Audioquest Dragonfly Black v1.5

[Dr.Jass]

What is it? It's a digital-to-analog converter (DAC) about the size of a USB memory stick.
What does it do? It replaces the DAC in your PC, Mac, iPhoon or Android (5+) phone/device.
Why do you need it? If you enjoy digital music, you'll be shocked to hear what you've been missing.

As some of you might know, building speakers is a hobby of mine. I also recondition old speaker cabinets with new drivers, crossovers, etc. While I'm no pro on that subject, I do enjoy good sound quality--especially if I built it.
Back in 2006, I reconditioned a set of old "monkey coffin" 1970s floorstanders a neighbor gave me, and proceeded to terrorize him with them for several years. Those things have had the crap beaten out of 'em. It was no great surprise that they didn't sound great after more than a decade of hard use.
A couple of years ago I reconditioned a set of '80s (very '80s) cheesy-lookin' JCPenney 2-way bookshelf speakers for the garage. I bought excellent drivers for them with decent crossovers. It wasn't an inexpensive project, but I wanted crappy-lookin' plastic-faced speakers to sound spectacular. While they do sound pretty good, I was underwhelmed for my investment--especially the expensive, highly-rated Morel tweeters. Thinking the plastic faceplates were a big part of the problem, I left 'em off. It helped, but I was still a bit disappointed.
I decided it had to be the source material, so I went back through and re-encoded all my CDs to 320kb/s constant bitrate from 224 variable. Again, a noticeable improvement but not what I'd hoped after all that effort. I ran all my MP3s through a program called MP3Gain to get them to play at a consistent volume; during process I found out a lot of them played well into clipping so I used MP3Gain to fix that as well. The clipping correction was an enormous improvement, plus there was no more jumping from a barely-audible song to one that was uncomfortably loud.
After all that, I figured maybe I'm just getting old and my hearing wasn't what it once was. That's probably still true, but...

...I read something, I'm not sure where, about the failings of factory-issue digital-to-audio converters. Well, my garage music laptop is 16 years old, so that seemed it could be a legit issue. But my tower PC? That's only three years only, and while it's just onboard sound it'll do 5.1 or 7.1 and a bunch of other nonsense I don't need. One would expect a decent DAC would be part of all that Realtek whatever. Christ, the driver/software package eats up enough hard-drive real estate and processor cycles. But I thought I should at least try to upgrade the laptop's audio.
After shopping around and finding a lot of very expensive USB DACs (it had to be USB; laptop sound "cards" can't be replaced) I stumbled onto the Audioquest website. They recently introduced a unit called the Dragonfly Cobalt, which itself ain't cheap. However, they have less-costly, if still not pocket change options. The Black 1.5 is the least expensive, with the Red being the midrange unit with higher output voltage and a better DAC chip. What I liked about all three was the simplicity: The size of a memory stick with no knobs, buttons, or any other adjustment. It has a 1/8" stereo (headphone) jack, which will work as a headphone amp but works as an output to an analog stereo source like my home stereo. I don't need surround or home-theater crap, I just want a good-sounding stereo signal.
I was a bit hesitant because while all versions of the Dragonfly are very highly regarded, they're highly regarded by the same people that swear they can hear the difference between a Wal-Mart HDMI cable and one that costs $1,200 (which is patently impossible since HDMI is pure digital). Anyhow, anyone that would recommend $5,000 RCA cables should be regarded with caution. I'm not just a skeptic, I'm also a cheap-ass. eBay, here I come. $63 later, I'd acquired a Dragonfly Black v1.5, used but in all its original packaging. It arrived today.
I was very tired when I got home, almost to the point of going directly to bed (the back medication is partially to blame). However, my curiosity about this thing on my porch was too great. I unpacked it, plugged it into the PC and it just worked. No setup, no nonsense. But I kind of like nonsense, so I went to the Audioquest website and downloaded the "control" program, which in the case of the Black really just updates the firmware if possible. Sure enough, there was a firmwre upgrade so I installed it. I also went into my computer's Control Panel and disabled all of Realtek's crap, changing the Dragonfly to the default sound device. I fired up my playlist in Winamp (which still whips the llama's ass, in case you were concerned). Since the PC is in a different room than the stereo, no real difference was noticeable from the driver's seat.
Over the past few weeks, I'd upgraded a set of old Radio Shack STS-50 bookshelf cabinets to new woofers and tweeters. The woofers were performing as expected after break-in time, but once again I was underwhelmed by the tweeters. When I went back into the living room with the stereo playing through the Dragonfly, my initial impression was "Well, I didn't pay much for it." I came into the kitchen and started doing some reading but left the stereo going. Looking up to see what mischief the dog was making, I looked at the spectrum analyzer on my stereo. I could see the high end was registering more visually, so I went back into the living room. Wait a minute, this sounds pretty good compared to half an hour ago. I kept going back and it kept sounding better, and then it occurred to me: There wasn't enough good signal in the tweeters' frequency range to even break them in--until tonight. After about three hours, the speakers sounded pretty awesome.
Wait a minute. Despite over a week's worth of listening, drawing a comparison on speakers that were still breaking in wasn't fair--it's naturally going to sound better as they loosen. I needed to check against a "reference", so to speak. I grabbed a pair of Optimus Pro LX5-IIs that I re-woofered late last year. The tweeters are the original (and amazing, as it happens) Linaeum omnidirectional ribbons. I know what those speakers sounded like all too well, and they were fully broken-in. Holy shit, Batman. I finally know what all the fuss about Linaeum tweeters was back in the day. For little bookshelf speakers with a 4" woofer, these speakers sound incredible... now. Despite having decent bass since I worked on 'em, now it's like I plugged them into a different stereo. The difference is nothing short of incredible. I wanted to go to bed hours ago but I can't stop listening to songs I've heard hundreds of times digitally already.
Tomorrow I'll try wiring up the old monkey coffins just to see if they really are that beat, but I can't wait to try this little beast in the garage--where I have my high-dollar refurbs, a healthy subwoofer, and a 13-year-older, definitely-shittier sound card/DAC. This Dragonfly will live out there permanently, and I'll replace it on my tower with a Dragonfly Red for the additional output voltage (to better match my receiver).

