johnjonathanYes and no. The Sennheiser HE 1, which is the Orpheus uses 8 of the ESS SABRE ES9018 as per the official page: https://en-us.sennheiser.com/sennheiser-he-1 I am certain that resulting sound signature is very different.
olbezImplementation of components is just as, and possibly more important that the components used. I'm sure Sennheiser made the DAC as clean as it ever could be then obviously went all out on the amp.
MeaslyblueTotally agree. That just reinforces the point I was trying to make originally - just because they used the dac chip from the same family, does not mean that both devices sound anything alike.
johnjonathanI have no idea how it compares to Orpheus heh, but it is great. Like I said in my other post here, I compared the udac5 with a bunch of other dacs in sub-$200 category and it was the best sounding for my tastes.
olbezYes and no. The Sabre chips have per se very similar sound signatures. They mostly differ in the amount of distortion and noise - in fact it is even more important how they are used. The Sennheiser HE 1 uses 4 of the 8 DACs in parallel per channel. The Gustard X20 uses two ESS9018 chips, one per channel, where in each one 4+4 are used in a balanced configuration (which should then be even superior). And so on. But 90% of the sound is given by what is around the DAC and I would expect the HE 1 to be top notch in this regard.
The DAC used in the uDAC-5 is not the 9010 but the 9010K2M, which is a low power, two-channel (stereo) only version. So it uses one internal DAC per channel. I expect the noise and distortion to be higher, but it would also be meaningless to put anything else in such a small box, with an opamp based amplification circuitry that by necessity is very simple - and definitely not at the refinement level of the Gustart X20, not to speak of the HE 1.