exaSound Audio Design e22 DAC Review

Direct or indirect to headphones

Investigating the headphone output of the exaSound Audio Design e22 I considered a comparison between the onboard headphone amp with a very affordable pair of Senhheiser HD 265 Linear cans at about $85 (now discontinued) versus the Kingsound KS-H3 Headphones and M-20 Amp/Energizer. Would it be an unfair comparison to pit an econo-headphone with the internal headphone amp of the e22 against a specialty electrostatic pair of cans with its own custom tubed amplifier?

Is this even a fair comparison? Perhaps it is not as unfair as might be expected. Use of an additional set of interconnects and an outboard device would be expected to degrade the signal. I would expect the electrostatic phones and amp to provide top-notch performance with the signal that reached it, but would a shortened signal path help an economical pair of cans make up much of the variance? If so, what might be concluded about the e22’s internal headphone amp? Perhaps that it is of a high enough quality that selecting a set of headphones and running them direct out from the e22 is quite a preferable solution?

The results were damning toward the economical headphones. The Kingsound combo was stellar, handing my ears an experience not unlike hearing the finest transducers I have used, including the Kingsound King III ESL speakers or the Vapor Audio Nimbus White. Certainly, the use of an outboard headphone amp more than made up for the introduction of another set of interconnects to reach it. I cannot say definitively that use of any headphones with the exaSound Audio Design e22’s internal headphone preamp would lose out to the likes of the Kingsound cans, but it would take a prodigious sum, likely on the order of $1K to get into the same ballpark. I suspect that the result will often be the same as with the addition of the TEO Audio Liquid Pre; the e22 will provide a competent option for preamp or headphone preamp use, but a custom component combined with the DAC output of the exaSound will bring a much more robust performance.

DSD functionality

Testing out the DSD playback of the exaSound Audio Design e22 was a glorious experience. I do not have a state of the art file playback system, but started humbly this year and plan on steadily working my way up to owning a high performance server. I am enjoying experimenting with several DACs to see how much influence they can bring to file playback. At this point the DACs are doing the “heavy lifting” as they upsample PCM files ripped from CDs (16 bit/44.1kHz).

My 2012 Mac Mini does not natively play DSD, so the conversion is left to Amarra 3.0; the software does the conversion and sends the DSD converted file to the DAC. I was not sure how much benefit would be obtained by this method, but was bowled over by the wealth of information, which translated into realism, brought by the DSD format. The difference in hearing the DSD file played back in quad DSD by the exaSound Audio Design e22 was nothing short of spectacular!

I chose two pieces of music I am familiar with, Tears for Fears “Shout,” and America’s “Horse With No Name”. The e22 provides an already gratifying richness when playing the PCM files (They had been ripped to my Mac in AIFF format) with a 384kHz frequency at 32 bit depth. But, the songs seem to be nearly remade by an entirely different, contemporary band when heard as DSD files. One of the most notable differences is the sheer fullness to the music, as there seems not so much to be a collection of instruments each having a defined number of notes, as an avalanche of notes. I thought the exaSound Audio Design e22 was excellent at detail retrieval with PCM, but I had no clue how extended that capacity was until hearing DSD. I am a detail freak, and the backing and filling of so much content enraptured my mind such that it could barely keep up while hearing it! The extension is so extreme in regards to note decay and the fullness of the notes so thorough that unlike PCM the music seemed to “flow” as never before.

Through all this the e22 kept its basic character tonally. The good match that had been achieved by pairing the e22 with the TEO Audio Liquid Pre continued to invigorate. Again, I was hearing such a content laden performance that my ears struggled to absorb it. The experience was as so profoundly different than the expected that I had to replay the tracks to capture it all. One of the great joys of hearing these pieces closer to their studio (or remastered) form was how seamless and smooth they were. Based on this experience I have no doubt that although DSD is more data rich, it does not result in a robotic soullessness. It resoundingly confirms my contention that there is no such thing as too much data or information in digital music. With such an increase in information the ear hears music as evidently more natural.

There is such a paucity of media currently in DSD format that I fear it may not succeed beyond the Audiophile community. There are enormous gaps in the media libraries of titles offered online, such that I despair of ever having my favorites represented on a file with a .dsf suffix. If you, however, do have such files, rest assured that if you are thinking ahead toward a time when you would wish for the e22 to play them, it will do so deftly, without glare and stiffness often associated with digital playback.

An engineer’s effort, and reviewer’s choice

I would not call the exaSound Audio Design e22 a musician’s type of product, simply because it reaches beyond where musicians generally expect playback to peak, and extends to the domain of the engineer. Behind the recording studio window, the engineer hears all. Although the e22 has a sterile name and appearance, its sound is nothing of the sort. It is the epitome of powerful processing without an iota of strain or cheapness, which makes it an easy recommendation for file playback enthusiasts.

Associated Components:

Source: Macintosh Mac Mini; Sonos Digital Music System; Musical Fidelity M1CDT Transport

Playback Software: Amarra

NAS: Buffalo Linkstation 500G

DAC:  BMC PureDAC; Eastern Electric Minimax DAC Plus with Burson and Dexa NewClassD Discrete Opamp Upgrade; Musical Fidelity V90-DAC; ifi Micro USBPower and Micro DAC

Preamp: TEO Audio Liquid Preamplifier; VAC Renaissance Signature Preamplifier MkIIhttps://www.dagogo.com/vac-signature-preamplifier-mk-2-review; Pass Labs XP-20; Cambridge Audio 840E

Amps: VAC Phi 200; Pass Labs X600.5 Monos; Musical Fidelity M1PWR (two units bridged to Mono)

Integrated: Pathos Classic One MkIII stereo tube hybrid (two units bridged to mono); Peachtree Audio Nova

Speakers: Kings Audio Kingsound King III; Legacy Audio DSW Clarity Edition; Kings Audio King Tower omnidirectional; Daedalus Audio Ulysses used in Landscape orientation; Vapor Audio Nimbus White

Subwoofers: Legacy Audio XTREME HD (2)

IC’s: Clarity Cable Organic RCA/XLR; Snake River Audio Signature Series Interconnects; Silent Source “The Music Reference”

Speaker Cables: Clarity Cable Organic Speaker; Snake River Audio Signature Series Speaker Cables; Silent Source “The Music Reference”

Digital Cables: Clarity Cable Organic Digital; Snake River Audio Boomslang; Silent Source “The Music Reference”

Power Cables: Clarity Cable Vortex; MIT Oracle ZIII; Xindak PF-Gold; Snake River Audio Signature Series; Silent Source “The Music Reference”

Power Conditioning: Wireworld Matrix Power Cord Extender; Tice Audio Solo