Cambridge Audio DacMagic Plus Reviews

4.3/5.0 based on 2 customer reviews

Sweetwater Advice

Patrick Cobley

When I first heard about the Cambridge Audio DacMagic Plus, I was a bit skeptical that this little box could really increase the quality of my home theater audio. But I have been blown away by the crisp clarity and increase in dynamic range that this powerhouse puts out. With its amazing upsampling and conversion, my home audio setup will never be the same again!

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Customer Reviews

Dan McCurdy
from Cincinnati, OH, USA
February 28, 2012Music Background:
Musician and Amateur Recording Engineer

Very Nice Product

I've been using an M-Audio Audiphile 192 PCI card (onboard DAC) for a few years now, and finally switched to an all-digital approach using an RME 9652 PCI card. This meant I finally had to switch to an outboard DAC.

I just got my Dacmagic Plus from Sweetwater today, and hooked it up to the SPDIF output on the RME card.

PROS
- Very Nice looking, compact unit. You can lay it on it side or on its end, they even give you a nice rubber boot to hold it in that direction.
- Good written instructions, easy to configure
- Super quiet -- absolutely no comparison to my old PCI sound card, which to be fair had the DAC's inside the computer with all sorts of noise around, which you could easily hear if you cranked it up. With the DAC Magic, I think the only noise I'm hearing when I crank things up is coming from my mixing board and amplifiers.
- Subjectively speaking, sound quality is outstanding. I did not do any objective measurements, and it was almost impossible to do an A/B test, but everything I heard was excellent. No evidence of phase, frequency response, stereo imaging or distortion issues at all. Just pure clean sound through my Genelecs.
-The balanced audio outs are very hot, fully +20 dBu, which matches perfectly with line-ins on most better mixing boards. You can program the volume control to adjust the level if your downstream equipment can't handle this, or you can use the unbalnaced outputs.

CONS
- Wall wart power supply. I don't mind this actually, especially in this case because they have taken care to put a ferrite core on the incoming 12V line and there's absolutely no trace of a 60hz hum in the output.
- no way to rack mount this unit. But I suppose thats true of most DACs these days.
- note that this unit can only decode 2-channel PCM sound on any digital input. It does not know what to do with 3.1, 5.1, or 7.1. Simple stereo is all I need for what I'm doing so I'm happy.

Overall, very, very pleased.

bob reuther
from wilmington de
May 22, 2012Music Background:
pro audio rep philadelphia area

dacmagic plus

great performance for the money, sound improved with a day or so break in , listening to hi rez 24 bit FLAC files like listening to the master in the studio, can't go back to 16 bit :)