[Mortus]

Hello my faithfull meridian explorer 2 is dying it served me as dac providing source to my ifi zen air can amp which powers my hifiman ananda

I wanted to look for something to replace it and …. Yeah i have more questions then i had before
First i thought easy will be picking ifi audio zen air dac and call it a day but after i read on audioscience dac in it measure really bad also it is plagued with channel imbalance and has delay of some type

Ok we digging more
Smsl c100 seems nice wait but there is smsl with same dac but cheaper smsl po100 ak there is topping e30 oh wait channel inverse problem look at v2 or ifi uno with sabre dac wait there is ifi go link cheaper with same dac , wait dongle can be used as dac so maybe we look up on them crap so many fiio ka3 ,ibasso dc03pro , ……

Please i beg you i need good quality dac for my mediocre setup ,it does not need cost fortune i will be happy if i could spend 100€ i dont need blows and whistles like bluetooth or remote only condition is it has to be connected to pc with usb working with win 11 and to have either 3,5mm out which i can connect to my ifi or rca thats all
Please can someone pull me out from this endless rabbit hole

 

[dunring]

The SMSL M300SE is a terrific DAC and has 3.5mm and XLR outputs. If it's got the connections you need it'll be good. I've had a couple and the 4.4mm balanced headphones out can power a Hifiman he5xx just fine, the 3.5mm is good for IEMs and less demanding stuff.