It is smaller than expected, barely gets warm and the sound quality is exceptional. Due to its low power consumption it even works with my iPhone 14 flawlessly.
The true strength of this device is its DSPs though. I have tried a few devices with EQ and DSP before (Fiio KA17 for example) and they fall short when it comes to the transparancy and quality of the signal processing that the Neutron DAC has.
The PEQ and Crossfeed DSP are really well implemented. I cant tell a difference to any good implementations on the market.
Unlike with the Fiio which distorts and changes the sound in a bad and very artificial sounding way.
It really shows that the developer is very experienced with signal processing.
I am very curious how this tiny gem further improves throughout its lifecycle.
The Dac sounds great and having autoeq and crossfeed for all audio on your phone or pc is priceless! I recommend this Dac!
I travel quite often. This is the perfect super light weight solution for my needs. They give new life to my custom inears thanks to the peq function. The device is so tiny!
I really wanted to love this product. It has much to recommend it - tiny size, high power HP amp without requiring ext. power, nice display, touch/tap controls, and ability (using NConfigurator app via PC) to accept and store a huge number of DSP personalization settings. I was able to program it to implement my HD800 frequency response tuning.
First - a few words (direct copy from Stereophile Recommended Components 2024 publication):
"Everything on the list, regardless of rating, is genuinely recommendable. Occasionally we get letters of complaint from manufacturers who object to being included in, say, Class B—but inclusion in Class B is a thing to be proud of.
Class A Best attainable sound for a component of its kind, almost without practical considerations; the least musical compromise. A Class A system is one for which you don't have to make a leap of faith to believe that you're hearing the real thing. When hi-rez became available, we introduced a new Class, A+, for the best performance in those digital categories. Class A now represents the best that can be obtained from 16/44.1 resolution. We also created Class A+ categories for turntables and phono preamps, originally to recognize the achievements of the Continuum Caliburn and Boulder 2008, respectively. More recently, we created Class A+ for headphones.
Class B The next best thing to the very best sound reproduction; Class B components generally cost less than those in Class A, but most Class B components are still quite expensive.
Class C Somewhat lower-fi sound, but far more musically natural than average home-component high fidelity; products in this class are of high quality but still affordable." NOTE - their use of CLASS has nothing to do with amplifier design topology which is a very different topic.
I tested it with 16bit, 44Khz FLAC files ripped from well recorded CD's. I played the files using NEUTRON Player (my go-to player) on an Android phone's micro sD card. The phone digital output was via USB C OTG using the USB cable supplied by each DAC manufacturer. Each DAC/Amp I used for comparison was played thru my Sennheiser HD800 phones.
Compared to my $900 battery powered Group A (rated by me) DAC/amp, the Neutron DAC V1 had slightly less ability to deliver the "space" or "air" sensation separating the instruments and vocals from each other - most noticeable in the low and mid frequencies. It had a faster decay to silence when reproducing the reverberation decay of the sounds in the recording environment - thus losing a little bit of realism.
It is a bit unfair to compare the DAC V1 with a 3x more expensive product - that is 15x heavier (340gm vs 22gm) and 18x bigger as well. I needed a reference system for comparison. I would not hesitate to use the DAC V1 if I was traveling a lot and needed a powerful and small unit with lots of DSP features. Kudos to Dmitry and the Neutron team for a very well designed product.
Stupid good for size and price!! Using with Verum headphones giving outstanding quality of sound ! I don’t have measurements ability, just listening, so I suggest you try for yourself.
Tillman