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74% would recommend to a friend 
Xduoo XD-05 Plus DAC/Amp
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Xduoo XD-05 Plus DAC/Amp
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Product Description
Building on the success of the highly regarded Xduoo XD-05—a DAC/amp that changed the game with its versatile desktop-to-pocket portability—the Xduoo XD-05 Plus keeps old favorites while adding a host of new features. New on the XD-05 Plus are an AK4493EQ DAC and XMOS XU208 USB chipset to improve sound quality, as well as onboard USB-C ports to update connectivity Read More
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(53 reviews)
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keyboard_arrow_downTerryKao
35
Jun 29, 2020
checkVerified Buyer
Good portable DAC
Has a lot of power. Sound quality is good, but not great. I prefer my Schiit Modi MultiBit DAC while working from my home office. But I use these for telecommuting on the train, at the office, and going to the local Starbucks to get some work done (all pre-pandemic days). These are also good to use when working in the backyard, or other parts of the house as a portable DAC. I also got the XD-05BL bluetooth adapter, which makes it much more portable so you don't need to tether your music source device to the DAC. I use this primarily with my iPhone Xs MAX, listening to downloaded FLAC files with VOX, and streaming/downloads with Quobuz.
Recommends this product? Yes
NightFoxXIII
20
Apr 2, 2021
TerryKaoHave you tried rolling different opamps in it?
I know its weird since you have to pay additional for a separate part, but can improve its fun sound signature. I've used the Burson Audio V5i for compatibility and portability but am using the Sparkos Labs SS3602 for best performance.
Made my cheap Beyerdynamic DT 990 feel great by adding extra fun out of tiny dac/amp. I'm surprised my DT 990 could produce that much bass and sub bass with just an opamp
point_blank
13
Mar 27, 2023
checkVerified Buyer
Great value for money
They have solid build quality, great sound (running it with various headphones, currently with Sony's MDR-1A), bunch of useful cables come with the packaging and so many good features (I would say it's perfectly thought through but you do have some useless buttons on the side, boost is mislabeled etc. but it really doesn't matter, not for 140$, this is a steal)
Recommends this product? Yes
angstroms
139
Jan 14, 2020
checkVerified Buyer
An Amp/DAC That Pair Well With Even More Power and Current Sensitive Headphones
I evaluated the XD05 plus with Hifiman Ananda, HE-560, HE-4xx, Focal Elex, Berdynamic DT-880 600 ohm, Sennheiser HD-6xx and Dan Clark Aeon X against wide range of songs in Alternative & Classic Rock, Blues, Jazz, Classical and EDM genres.
The two headphone that surprised me on XD05 Plus, note which are both hard to drive, was the HE-560 and the Aeon X they both finally came alive, the amp satiates there current needs to really activate their drivers to there full dynamics. Now the Hifiman Ananda which is already very efficient headphone it bring better clarity.
Next the dynamic driver based headphones also found sweet spot. The Sennheiser HD-6xx finally had the dynamic voltage level to bring very good level clarity I have been missing, they felt muddled before. Focal was the easiest of Headphones to drive, but the amp give them more clarity and thump.
One thing at higher volumes I did find some distortion in lower frequency.
It is great great sounding device, with plenty of power and current on tap for both Voltage and current hungry headphones.
One issue you find you need special USB-C to USB-C cables, the one I found that work beyond the OEM cable is"
- DD Electronics Technology Co Ltd model number TC05
- TC05 cable link https://www.ddhifi.com/productinfo/469679.html .
- On Amazon search for "DD TC05 Type C to Type C OTG Audio Data Decoding Cable for FiiO K3/BTR1K/M9/M6 10 cm" you find one that is around ~$8
- USB-dongle that I have tested:
- AkoaDa USB Type C to USB-A Female Adapter DataSync and Charging
- AUKEY USB Type C Adapter to USB-A Female
- Apple - USB Type-C Digital AV Multiport Adapter with USB-A Female support
- USB-C to USB-A cable I have tested.
