GUSTARD A26 DAC MQA Dual AK4499EX AK4191 With Streamer/Renderer XMOS DSD512 PCM768K MQA384K IIS Balanced Audio Decoder Black

Product Information

The A26 is a much more resolving DAC that delineates reverb and subtleties found in a guitar twang. Adding some width at the cost of airiness, the SU-10 gives a more rigid tap to a piano accompaniment. In the first room you can spot two encapsulated 50W linear transformers, which are on the heavier side. You can certainly feel their weight on that part of the case. One transformer is powering the analog section and the second one the digital section, which is an amazing design decision, something I already saw on X26 PRO and R26. I initially tossed aside the USB cable provided without taking a proper look. It took me a while but when I noticed that the terminations are gold plated and the wire has a substantial gauge, I thought it was worth a try nonetheless. For the current to voltage conversion (I/V conversion stage), Gustard used only discrete components, not a single op-amp is found in its signal path. Its analog Low-Pass Filter (LPF) also uses only fully discrete components biased into Class-A. Again, no cheap op-amps are found in its signal path. This is a crucial part of any DAC, this is the reason it uses two toroidal transformers and this is why it dissipates so much heat. It goes without saying that R26 is an exceptional converter when it comes to layering, width and depth, exactly as the biggest majority of well-made R-2R converters are performing.

In simpler words, what a single AK4499EQ chip could do a few years ago was moved into three separate devices, two AK4499EX (for a fully balanced signal), and a single AK4191 used as a premium delta-sigma modulator. Since every chip does its own thing never to be bothered with additional tasks, the noise floor and distortion lowered, the sound became faster and more accurate than ever before. Run apt update && apt install -y multiarch-support libavformat57 libidn11 git libportaudio2* libflac++6v5* libavahi-common3 libavahi-client3 alsa-utilsNoteworthy for being far sounding, the A26 reproduces the lightest of notes with pinpoint accuracy. Instruments get a nice canvas to play around in, with the only caveat that the height is on the reserved side. DACs: Gustard A26, Gustard R26, Chord Electronics DAVE, Gold Note DS-10 PLUS & PSU-10 EVO, SMSL D400EX PCM Filter – You can choose between six digital filters provided by AKM, which are working on the hardware level. The first one sounds the most accurate, while the Super Slow Roll-Off filter sounds the most natural to my ears. Some of them are sounding quite similar and the differences are subtle at best. Boasting a total of sixteen channels from its pair of ES9038PRO, the SMSL SU-10 at around half the cost is covering its bases for a balanced unit. Getting to the unit itself, some of the rear ports are protected by covers. From the front, while the A26 came wrapped in a thin sheath of plastic, Gustard neglected to include a screen protector for the glass strip running across.

For the A26, the left-to-right width is almost boundless. Only when piecing it together with the depth, it can be perceived that the front imaging is inching just a few steps closer.I did a 'w' in MBR mode (didn't seem to do anything) and then 'r' to return to GPT mode and then 'w' to write and exit. On exit, it output: Utilizing another EarMen product, I connected the A26 to the EarMen CH-Amp together with my Audio-Technica ATH-ADX5000. The A26 did an amazing job at quelling the shoutier regions and filling in the weight of the two rather thinly voiced pieces of equipment I paired. One thing that surprised me is how the A26 unfolded a violin with more complexity than I’ve heard before. I think the pliant timbre has an effect, but there is also the technical aspect where the resolution and dynamics made a solo just a bit more impactful. Staging & Dynamics Run fdisk /dev/mmcblk0 and type dnnw exactly. In the headphone setup, it was mostly connected to the Benchmark HPA4 driving several high-end planar-magnetic headphones and a bunch of dynamic headphones. Okay folks, enough with the talk, my ears are itching for some music, so let’s hit some ear-drums!

Brightness – Five positions are provided. Since we are dealing with an OLED panel that could potentially burn-in, please don’t use the brightest setting for long periods of time. The Screen Saver option seems like the best option for a long service life. At this point I thought it would probably be safer to remove the SD card and do the work on a Raspberry Pi using an SD card reader. it gave me the same warning about the hybrid partition table(s). Reading a bit it seemed that the answer was to use fdisk to edit both the GPT and hybrid MBR consistently. I did this and the resulting 'p' outputs look like this once I'd deleted the 2G partitiona and re-added it as 20G: For starters, I find it extremely technical for an R-2R unit, especially when used with a nice DDC like their own U18 or with a Singxer SU-6, scoring huge points as usually resistor ladder DACs are slower, muddier, less focused and not that precise or fast sounding. Gustard bumped that resolution so high, that I no longer feel a gap in between it and the X26 PRO.I cannot put a finger on anything that bothers me really with this unit, the soul of the music is here, it created emotions that only R2R units could easily unearth from my music, it has the soundstage of serious AKM designs, it has their flow, while retaining the best virtues of ESS-Sabre designs like detail retrieval, transparency, cleanness, speed and thunder like impact. Can I really complaint about anything wrong in this unit? I probably can’t. A26 is the flagship DAC coming from Gustard, and it’s a mighty good one too. Up until recently, I wasn’t a big fan of Gustard DACs, but their latest R26 definitely changed that in a big way. It was the first R2R DAC entry from Gustard and it was nothing short of stunning. Gustard A26 comes as a part of the same high-level tier but uses the flagship Asahi Kasei DAC chip instead of the R2R ladder. What does this mean for the sound and which one should catch your attention? Keep reading. Build and Connectivity All my tests were done blindly with the help of my beloved that was switching the inputs on the HPA4. The most striking thing to know is that both devices are sounding almost indistinguishably. Both carry the same weight in the bass, both sounds exceptionally open and wide, both have natural decays but also lightning speed when asked for. Their tonalities are very alike, but still…there was a minor difference. X26 Pro was by a hair more organic sounding, its midrange was by a smidge fuller. Acoustic music was always grabbing my soul and that happened less often on the Element X. Gustard unit seems to have a slight advantage when it comes to midrange density. It is by a hair warmer sounding in here and that worked as magic for lean sounding setups. The tone is just bolder and the air is heavier on the X26 PRO, it just feels over-powerful and really effortless sounding with everything I throw at it. In terms of soundstage, it was a hit or miss, sometimes X26 PRO felt like bigger sounding, sometimes I had a better pin point location of all the notes with the Element X and other times I couldn’t spot a difference at all. If there is one, X26 Pro is maybe by a hair wider sounding from left to right, but only with live and well-mastered music. Reviewing DACs is a complicated process, as I am listening less and less often to my own setup and this comparison made me rediscover…my own DAC. I was excited this whole review, it indeed blown me away as X26 PRO really sounds like a high-end DAC from any point of view and it seems that my own unit sounds pretty much the same. How curious. Another heavy rival from Gustard, A26, comes out after the top-ranking R26! Let's take closer look at this new DAC! A26 utilizes dual flagship D/A chip AK4499EX, and AK4191 modulator for solid performance. With an independent power supply and grounding for each channel, separate digital-analog architecture eliminates interferences from the beginning.