-Audiolab QDAC Digital To Analogue Converter

Since its launch in the autumn of 2011, the £600 M-DAC has earned a plethora of awards for its exceptional performance, helping it to become Britain's best-selling premium DAC. The new Q-DAC is developed from the same circuit design, removing some of its sibling's less essential features whilst maintaining critical performance elements, thus enabling its retail price to be reduced by a third.

Like the M-DAC, the new Q-DAC serves not only as a superlative DAC but, if the user so desires, as a high-quality digital preamp and headphone amp, too. Given an SRP of just £399.95, the quality of its internal architecture is exceptional, with top-spec components including the ESS Saber32 D/A converter chip, a 32-bit processor that excels in handling the full bit depth and ultrasonic extension of high-resolution audio files with incredible precision and accuracy. This highly regarded high-end chip is usually only found in much more expensive DACs; indeed, the Q-DAC is the most affordable product on the market to use it.

Like the M-DAC, the USB input is asynchronous - data is regulated by the Q-DAC's high-performance master clock, rather than by the computer at the source, thus helping to minimise jitter (digital distortion). Triple cascaded jitter attenuation stages further ensure that jitter is essentially eradicated whatever the source, while the high-current, high-linearity Class A output stage and headphone amp deliver the best possible signal quality to a power amp or pair of headphones.

The Q-DAC's USB and coaxial inputs handle data up to and including 24-bit/192kHz (24-bit/96kHz via the optical input), and like the M-DAC it sports seven digital filter settings, enabling the listener to tailor the sound to suit his or her taste, or the nature of the recording. In terms of sound quality, the Q-DAC comes extremely close to the M-DAC, delivering around 98 per cent of the performance for only two-thirds of the cost.

Simpler display (M-DAC has a larger OLED display)

Analogue outputs - RCA only (M-DAC also has balanced XLR)

Digital inputs - 1x optical; 1x coaxial; 1x USB (M-DAC has 2x optical; 2x coaxial; 1x USB)

Slightly different ESS Sabre32 DAC chip (9016 instead of 9018)