XDUOO TA-01B High Performance USB DAC Tube Headphone Amplifier

Is this the best DAC/Headphone amplifier, tube or otherwise? No. Do you get your money's worth for $140? Heck, yes!!! I replaced the very well-regarded Schiit Fulla 2 headphone amp with this one. I thought that I would keep them both at first and use the Fulla when I wanted accurate and use the XDUOO when I wanted the music a bit more colored. Well, color me ticked cause I'm giving the Fulla away!The DAC is really not too bad in my opinion. That said, I don't use it and use a Schiit Modi Multibit, but I've A/B them and I can't find anything wrong with the DAC. I wouldn't use it for my speakers (no line output anyway), but it's plenty fine for listening to headphones straight from the computer. It definitely provides a warm, tubey sound from it's little 12AU7. Speaking of which, it took my 3 whole days to replace the Chinese tube with which it came. I tried a couple and landed on an RCA (with black plates - important) that I found on eBay. It was $20 delivered.Now, I'm in listening heaven playing Ultra HD tracks from Amazon Music through my headphones, a pair of 1MORE Triple Driver Over-Ear Headphones (never past 9 o'clock on the volume knob either). The last thing that I'll add is that I was impressed with the overall quality of the amp and the packaging, etc. This isn't some POS thrown together by a Chinese manufacturer someplace. A lot of thought and design (and expense) has obviously gone into this product. I would recommend this little tube (hybrid) amp to my best friend and probably will!

I bought this DAC/AMP on 4/13/19 and the DAC section died on 6/11/20. I think it is because the AMP section gets very hot and eventually it will kill the DAC section. This combo is decent but it is overpriced. Everything is unusable out the box except the AMP section. The power supply and USB cable are too short, so you have to spend more money on aftermarket cables. The DAC section measures very badly but CS4398 are suppose to be good. The volume control has too much power. The stock tube is muddy. The AMP section is the saving grace and it scales well. It can scale from a better power supply, better 12AU7 or equivalent tubes, and better DAC. I ended up using iFi iPowerX 12v/2a as power supply, TAD 12BH7 as tube, and SONCOZ SGD1 as the DAC. iFi iPowerX opens up the sound stage more and improves treble response. TAD 12BH7 gives a warm sound without being muddy like the stock tube. SONCOZ SGD1 improves the sound stage and separation. I wished xDuoo just remake this AMP and remove the DAC section. Have a low/high gain switch, improve components, and lower the cost. There is no good Tube AMP under $150 and xDuoo should take advantage of the market. It is hard to recommend this DAC/AMP because you can get better a tube amp for the money and you spend too much on aftermarket upgrades. This AMP does sound tubey and there are huge differences between my solid state amp, Geshelli Archel 2.5.Extra notes for tube comparison:~stock 12AU7: muddy bass and everything else is rolled off~Genalex Gold Lion 12AU7: very bright and 5-8khz spike. Terrible sound and very expensive.~Electro Harmonix 12AU7: very smooth sound but it is a little congested. Mid focused, bass and treble have slight roll off.~Electro Harmonix 12BH7: sounds almost like Genalex Gold Lion 12AU7 but separation is worse. Very harsh around 1-4khz. Electro Harmonix 12AU7 sounds better and I was disappointed.~TAD 12BH7: bass and mid focused, and a bit of treble roll off. Sounds like Electro Harmonix 12AU7 but better bass, separation, and sound stage. Vocals are the stars for these tubes: they are forward and warm sounding.

I was looking for a desktop DAC/AMP that had an 1/4” headphone jack output, an RCA input, external power that could drive 300 Ω headphones and some other quirk/feature that had to sold me; all in a small compact form factor and for a good price. Well, this is it.While it isn’t cheap, it’s perfect for the price. The only thing this little boy lacks is Bluetooth and some eq features (gain, treble bass control), but not an issue at all. The 6.35 mm output could be better tho, feels a bit cheap, but still I seriously didn’t expect the solid build quality (feels bulletproof) and the smoothness of the volume knob. It even has USB Type C.2100mw at 32 Ω, means that you can even drive 600 Ω headphones, so power isn’t an issue. As for the sound, the dac isn’t bad but it would certainly benefit from a dedicated one. Regarding the amp side, I didn’t found the tube to be lacking but obviously it would benefit from some old 1950s to 1970s tubes.Overall, pretty nice all rounder. Remember that this isn’t just a dac amp combo, it’s a hybrid tube amp with insane power and also a pre-amp. Most definitely my next hybrid will be the TA-10.

This amp is something of wonders when its has no hiccups. The power output seems to be limitless. I have plugged in my DT990 pro 250 ohm and at about 10:45 almost 11 its very loud listening volume for me. The amp only takes about 10 seconds to turn on(if you have tried other tube amps this is very short for most). Now for the issues i have been experience may vary from your own. My unit will sometimes randomly disconnect the DAC from the computer then require it to be unplugged and plugged back in. While this isn't a huge issue it does get annoying very quickly. The main difference between this TA-01B and the non B (TA-01) is dac chip and the usb port on the back (updated xmos CS4398 dac chip and USB C instead of USB micro extra points for this). My next purchase will be another tube for unit since i like to find the difference in my music and gaming.(update) i have found that my sound drivers were the issue. for some reason, it wouldn't let me play over 48khz on the windows setting for sampling rates. So if you have this issue, try turning down the sample rate, or reinstalling your sound drivers