- Generic USB-C to USB-A cable that came with one of other electronics I have
- Ainope USB-C to USB A
- Apple Branded USB-C to USB-C cable
- Andova USB 3.1 Gen 2 10 Gbps, 3 Foot USB C to USB C with PD 100 W support from Amazon
- Akoada 10 Foot USB C with PD 100 W ( E-Marker chip) 480 Mbps charging support from Amazon
- Startech USB-C to USB-C 18" cable with Thunderbolt 3 support, which I use for UA Arrow.
- Amazon Basic USB-C to USB-C Type 2.0 Cable 3 feet
- Cable Matters USB-C to USB-C Gen 2 ( 10 Gbps) Cable with 100W PD
- QCE USB-C to USB-C 20 Gbps USB C 3.1 Gen 2 Cable 5 amps 100W
- Also tired directly connecting IPAD 6th Gen nor iPhone 8via following cables with out success.
- Apple USB-C to Lighting Connector Cable
- USB-C Adapter above to USB-A to Lighting Connector Cable
(Edited)
Rls1
6
Nov 8, 2019
checkVerified Buyer
I would like additional USD c short cables
angstroms
139
Jan 16, 2020
Yes the amp is fine, but the USB-C to USB-C connectivity is borked, I can get any USB-C to USB-A Cable then use USB- A to USB-C adapter to work with no issue. QC/QA on USB-C support is suspect.
angstroms
139
Jan 17, 2020
angstroms
- Finally found third-party cable that works with xDuoo XD05 Plus for Power and DAC connection "DD TC05 Type C to Type C Audio Data Decoding Cable for FiiO K3/BTR1K/M9/M6 10 cm" available on Amazon for ~$8. for connected to desktop it is more flexible and give it right length of the MacBook Pro to make easier to use. Getting second so I can power and playback from the MacBook Pro.
(Edited)
legaceez
90
Jun 14, 2020
checkVerified Buyer
Be careful when ordering.
This review is as much about the ordering experience as it is the product.
The product itself I would give 4 stars. Case feels a little light and flimsy. You can hear some rattling from the inside and LED's don't work as the manual suggests. Also it is very picky on what type of USB-C cable you use to it kind of defeats the purpose of a universal wire standard. On the plus side it sounds very good. Powers my Campfire IEMs without a noticeable noise floor and my HD6xx with room to spare.
The ordering experience: This might be an issue with xDuoo as this is the second order they messed up for me but they sent me the wrong color. I ordered black and received silver. Another person in the discussion forums had the same happen. My guess is they don't have any black ones to begin with so I don't know why they offered the color option. The best Drop will do is offer you $20 credit for that mistake after giving you a series of canned responses. (The rep didn't even know there was a currently active run of the same item when I asked.)
(Edited)
Recommends this product? No
NightFoxXIII
20
Feb 16, 2021
legaceezYes, this is an annoyance to a lot of people who're ordering black (including me) with a measly $20 credit to fix the mistake that there's some false advertising going on.
Other than shipping, the DAC/AMP is actually very solid. Have you tightened the screws? I sometimes get that rattling, but tightening the screws removed that issue.
My only gripe with it is that you can have rollable op-amps but you can't put any of the nice op-amps (like the Sparko Labs SS3602) since the capcitor layout and height of the case is limiting what you can put in it. If they made the space a little bigger, moved the capacitor and increased the height of the case, this would be perfect. However swapping the opamp to the Burson Audio V5i dual is sufficient for now.
rudbear
199
Jun 12, 2020
checkVerified Buyer
Poor QC & feature implementation take a 5/5 product to 1/5
XDUOO XD-05 PLUS DAC/AMP
I normally don't turn a review this quickly, but after about 6 days of listening and using the product, I can sadly and confidently say this is not a good buy. The sound is fantastic for the price but the features fail to deliver, the QC is lacking, and the experience with DROP has been very frustrating. I ordered a black unit and got a silver one and haven’t gotten any help with my QC issues.
DROP is failing in their customer support experience as they remained willfully silent, choosing to launch a second drop of the item while remaining mute. Several people report having received the wrong color or defective units and DROP is running another round instead of responding to their customer support requests. This marks day 5 since I submitted my support ticket and the current DROP will close tomorrow.