If you really enjoy music and use a digital source, I can't recommend this little contraption enough. If you decide to check it out for yourself, take note: The Red and Cobalt are obvious by their colors, but there were at least three versions of the Black (which was the original Dragonfly). You absolutely want the Black v1.5. It's clearly marked on the back. Earlier versions didn't say "Black" since they were just Dragonfly back then.

Oh, yeah--there's a nifty little dragonfly-shaped indicator on the top that changes color depending on the encoding depth/frequency of whatever track is playing. In my case, it's a solid green because pretty much everything I have is 16-bit/44.1KHz, but if you've got a variety or listen to HD streams like Qobuz or Tidal, it'll change to other colors as tracks change.

Now that I'm sure my hearing's not quite shot, I want to build some full custom speakers, cabinets and all. I haven't done that since the 1990s.

 

[b-body-bob]

I've got one of the newish micro PCs. The only sound out is a headphone jack. The sound is good enough for this old deaf man, but for some reason that thing pops and cracks randomly all day long even if the sound is muted.

 

[Dr.Jass]

I've got one of the newish micro PCs. The only sound out is a headphone jack. The sound is good enough for this old deaf man...

I thought the same thing for about a decade now. Yet I've put about seven hours into listening since I installed and configured the Dragonfly around 6PM yesterday, and I slept eight of those hours. It's just a different world entirely.

...but for some reason that thing pops and cracks randomly all day long even if the sound is muted.

Popping and cracking--along with skipping if you can believe that--is one of the issues I specifically sought to address with the garage laptop. I'll let you know what I find when I get a chance to test it*. My thought on the track corruption is that since that computer is so old, the DAC is actually lagging. The Dragonfly should address that through something known as asynchronous clocking. It ignores the computer clock and sets its own.

If you've got a USB port, the Dragonfly can be used. They sell a dongle for use with smartphones (it's included with the Cobalt model), though late-model iPhones need a "Lightning Adapter" since Apple must be proprietary wherever possible. If one's going to connect to a phone or laptop that moves a lot, that's where the model really becomes important. The early black-colored, non-v1.5 units are notoriously power-hungry and will flatten a phone battery in a couple of hours and noticeably shorten a laptop's endurance. AQ makes no secret about that. On a desktop machine, it shouldn't make a noticeable difference.

* I really want to check it out in the garage, but I just as badly don't want to disconnect it from the tower to do so. I really need to order another so I won't have to swap.

 

[Dr.Jass]

Just to see, I reconnected the big floorstanders I redid back in '06. Yeah, there's absolutely no problem with those whatsoever. I'd definitely need to lower the bass sliders on my EQ if I was going to continue to use 'em, so the improvement is clearly across the entire audio spectrum.

