Review on ES9068AS MQA384KHz PCM768KHz Balanced Bluetooth by Darnell Murphy

This DAC is exactly what you need. Pretty impressive specs. Having had bad luck with the SMSL M400 and Topping X30 in the past, I settled on the more expensive Gustard X16 after reading a rave review from Audio Science. This DAC features two ESS ES9068AS chips with onboard hardware MQA bitstream decoding. I think internet spies were following my purchase because a day later I received an offer for a few months of Tidal HiFi with MQA implementation. I tried a few songs from Tidal and my Gustard display showed MQA in big letters. Sound. My experience so far has been from the above DACs (all under $300) and the Oppo H2 as well as my Marantz receiver DAC. Gustard has spoiled me now. The sound is very natural and detailed. The topping and SMSL were detailed, but there was a sharp edge that wasn't comfortable for prolonged listening. In general --- the goalkeeper.