General Impressions & Use:
This is a product that, sadly, does not live up to the sum of its parts. The feature-list is impressive but fails in almost every implementation even though it ticks most of my boxes; the CNC shell is excellent but the rattling of the internals and poor QC of the parts is not; the sound is fantastic but the firmware makes getting to the best sound settings quite frustrating. The best product experience would probably be plugging it in as a desktop unit and avoiding interacting with anything but the volume (which negates any advantage is has as a transportable amp). It is at the very edge of what counts as a portable device, it’s almost better to transport it and use it at a destination.
Sound
This may be the first and last positive part of the review. The sound is fantastic; I rate it between the iFi Micro and Nano DACs, a little better than a Schiit Super Stack (Magni 3 & Modi 3 multibit) but transportable and bluetooth with the module. The different filters were interesting and noticeable in more detail-focused tracks; I really liked the minor inflections and was able to discern them even accidentally blind-testing myself by hitting the button. The ability to swap opamps is interesting and I'm considering trying it out. I’m glad this sounds as good as it does. It’s impressive how close to much more expensive desktop units it gets in performance.
The amplification is fantastic. There is almost no channel imbalance, the unit has little to no distortion at the highest settings with power hungry headphones as well as a very quiet noise floor for IEMs. I love the sound out of the thing. The sad reality is that the experience sours the sound, I can hear the PCB rattle in the enclosure through microphonics through the cable when I flip something as small as one of the front toggles. The DAC is really quite good, clear and less surgical than iFi’s mobile offerings (even though I like the sound of their Burr Brown DACs).
The majority of my listening was wired via USBC and from Spotify set to so called "high" and "quality" bitrate of 320 kbps or lossless because that's what I had on hand; the improvement in lossy matched that of the lossless sound which is nice as my use case is mostly mobile/portable listening that improves both the FLAC and 320kbps streaming audio experiences. I listened through a lot of headphones as a DAC, DAC/Amp, and Amp. Most of my time has been with Grados or Argons but I also tested with the HE 4XX, Beyerdynamic DT 880 Premium 600 ohms, DT 990 Premium 600 ohms, DT 990 Pro 250 ohms, DT 770 Pro 80 ohms, Fosstex T60RP Argon, Dekoni Blues, Blue MoFi’s, Campfire Audio Cascades, Campfire Audio Orion (lovely clarity, like baby Andromedas), Campfire Audio Comet (don’t use bass boost), M&D MH40s (for the craic), Alessandro M1s, and Grado SR80, SR125, SR325, SR325i Gold (all the Grados benefitted from bass boost and sounded so much better, even more than on tubes). I listen to a lot of genres, and tried to match genre to headphone.
Physical Build
The CNC shell is lovely, the faceplates could have been so much better with one more finishing pass chamfering the internal. As mentioned, the PCB mounting is nothing short of negligent, it affects the sound. There are some sharp corners and imperfect mating on some of the extrusion faces.
Controls
The number one critique of the unit would be that the side buttons are a massive pain as they're easily activated when picking up or moving the unit – simply brushing the side of the unit to push it over on the desk is enough to accidentally switch from the input playing music to a silent one and then struggle to intentionally navigate back to the music. I can actually hear the ping from bumping some of the side switches - you can hear the poor choice in the tactile event in the sound.
The front switches are too easily switched, which makes the gain toggle dangerous to your hearing if you're using IEMs or sensitive headphones. The jump from Low to Med is minor while the jump from Med to High is massive; it is like they intended an iFi iEMatch type reducer with Low to Med but the implementation. The left-most toggle is confusingly tabled “boost” instead of “impedance.” The single pleasurable interaction is the large knob (which is black and sticks out like a sore thumb on the silver color unit) as it is smooth and offers sufficient resistance so you can control the volume in micro-increments.
Firmware
The defaults are stupid and go to the lowest setting while sometimes conflicting with the source bitrate; I should be able to change them. While there is new firmware, I believe I have the most up-to-date version. Any time you turn it on, it defaults to the 44.1 khz USB input no matter what you have plugged in. The USB implementation is absurd.
