iBasso DC05 Portable USB Dongle DAC, Black

Product Information

Mids sound open, spacious, with fine articulation and fluid expression in the vocal range, timbre is mostly natural without severe digital artifacts while instruments sound well textured. Treble is extended, sounding lively and agile with excessive energy but without any disturbing sharpness. The DC05 is truly excellent sounding and in blind tests, someone would have a hard time to tell that this kind of audio performance is coming from a tiny USB DAC dongle that is hanging from a phone. iBasso has developed a custom volume control application that uses the latest UAC2.0 USB protocol to enable 64-step volume control by a connected source device.

Advanced MP3 Players - the MP3 player experts

I don’t have the DC03 ATM to do a direct comparison but from memory I would dare to say that the two dongles are close enough. I have tested the iBasso DC05 with their own ITX01, FiiO FD3, DUNU Falcon Pro and with the Sennheiser HD660S that did an excellent job in driving them with ease and headroom. I remember the DC03 to be quite powerful and could certainly drive the HD660S but I have the impression that the DC05 is slightly more effortless with greater headroom and dynamic range. The dynamic range is excellent for such a dongle and the DC05 is doing a great job in presenting large scale works in a grand scale manner.iBasso DC05 vs Matkar Spectra X2 (69 USD vs 200 USD) – I was able to compare those loosely, since they are not interchangeable , DC05 being a Type-C dongle for Android, and Spectra X2 is made for iPhones. The sound is actually comparable, but Spectra X2 has a bit more dynamics and more detail, where DC05 has more punch in the lows and more impact in the bass. The bass of DC05 is enhanced a bit above what I would consider purely neutral, having a strong bottom end extension and impact. This reflects well for EDM, Dubstep and Electronic music in general, where you can hear the deepest bass notes in every song, and you can even notice nuance and depth quite easily. DC05 doesn’t sound like it has a bass boost turned on, but it surely has good weight and body to music.

iBasso DC05 Review - Top Audiophile Reviews Dacs | Daps | Amps iBasso DC05 Review - Top Audiophile Reviews Dacs | Daps | Amps

Depending on where you live, the time it may take for your exchanged product to reach you, may vary. Please allow 3-5 business days for mail-in exchanges to be processed.The US based ESS seems to be the only manufacturer who can meet the increased demand but I don’t know for how long. DC05 brings high-resolution MQA decoding right at your smartphone. It supports full MQA decoding ensuring the users a pure sound performance as the artist intended. It also has full support for 32-Bit/384kHz PCM and native DSD256 decoding. The ES9219C is a third-gen chip from Sabre Technologies that handles both decoding and amplification duties. DC05 is the latest USB DAC from the house of iBasso. iBasso has designed it with a premium Dual DAC chipset featuring two ES9219C Sabre DAC chips. It is loaded with premium features such as HyperStream III audio architecture, Time Domain Jitter Eliminator that provides crisp high-res signal decoding with ultra-low THD+N and high dynamic range. Turn your regular smartphone into a high-end audio player with the DC05 today!! Upon hooking the iBasso DC05 to the host device, a window pops-up asking for a permission to access the UAC application.

IBASSO DC05 Portable USB DAC/AMP - SHENZHENAUDIO IBASSO DC05 Portable USB DAC/AMP - SHENZHENAUDIO

Unfortunately they were short lived due to the chip shortage that is plaguing the industry for almost two years now. We listened to more songs than those named in this playlist, but those are excellent for identifying a sonic signature. PRaT, Texturization, Detail, Resolution, Dynamics, Impact, and overall tonality are all revealed by those songs. We recommend trying most of the songs from this playlist, especially if you’re searching for new music! The power rating is rather high for a dongle, at 140mW for 16OHMs, and 93mW for 32 OHMs. The output impedance is not very high, at 0.5 OHMs, and if you want to use DC05 as a pure DAC with an external AMP, it has a 2V signal at 300 OHMs, and 1.73V at 32OHMs. If you’re looking for comparisons, DC05 has almost double the driving power DC03 had, even though it has the same size physically.

In fact it is so good that it is touching the big boys like the THX Onyx and Violectric Chronos but with less than half of the asking price and this is a hell of an achievement. The sound is crystal clear, crisp and tonally neutral yet pleasant and enjoyable with all kinds of music. It should be noted that I have absolutely no affiliation with iBasso. I’d like to thank iBasso for providing the sample for this review. This review reflects my personal experience with iBasso DC05. Every opinion expressed is mine and I stand by it. The purpose of this review is to help those interested in iBasso DC05 find their next music companion. We have excellent decoding abilities too, with MQA decoding up to 16X, and 32 Bit / 384 kHz for PCM. iBasso didn’t leave out DSD fans either, and DC05 can decode up to DSD265. iBasso is not shy to mention the technical data of DC05, as it features 121dB of Dynamic Range, and 0.00056% THD+N. The total frequency range is rated to be between 20Hz and 40kHz, enough to impress both humans and serpent people.