 

[69.5CUDA]

having played with a few dac's im actualy shocked your getting that much improvement out of what amounts to a usb stick, the brick i was given which i belive to be a soundblaster does the kind of thing your talking about to a level i wasnt even aware i could hear especialy when fed FLAC

 

[Dr.Jass]

The difference is astonishing, especially for something so small. I hoped for an improvement obviously, but this is an order of magnitude better than I imagined. Stretch was here today, and while he didn't hear the setup prior to the Dragonfly, he did mention a couple of times how incredible those Linaeum tweeters sound. Prior to the Dragonfly, he would've wondered what all the hullabaloo is/was about them too had I mentioned it (he'd never heard of 'em previously). What's funny is that the Dragonfly is a couple of years older than the 5.1 surround sound on my desktop, but it sounds dramatically better.

I looked at some of the SoundBlasters. Their less-than-stellar reputation for reliability of late is why I kept looking, eventually stumbling onto the Dragonfly. A lot of the problems seemed to revolve around the software, which on the newer ones I guess is self-updating and causes settings to refuse staying set or the card to cease working. I figured that there'll always be a few bad ones, so I looked into older models with better records. Some of those looked great, but all the SoundBlasters were either way more large, complex and feature-laden than I wanted, or didn't have the capabilities to play more complex encoding like 24/96. They also all required software of some kind to run in the background. I just wanted a clean stereo output and nothing else. No THx, no 5.1/7.1, no effects or trickery since I'm connected to a 2-channel stereo (music universally sounds terrible through home theater amps--the more channels, the worse it gets). I rarely even watch movies, to be honest. I haven't been to a theater in 24 years.

If I had a home-theater setup, I'd definitely have kept looking. The Dragonfly does exactly what I want with no software and indeed, no controls. It's just a matter of changing the Sound settings in Windows Control Panel to use it as the audio device. The only software is the firmware updater, which doesn't run in the background. The tiny size is definitely a bonus, as I have enough crap hanging off/around my PC.

I'm shopping for another, so that's a pretty good testimonial. I plan to have Stretchamongous here when I set up the garage Dragonfly so he gets a good A/B comparison.

 

[b-body-bob]

$170 @ amazon. Yikes.

I'm a music fan but that would buy me a pretty good amp-in-a-box, which I don't need either because I've got one of these (and 2-3 other amps that I don't use).

I guess I'm pretty easy to satisfy and have become stingy in my old age.

This PC is plenty fast and all that, just for some reason, if I don't power off the speaker system, it randomly snaps crackles and pops when it should be silent.

I hadn't thought to try a BT speaker, which I have, to eliminate the headphone path to sound and see if it continues to act up.

 

[Dr.Jass]

$170 @ amazon. Yikes.

This PC is plenty fast and all that, just for some reason, if I don't power off the speaker system, it randomly snaps crackles and pops when it should be silent.

I hadn't thought to try a BT speaker, which I have, to eliminate the headphone path to sound and see if it continues to act up.

Yeah, they're expensive new. That's why I bought a used one. I, too, am stingy when it comes to anything other than car parts (and even then, unless it's something hard to find, I'll await a good deal). I was also skeptical that it could make such a big difference, due to my dim regard for "audiophile" equipment reviews. I slept through an auction for a new-in-the-box Dragonfly Red that ended this morning. It didn't sell at $90. Regardless, were I not aware of eBay and just had to base my purchase just on what I've heard, I'd pay $170 for it (although the Black v1.5 I have, I believe, has a "street" price around $130 or so). At this point, to me it's a "gotta have" item.

PC speed has nothing to do with sound quality. The sound card or, more often, on-board sound components have little to do with the processor other than clock cycles, which are often at odds with the clocking frequency on audio tracks. As I mentioned, I have some kind of hootchie-pow 5.1 onboard sound (Realtek, as I recall) and a 3.6GHz processor, but apparently they either skimped on the DAC or its clock misalignment with audio files denigrates the sound quality... noticeably, as it happens. As I mentioned previously, I can literally see the difference via the spectrum analyzer on my equalizer.
I can't speak definitively to the cracks and pops, but it sounds like your line-out/headphone jack is being overloaded by directly driving speakers. That makes sense to some extent, because that jack is usually designed to only run headphones directly, which are high-impedance devices (600Ω or greater). Amplifier inputs have similarly high impedance. You're trying to run something on which the total impedance is 10Ω or less. The amp chip probably runs hot, which may explain the noises. The various Dragonfly models probably wouldn't help that, since they're also designed to feed either headphones or an amp.