Charging & Cables
After QC issues, build quality, firmware defaults, and controls, charging the unit is an experience-killer for me. My unit won't charge all the way, gets stuck at various stages, it requires powering the unit off and then back on to get it to recognize as charging (even though the rear LED is lit). So: it’s frustrating trying to charge the unit, difficult to tell if it is still charging, and irritating to wait the much-longer-than-advertised time to recharge it.
Read through the discussion and reviews of this item and you’ll see a lot of issues with cables. The XD05 comes with several mediocre quality cables that are too short to use anywhere but next to a USBC laptop or in shifts between charging. The is not USBC to Lighting cables so add another $20 plus shipping from Xduoo site and have it ship from China. It’s worth noting that cables that would transmit data wouldn’t charge the unit but would charge the Bluetooth module.
In my opinion current USBC and cable implementation is just short of infuriating; it would have literally been less difficult if it were USB Mini/Micro, and that is one of the worst USB ports to ever exist, but it wouldn’t be a complete goat-rope to get cables to work like the current implementation. I got this unit primarily for mobile bluetooth listening and I am still infuriated by the cable situation.
Summary & Open Letter to XDuoo
This would be a 5/5 product that I would recommend if it:
Nice to haves:
Summary:
I wish I had not bought this unit; it has great promise, it could have been an absolute champion in its class, it has flopped as a mobile audio solution, a product, and a customer experience. As a product designer, I am shocked how it managed to meet acceptance criteria while failing to be successful.
[Testing] XD-05BL Pro
General Impressions & Use:
A full review is still pending, but I have run into connectivity issues where it won't transmit from the front hip pants pocket the phone is in to the other the DAC/AMP is in.
I normally don't turn a review this quickly, but after about 6 days of listening and using the product, I can sadly and confidently say this is not a good buy. The sound is fantastic for the price but the features fail to deliver, the QC is lacking, and the experience with DROP has been very frustrating. I ordered a black unit and got a silver one and haven’t gotten any help with my QC issues.
DROP is failing in their customer support experience as they remained willfully silent, choosing to launch a second drop of the item while remaining mute. Several people report having received the wrong color or defective units and DROP is running another round instead of responding to their customer support requests. This marks day 5 since I submitted my support ticket and the current DROP will close tomorrow.
General Impressions & Use:
This is a product that, sadly, does not live up to the sum of its parts. The feature-list is impressive but fails in almost every implementation even though it ticks most of my boxes; the CNC shell is excellent but the rattling of the internals and poor QC of the parts is not; the sound is fantastic but the firmware makes getting to the best sound settings quite frustrating. The best product experience would probably be plugging it in as a desktop unit and avoiding interacting with anything but the volume (which negates any advantage is has as a transportable amp). It is at the very edge of what counts as a portable device, it’s almost better to transport it and use it at a destination.
Sound
This may be the first and last positive part of the review. The sound is fantastic; I rate it between the iFi Micro and Nano DACs, a little better than a Schiit Super Stack (Magni 3 & Modi 3 multibit) but transportable and bluetooth with the module. The different filters were interesting and noticeable in more detail-focused tracks; I really liked the minor inflections and was able to discern them even accidentally blind-testing myself by hitting the button. The ability to swap opamps is interesting and I'm considering trying it out. I’m glad this sounds as good as it does. It’s impressive how close to much more expensive desktop units it gets in performance.
The amplification is fantastic. There is almost no channel imbalance, the unit has little to no distortion at the highest settings with power hungry headphones as well as a very quiet noise floor for IEMs. I love the sound out of the thing. The sad reality is that the experience sours the sound, I can hear the PCB rattle in the enclosure through microphonics through the cable when I flip something as small as one of the front toggles. The DAC is really quite good, clear and less surgical than iFi’s mobile offerings (even though I like the sound of their Burr Brown DACs).
