of connections, including one coaxial, one optical and one asynchronous USB input, plus digital coaxial and optical outputs.
The fascia has an excellent and informative OLED display, plus a bank of fiddly buttons that cover input selection and volume control, should you wish to use it as a preamplifier. There's also a front panel-mounted 6.3mm headphone socket, with the accompanying built-in amplifier, naturally. Inside, the manufacturer says, much attention has been paid to reducing jitter, and there are triple cascaded jitter attenuation stages to ensure that it is kept to a minimum, and a high-current Class A analogue output stage. By the standards of the group, the Q has a truly massive separate off-board power supply. Overall, however, this is the most flexible DAC here, with a wide range of features that are all implemented very well. The aluminium casework is superbly finished and the product feels more upmarket than its $650 asking price.
The Arcam is a hard act to follow, but the Q-DAC isn't fazed and delivers a sound that in some senses is deeper and more three dimensional, with a fractionally better sense of the spaces between the notes where the Arcam slurs them more into one. However, tonally the Audiolab isn't quite as good - it simply doesn't have the former's richness and textural insight. This means that on the Beth Rowley track, for example, those plucked steel guitar strings sound slightly thinner and more needly. Her voice doesn't quite have the body or the vibrancy of the Arcam, but by the same token the Q-DAC manages to separate out all the strands of the mix with enormous confidence and poise - the irDAC never sounds wobbly, but the Q is definitely more secure.
The Bruce Springsteen track again throws lots of light on things, and shows the Audiolab to be one of the fastest, tightest and controlled DACs in the test, but it doesn't quite have the textural richness on piano that the Arcam or NAD possess; there is less of a sense that the Q enjoys playing the musical notes and more that it is intellectually interested in showing the gaps between them. One listener says: "It does rhythm pretty well, but there's a lack of complexity to the timbre of everything". Another adds: "It's like you're getting the main image but not so much behind it... there's nothing to go and explore".
Maybe this overstates things a touch and lots of praise does go to the bass. Although it's not the richest here, it's well extended and integrates well with the rest of the frequency spectrum. The DAC also images well, and puts up a very wide stereo soundstage. Excellent overall, it doesn't charm our panel as much as two others here, but they all agree it's a lot of product for the money.