I still haven't heard a Bluetooth transmission that sounds as good as a hardwired connection, and of course the BT is only as good as the device's DAC. Mind you, BT has its place, and the 5.0 aptX spec (and up) is pretty darned good, but the vast majority of commercial Bluetooth speakers just plain suck, including ones that cost dramatically more than even a retail Dragonfly Cobalt (their most-expensive option). Furthermore, Apple doesn't even support 5.0 aptX and newer--probably because they didn't invent it--so iPhone and Mac devices are kneecapped out of the gate. Neither of my stereos ever move--the Nakamichi receiver in the garage weighs 38lb by itself--nor do the sources feeding them, so in my case there's no reason to not be hardwired, despite my desktop being in one room and the home stereo in another. A 25' 1/8" stereo interconnect runs from one to the other.

In fairness to Bluetooth, most of my experience with it has been with streaming music which, of course, sucks. Unless you're using Tidal or Qobuz, you're usually listening to mediocre 128kB/s encodes anyhow. Spotify, IHeart, Amazon, iTunes, whatever. They generally stream garbage files in the first place, but even at that they'd sound better hardwired. My friend Kevin gets most of his digital music from iTunes, and I was surprised to see that most of them were AAC 128 or occasionally 192 or 224VBR. He doesn't stream anything; they all go into his iPod because "it sounds so much better than Bluetooth." His two main car stereos are the same: An older Sony unit that opens to an iPod dock. I would assume that, being solely audio devices, that the DAC in both units would be pretty good, although they're both pretty old at this point. He gave up on streaming services for a few reasons, one of which was sound quality.

I don't consider myself an audiophile by the definition that many use, nor even necessarily a critical listener. My RCA cables are good, but I didn't pay $20 each for 'em--they're just less flimsy than the inexpensive black ones that have given me no end of trouble in my life. I buy speaker wire by the 100ft spool, using 14g OFC for speaker runs and 12g OFC inside cabinets for large drivers. I like my music to sound as good as it reasonably can, even when it's just in the background. In the past couple of days, though, I've been distracted from other tasks by how good songs I've been listening to for years suddenly sound. I haven't run the stereo this much nonstop in a long time, and I keep going into the living room and saying "Damn" if that's worth anything.
I have several albums that, every so often, I'll sit and listen to in their entirety. On those occasions, I'd always do so via the source CD because it sounded so much better than the compressed files on the PC. I'm not convinced that's the case anymore, although I haven't done back-to-back comparison yet. I will, though, because it'll be interesting to see how the Dragonfly, my PC, and 320 MP3s fare against a Denon DVD-1920 SACD-capable DVD/CD player (the only real "audiophile" component in the stack, due to its SACD compatibility) and the original source material. I still expect the CD to win, of course, but the difference may not be enough that I feel the need to break out the physical media anymore.

 

[69.5CUDA]

your dead right on "older" models being better as they have worked out the kinks and bugs, especialy stuff thats at the point of only "lighty supported"

ive been lucky with my onboards being "gaming" mobos as they tend to have overall better components and drivers to run better output overall..or..atleast a fair bit better than the cheep POS mobo's that are sold in the average "off the shelf" budget rigs even a decade old "gaming" mobo typicaly has a MUCH better built in DAC than even a brand new rig that isnt "gaming"

on the bluetooth side of things, therers 3 things ive found critical to "quality" of sound, the app used to play it, the BT DISTANCE on the devices and the rig playing it, be it a big ole home theater or a single din this is where a BT dac plugged into an aux on a single din can make some serious leaps and bounds!!!!!,

the best app ive found for this both in "user friendly" function and QUALITY is neutron player..i dont buy apps often..in fact neerly never, this one is worth the buy just to support them(think of this as the phone/tablet version of winamp only...BETTER somehow) its just that good as it doesnt muck shit up, unless you are intentionaly playing with the eq to fix things its just going to make shit play cleanly..mind you i dont "stream" from a station but from my own playlist...i rarly can put up with a "radio station" or shity djs ..never mind any comercial gets me just angry

with that said a bluetooth dac direct into a headunit in a car wired into the inputs and simply hidden out of site is an epic improvement as most heads have poor BT capabiolity and typicly run on really old versions of bt, and things kinda get "lost"

as for original source cd VS rip...well that depends greatly not only on the quality of the rip but the quality of the ripper, program used to rip etc etc etc...really unless its flac, your going to lose something to some extent, mind you flac is really only for the most truest of audio geeks, and imo still overkill unless EVERYTHING in the components is dialed to perfection where you can notice it
simply put..if you think your losing quality in the rip vs the cd then you need to re-do the rip in either better quality or with better software and components//or both...at the end of the day whats on the cd vs the rip CAN be 110% identical, its a matter of making it that way

