Digital Processor Reviews

A few summers ago, I briefly got it in my head that I could become a wine connoisseur. This was due to a very generous and unexpected gift. A local acquaintance had passed away, and his wife wanted to rid her basement of his small wine collection.

I don't know why I was chosen as the lucky recipient, but after stammering half a dozen thank-yous, I suddenly owned about 150 fine wines. A few carried four-figure price tags.

Reliably telling a Pinot Grigio from a Chardonnay isn't part of my skill set. Grape varieties, terroir, vintages? You might as well ask a toddler to become conversant in quantum mechanics. Still, I was intrigued by the bottles and amused by the ridiculousness of the situation. Me, an oenophile? I supposed I could pretend, and I did.

After opening and drinking, with my wife, a 1988 Château Léoville Barton, I wrote an over-the-top review and emailed it to a wine-loving friend for his amusement. "I beheld Hawthorn berries and beef stock along with a suggestion of blonde tobacco. Other than the obvious green walnut, there was a top note of wet Baja beach at dawn, mixing subtly with minke-whale flatulence and a hint of two-day-old scallop innards. Finally, with subsequent sips, I detected the aroma of the well-worn merkin of a Honduran sex worker. All in all, not a bad wine."

Eat your heart out, Robert Parker!

When the buzz of the Bordeaux wore off, so did my oenophile aspirations. I was already an audiophile. I mean, one hobby obsessed with determining "betterness" is all I can handle—especially because subjectivity is not the same as off-the-cuff opinionating. Useful opinions are backed by experience, earnest effort, and some level of real discernment.

Anechoic or spectroscopic measurements may give us a basic idea of how a speaker will sound, or how a wine will taste. But we're only able to judge subjectively—not mainly scientifically—if and why the 1998 Romanée-Conti appeals to us more than the 2001 vintage, or whether, to our ears, the Eversolo DMP-A8 streamer sounds good enough to beat its competitors.

And it so happens that I have some perfectly sober thoughts on that matter.

Men of mystery
Eversolo is a subsidiary of consumer-tech company Zidoo, which is based in Shenzhen, China. The brand landed in North America a few years ago, with a bit of a splash. Its Neo S 4K player won an EISA Award, but the buzz around the company turned into a low roar because of its $859 DMP-A6, an excellent DAC/streamer that's about half the size of a shoebox. Last year, the A6 and the upgraded A6 Master Edition ($1299) became ubiquitous belles of the ball, followed in November by the larger and more versatile DMP-A8 DAC/streamer/preamp that is the subject of this review. The A8 costs $1980.

US distributor Lily Luo sent me a one-page history of the company that lifts just a small tip of the veil. This is the first sentence, about Eversolo's founders: "Y and M are two senior software engineers in their 40's." Initials only? I inquired about Y and M's full names. "Their English names are Steven and Mirror," Luo wrote back, coyly. "They are very low-key founders and engineers. To the outside world, they are nonexistent and ghost-like."

International men of mystery! Is that cool? Silly? You decide. Luo estimates that the company employs about 100 people, and that "half of the team are software and hardware engineers." She says that Eversolo has its ambitious sights set on "more streaming products, digital processors, power amplification products, and headphone amplifiers."

A clean machine
The A8's CNC-machined aluminum body is just over 15" wide, about 4.5" more imposing than its A6 predecessor. The unit is 9.5" deep, 3.5" tall, and has a 6" diagonal touchscreen—substantially smaller than the 13" screen on the HiFi Rose RS520 I reviewed last year.

On the right of the fascia is the knob fronting a stepped R2R volume control. Expect satisfying clicks from the analog relays as you adjust the level in your choice of 0.5dB or 1dB increments. The knob is surrounded by a dimmable white LED ring. On the far left is a small Eversolo logo—and that's it. "Such a clean machine," Queen's Roger Taylor might sing.

Around back, we have three stubby Bluetooth and Wi-Fi antennae that can fold out of sight without compromising data reception (at least in my room). Then there are RCA and XLR analog outs, an I²S bus to feed a high-end DAC (should you wish to use the A8 as a standalone streamer) as well as outputs for TosLink and coax digital and two USB ports (marked "3.0 OTG" and "USB AUDIO OUT" respectively).

Eversolo bills the A8 not just as a streamer and DAC but as a high-quality analog preamp. Consequently, you'll find tons of options to connect other gear. The analog ins have both RCA and XLR ports. On the digital side, there's an HDMI ARC input, two TosLink inputs, two S/PDIFs on RCA, and a USB port.

On the left as you face the rear of the unit are a power switch and the usual three-prong power cable receptacle. A standard black power cord is included; I used a Clarus Crimson cable instead. Rounding out the back panel are a gigabit Ethernet port and a 12V trigger.

You can run cables between each output and whatever associated equipment you're using, but only one output at a time can be enabled—and they do need to be enabled. During my first evening with the A8, it took me an embarrassingly long time to understand why I wasn't hearing anything. I checked that I was using the correct input on the preamp, that the AudioQuest Coffee digital cable was working as it should, that I'd selected and enabled the player in the Roon app, and that the volume was up to a potentially audible level. The upshot: Don't be like me. Both the A8 touchscreen and the phone app feature an input/output screen. Just tap on the inputs and outputs you want to turn on.

When a desire for convenience is more important than getting the highest audio quality (it happens; I'm not sniffing!), users can connect to the A8 via Bluetooth, including aptX HD. The codec is a solid improvement over regular aptX, though still not lossless, and it only works with a similarly enabled source device. (Your iPhone, for example, will connect with the AAC codec, which is also supported.)

Flipping the unit over reveals a slot for an NVMe M.2 solid state drive (not included), where you can store your music files locally and call them up with the Eversolo app or the front-panel interface. The A8 will accept up to 4TB of SSD of storage via said slot. Need more? You can add a USB drive via that USB OTG port.

Photos of the unit's exceptionally well-organized innards reveal two power supplies, one linear, one switching. Eversolo says this approach eliminates "interference and noise between the system circuit and the audio circuit." The linear PSU circuit consists of a multi-winding toroidal transformer "designed to match the characteristics of analog audio circuits." The switching power supply, meanwhile, is tailored for the system circuit, where it aims to reduce "ripple and magnetic leakage interference," theoretically resulting in increased purity of sound. The A8 autosenses the voltage coming from the wall and adapts accordingly: You can use it in the US or overseas without flicking a manual switch.

Look closely and you'll see high-quality WIMA capacitors from Germany and Nichikon ones from Japan alongside Japanese Omron relays and US-made, audio-specific Texas Instruments OPA1612 op-amps.

The A8 handles files up to DSD512 and 32/768 PCM when connected via network or USB, and outputs digital files in the same elevated quality over I²S or USB. Eversolo says that the unit has a signal/noise ratio and a dynamic range of 128dB and THD+N of –120dB. Let's see if JA confirms.

Notable extra features include CD playback and ripping from an external optical drive, half a dozen digital filters to subtly tailor the A8's sonics to taste, and a nice selection of eye candy in the form of selectable virtual VU meters and spectrometers.