The majority of my listening was wired via USBC and from Spotify set to so called "high" and "quality" bitrate of 320 kbps or lossless because that's what I had on hand; the improvement in lossy matched that of the lossless sound which is nice as my use case is mostly mobile/portable listening that improves both the FLAC and 320kbps streaming audio experiences. I listened through a lot of headphones as a DAC, DAC/Amp, and Amp. Most of my time has been with Grados or Argons but I also tested with the HE 4XX, Beyerdynamic DT 880 Premium 600 ohms, DT 990 Premium 600 ohms, DT 990 Pro 250 ohms, DT 770 Pro 80 ohms, Fosstex T60RP Argon, Dekoni Blues, Blue MoFi’s, Campfire Audio Cascades, Campfire Audio Orion (lovely clarity, like baby Andromedas), Campfire Audio Comet (don’t use bass boost), M&D MH40s (for the craic), Alessandro M1s, and Grado SR80, SR125, SR325, SR325i Gold (all the Grados benefitted from bass boost and sounded so much better, even more than on tubes). I listen to a lot of genres, and tried to match genre to headphone.
Physical Build
The CNC shell is lovely, the faceplates could have been so much better with one more finishing pass chamfering the internal. As mentioned, the PCB mounting is nothing short of negligent, it affects the sound. There are some sharp corners and imperfect mating on some of the extrusion faces.
Controls
The number one critique of the unit would be that the side buttons are a massive pain as they're easily activated when picking up or moving the unit – simply brushing the side of the unit to push it over on the desk is enough to accidentally switch from the input playing music to a silent one and then struggle to intentionally navigate back to the music. I can actually hear the ping from bumping some of the side switches - you can hear the poor choice in the tactile event in the sound.
The front switches are too easily switched, which makes the gain toggle dangerous to your hearing if you're using IEMs or sensitive headphones. The jump from Low to Med is minor while the jump from Med to High is massive; it is like they intended an iFi iEMatch type reducer with Low to Med but the implementation. The left-most toggle is confusingly tabled “boost” instead of “impedance.” The single pleasurable interaction is the large knob (which is black and sticks out like a sore thumb on the silver color unit) as it is smooth and offers sufficient resistance so you can control the volume in micro-increments.
Firmware
The defaults are stupid and go to the lowest setting while sometimes conflicting with the source bitrate; I should be able to change them. While there is new firmware, I believe I have the most up-to-date version. Any time you turn it on, it defaults to the 44.1 khz USB input no matter what you have plugged in. The USB implementation is absurd.
Charging & Cables
After QC issues, build quality, firmware defaults, and controls, charging the unit is an experience-killer for me. My unit won't charge all the way, gets stuck at various stages, it requires powering the unit off and then back on to get it to recognize as charging (even though the rear LED is lit). So: it’s frustrating trying to charge the unit, difficult to tell if it is still charging, and irritating to wait the much-longer-than-advertised time to recharge it.
Read through the discussion and reviews of this item and you’ll see a lot of issues with cables. The XD05 comes with several mediocre quality cables that are too short to use anywhere but next to a USBC laptop or in shifts between charging. The is not USBC to Lighting cables so add another $20 plus shipping from Xduoo site and have it ship from China. It’s worth noting that cables that would transmit data wouldn’t charge the unit but would charge the Bluetooth module.
In my opinion current USBC and cable implementation is just short of infuriating; it would have literally been less difficult if it were USB Mini/Micro, and that is one of the worst USB ports to ever exist, but it wouldn’t be a complete goat-rope to get cables to work like the current implementation. I got this unit primarily for mobile bluetooth listening and I am still infuriated by the cable situation.
Summary & Open Letter to XDuoo
This would be a 5/5 product that I would recommend if it:
- Came in about $250-$275
- Had actual USBC support instead of the arbitrary implementation of the USB protocol
- Offered the same build quality and more robust mounting with a thought towards shock and drop-proofing
- Had single port trickle charging with secondary power port for direct charging (like the Schiit Fulla or Hel running off of onboard power with the option of more power),
- Complied with USB PD standard and charges from most sources (even allowing slower charging sources, I already have wildly inconsistent charge times, fixing USB PD would improve charging more refusing to charge from lower power sources to hide poor engineering)
Nice to haves:
- Onboard Bluetooth 5.0 with aptX HD, LDAC, AAC and other codec support with the current ability to stream and decode at the device.
- Balanced output along with the 6.5mm front out.
- This might make it hard to fit the OLED screen and controls on the device, but I think that moving the screen to be recessed in the hood on the top of the device makes more sense for a product that lays flat.