 

[Dr.Jass]

Well, the fun thing about ripping CDs is, of course, no matter how high of quality you choose, you can never make it any better than 16-bit depth @ 44.1KHz. Sure, you can rip FLAC to 24/96, but it won't sound any better... it can't. It's physically impossible. I can't recall the name of the ripper I use, but it used the LAME back end, which 20+ years later has yet to be surpassed. Yes, there are fancier that don't pop up legacy DOS boxes, but that's part of the beauty of LAME. It runs "beneath" the operating system, so to speak. I've literally never had a bad encode, other than trying to rip a damaged CD.

Going back to the Dragonfly and DACs in general, there is actualy a much-better option in the (almost) same form factor. It's made by a company called E1DA, and the "equivalent" model is the 9038D. Although some of the improvements are academic--it's much cleaner above 40KHz (I guess that's for your dog's enjoyment)--but it does have better overall sound way back down in the human-hearing register of 20-20,000Hz. It's also got a lower, in fact the lowest, distortion and best S/N ratio (129dB--again academic but damn). It even whomps the Dragonfly Cobalt in terms of performance, even though the latter is far more expensive: Shopping around, I found the E1DA units between $99-$130. The main difference is that it's got a female USB-C connector rather than the male USB-A plug, so you need a cord to connect it.
E1DA also makes a model with balanced outputs. Does anyone even make a 1/8" TRRS-to-dual-XLR cable? Regardless, balanced inputs are the stuff of pro and very high end home audio gear... but if you've got a Crown power amp or a couple of Pass monoblock amps just lying around, well, there you go.

Of course, I found out about the 9038D the day after I bought a Dragonfly Red (also used) on eBay for $70. I think the difference is probably more in the specs than the listening, and I'm into both units for around the high end of the E1DA price range. I don't need an extension cable and my DAC flopping around in the "cord hell" behind my tower, either.

Anyhow, the Dragonfly Red is definitely louder than the Black v1.5, although not dramatically so. As far as sound quality, I can't really tell the difference other than having to back the lower half of my EQ down yet again due to even-better bass response--with only 4.5" woofers! Mad props to HiVi research for making a small driver that can produce relatively prodigous bass in a small ported enclosre.
I moved the Black out to the garage, with the side effect of turning the bass up a little bit out there, despite that system having a dedicated sub. The bass is just, I dunno, cleaner... it allowed me to turn the crossover frequency down on the sub amp, and feed more to the whole system since the satellite speakers' bass is better-defined. In my short listening session (less than an hour) I again noticed the tweeters coming to life, meaning even after a couple of years' use they apparently aren't fully broken-in... and now I'm finally grasping why Morel tweeters cost what they do. Also, I seriously need to revisit my crossovers. Oy.

EDIT: Strangely enough, out in the garage the stereo's actually a tick quieter with the Dragonfly (Black) than it was without. Apparently the Dell's onlboard sound has a higher-voltage output than the Dragonfly does. No matter; I wasn't using much of the volume knob's range anyhow. That receiver gets loud very quickly (185W/channel in stereo, 70W in 5.1).

 

[69.5CUDA]

nothing to do with sound..buuuuut

something of note doc, with the "female" input, that i find is a MASSIVE bonus and ive actualy retrofitted a few of my "prized" keyboards as such, ive even done some as male, the big bonus here is that while my devices get used HARD ..hard and long enough(giggity) to kill cords, a male usb slot on a keyboard means just replacing a cord..right up till that male breaks or bends wrong etc, but a femail input is about as bulletproof as they come, meaning youll ALWAYS break the male cord before you break the female port..which..in a shop enviroment is even more of a bonus....with that said, consider running the dragonfly off even a 6inch usb extension you may prolong its life should it get bumped etc as its not "hard attached"

ive got a specific mouse ive had a long..long...looooong time that ive rebuilt and reworked far too much, but, its a gaming mouse that fits my paws and doesnt cramp or feel funny...in this day n age NOTHING out there fits, its the original razer diamondback, ive replaced atleast a dozen cords in it....its what led me to looking at just adding ports for fast cord replacement