Some people fall in love with fast cars or expensive women, but it’d be hard to blame an audiophile for swooning over this gorgeous DAC and doing something irrational to get it. Lock up your family heirlooms around the M2Tech Young DAC.
No, this isn’t a fancy $US1600 alarm clock. The LED lights that read “384” aren’t spelling out the time of day — what hour of the day has 84 minutes, anyway? That’s 384kHz — the absurdly high maximum sampling rate the digital-to-analogue converter can handle through its USB input. If you’ve got gorgeous Lossless audio files of rare Jazz performances on your computer, this is the way to process them into an analogue signal to send to a sweet pair of speakers. (The Young DAC also supports other standard digital inputs at up to 192kHz.)
Are there other DACs that’ll do the job well enough? Sure — just like a Honda Accord will get you to the grocery store. But no matter how expensive it is, some people will fall in love with the design and they’ll need to have it regardless the cost. [M2Tech and Amazon via Uncrate]