Summary:
I wish I had not bought this unit; it has great promise, it could have been an absolute champion in its class, it has flopped as a mobile audio solution, a product, and a customer experience. As a product designer, I am shocked how it managed to meet acceptance criteria while failing to be successful.
[Testing] XD-05BL Pro
General Impressions & Use:
A full review is still pending, but I have run into connectivity issues where it won't transmit from the front hip pants pocket the phone is in to the other the DAC/AMP is in.
(Edited)
Recommends this product? No
legaceez
90
Jun 14, 2020
rudbearI received the wrong color too. Looks like they never had black in stock and are playing dumb about it honestly.
Will2416
75
Apr 4, 2021
rudbearThanks for putting in the time and effort writing this review. Not only are you exposing the quality of the product, you are exposing the quality of Drop. I am consistently reading negative comments about Drop. As a disclaimer I must add that I have myself purchased the THX XXX 789, the MrSpeakers Ether CX and a couple of other small items and have not any issues with the products and thus not either returns or warranty problems. I am very hesitant to purchase products from Drop nowadays. I'm more inclined to purchase the equivalent products on Amazon at the lowest retail price which are sometimes on sale comparable to Drop prices. Unless Drop does something exceptional in collaboration with a manufacturer, especially very reputable ones (Dan Clark, Sennheiser etc) AND gets good user reviews, I'm pretty much staying away.
Mastaboog749
146
Mar 12, 2023
checkVerified Buyer
Surprisingly good.
I got this because the little xduoo tube amp I got on here(ta 03?) Which had super weak specs on paper but was insanely good, especially after I put converted 6sn7 tubes on it
Either way I wanted to give this little guy a go for my laptop, I already have the topping g3 to fit these needs but I like have multiple pieces of similar gear because I have to go bags, I have a studio set up, I have my work stuff. The topping has Bluetooth built in which is great, this can get Bluetooth if you get the external module. The topping is nice and powerful but this has a slightly warmer more fun sound. And with the bass boost function it adds a nice little bit. I'm not sure what the other boost does yet, I can't necessarily hear a tonal difference atleast in the music I listen to but maybe that's a boost for adding an external source.
At the price I got this at, I think it was around 130. Super worth it. I spent 300 on the topping and if I were to choose just one for a laptop dac I would choose this. If you need Bluetooth I'm not sure how much the external piece is but still might be cheaper than a G3
Recommends this product? Yes
wofse
122
Nov 7, 2020
checkVerified Buyer
Why bother to offer BLACK...
I like everyone else ordered this in black but I got SILVER. The reason I didn’t just send it back is drop just doesn’t care. If I knew drop was going to continue this practice I would have placed my order w Amazon without the famous drop wait. I rec the product just not thru Drop
Recommends this product? No
Houro1
56
Aug 19, 2020
checkVerified Buyer
What a Powerhouse!
It has been on my radar since the original XD05 released and still wish I could have had the black face plate with silver chassis but all silver works. Its really too powerful for most efficient iem’s even in low gain mode but like a fine set of speakers you can really get the most out of them with really good power and use an amp with 2-3 times the recommended rated power for the speakers. Reserve power or joules can really get the peaks clean and clear. The trick when in high gain is not to over drive them, the low level detail should be there if the amp is clean.
(Edited)
Recommends this product? Yes
microboy
12
Dec 22, 2020
checkVerified Buyer
One of my fav amps
I have about 4 amps at this point. This is one of my favs! I use this as a push to my IEMs as a drummer. I don’t like stand alone monitors so I use IEMs but our mixing board doesn’t have a powered “out” for my monitors coming off a standard RCA Jack. I use this with an RCA to 3.5 or a 4.5 connector and this connected to my IEMs and it pushes great sound. Helps me hear the rest of the output of the band! Love this little amp. I can play for 5-6 hours straight after that I am wiped out, but this thing is still going strong. The knob volume control is great!...much better than fumbling around with some buttons when all of a sudden the volume output changes (sorry we have a crappy mixing board so what it will do next is your best guess). This is easy to manipulate and powerful enough to get me through a long evening behind the skins.
Recommends this product? Yes
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