AudioQuest - Dragonfly 1.2 Digital Audio Converter - Black

Here are some of my observations of positive aspects as mentioned above: The size of the Dragonfly is equivalent to that of a standard thumb drive. It fits smoothly into existing USB ports, whether a laptop or desktop. The industrial design of the Dragonfly is excellent. Firstly, the exterior is strong yet smooth to touch given the finish. Unlike thumb drives that are plastic and light, this device is metal and has just enough weight to rest comfortably in ones hand. The Dragonfly logo nicely accentuates the rest of the design just prior to the output. You get the feeling the moment you grab Dragonfly that it is well machined product. The LED indicator is a nice way to know that your device is on and running. Depending on the mode in which it is operating, the color of the Dragonfly will change. I typically run it at 24-bit/96 kHz to take advantage of oversampling. See the attached picture showing it in action. The noise suppression on the Dragonfly is managed well. It is clear that they implemented some sort of decoupling circuity as the power supply noise present on the headphone jack of my work laptop is completely decoupled when using Dragonfly. Minus background office noise, one cannot hear any noise or distortion whether low or high volume. I mentioned above oversampling and this is very beneficial when listening to streamed audio, through Pandora for example. The oversampling helps round off some of the oddities of lower bit rate music to give it a more flat sound. Here are some of my observations of negative aspects as mentioned above: For devices that have USB, this product is fantastic. It will enhance the work laptop listening experience and augment any other USB capable machine. Still, it has to be USB and it is not compatible with smartphones or other devices. This is not a huge frustration though as one buys it knowing it is a USB DAC! I recommend the Dragonfly to anyone who wants to get the most out of listening to music or movies. It enhances the often generic laptop audio experience to one that is deserving of even decent headphones. I use a pair of Bose® - QuietComfort® 20i Acoustic Noise Cancelling® Headphones (SKU: 9154082) and it creates a brilliant noise free environment to enjoy audio free from all other distractions. -Ryan the OC

I saw this little auxiliary DAC pop up on one of BestBuy's flash sales. While I was not in the market for any type of auxiliary sound card, I did some background research and took the plunge. This is about the size of a standard thumbdrive and plugs into the usb on your laptop or computer. You then go into your control panel and you will see the Dragonfly displayed as an optional audio card. Click on it and you are all set. Set-up took no more than 7 minutes. Audio files will now play using the Dragonfly circuitry rather than the inferior laptop wiring. Plug in a pair of headphones into the mini port at the end of the Dragonfly and it's ready to go. You could also use a y cord to take the signal out of the Dragonfly to the input on a home stereo receiver. Over the years I have converted all of my cd's to mp3 files ripped at the highest resolution. Any high quality audio files will be good material to test out the Dragonfly. I spent about 1/2 hour with some Sennheiser headphones listening to various songs that had great production - Early Seal stuff, B-52's Follow Your Bliss, Thomas Dolby - Spice Train, even Adele. The sound was noticeably clearer, with more bass, more separation and more detail. It made me want to turn the lights down and sit and listen to a whole album with no distractions like all of us adults did back in the day, and rediscover my whole music collection again. Note - This model, the 1.2 has been replaced with two new models and is no longer being made by Audioquest. The new models, the Red, the Black, are more than twice the cost of this unit, but apparently make the device more compatible with phones. Even this unit was selling for $150 just last summer. If you can find a first gen 1.2 still on the shelves, and BestBuy still has some, it's a steal at $79. Jump.

Ok, I was reluctant to purchase this item. I mean its the size of a flash drive. Can it really make my computer sound that much better? Well I am here to tell you with a resounding YES it makes your music files sound awesome. Of course it helps to have high res audio files. I burn most of my audio at full lossless anyway, but this Dragonfly device had me convinced of its value in just a few minutes of listening through my Sennheiser HD headphones. It truly makes a world of difference. Just go to Best Buy and pick one up. Make sure you have good headphones and enjoy!

Plug this in to an open USB port, plug your sound system into it, set the sample rate in Windows Settings to 192khz/24 bit and then forget about it. DirectSound does a much better job managing rate conversions than it did back in my formative audiophile days when we meddled with using pro grade gear and ASIO drivers and all manner of arcane techniques to keep Windows from degrading our sound quality as it passed through the system. It may not be perfect. Actually it may, since its been years since the differences have sounded dramatically enough for me to want to take all that extra effort, so I don't know or care if maybe they'd cleaned up the last few "issues" . Bottom line, set your hardware to its best possible output settings, let Windows do its thing, and every thing, from pristine 192khz/24 bit music purchased from specialty outlets down to hyper compressed podcasts or Youtube soundtracks will sound better than they did through your onboard hardware or SoundBlasters or Bluetooth Audio and even many examples of professional audio interface gear. This was the perfect solution for my new primary rig. I had converted from an older hand built tower (using an older EMU 0404 for sound, which is still a fantastic bit of kit, though it requires a desktop computer with a PCI slot, with is a rarity these days) for a second hand, if much more powerful laptop/docking station (yeah, high end but old laptops with basically dead batteries but nice sets of connectivity are great, power efficient and generally quiet replacements for large old desktop towers). Everything about the new to me machine was a large upgrade compared to my previous machine, except the sound, so I started hunting. There are many other options in this space. Several tiny audiophile manufacturers make units that function pretty much the same as the Dragonfly. Several of these options, I would imagine would be of higher quality than the Dragonfly. They also, all cost more than the Dragonfly. Much more. An order of magnitude more, in some cases. All with the giant downside of non-returnability. Its hard to want to throw larger amounts of money out there just to amass a pile of USB DACs to obsessively compare to each other, when you could just grab the Dragonfly from a local retailer, plug it in as described above, hear instantly that everything is better now and move on. Other options include pro and semipro gear, often meant for piping music into a PC for recording purposes. Most of this gear is imminently competent. Some of it is direly expensive. As for bits in the comparably priced range, none of it is even remotely similarly specced, and that's simply because those units are swiss-army audio interfaces that have to spread their cost around audio in, interfaces and ruggedizing in addition to audio out. The Dragonfly wins because all we're looking for is a focus on output sound quality here. One last thing, in my usage, I don't worry about Windows messing up the sound quality due to digital volume control. I keep the volume at 100% and in room volume control is managed after that in the chain via analog (non-lossy) control. This is habit from my old audiophile days. Requires more hardware, but was always the easiest solution to the problem (Windows had, and maybe still does, shaved bits off the end of the audio stream to change its volume, thus losing detail and quality). The Dragonfly has its own, internal, analog volume control, and so is ideal in today's more portable lifestyle. Laptop, Dragonfly, good headphones ... you can now get close to perfect sound quality on the road without needing at least an mATX sized computer and a small mixing board.

The Dragonfly is a good entry level DAC with high grade circuitry. The DAC is a 24 bit ESS Sabre chip which is a high performance DAC. Processes music files natively up to 24 bit 96khz. Makes your music sound more natural and with less jitter caused by decoding of compressed files. Unfortunately, does not work with Windows Vista. Therefore, anyone that doesn't use Vista as an OS, will love this product. Would rate 5 stars if the DAC offered 24 bit 192khz native processing.

Having demo-ed several different DAC units ranging from $50 to over $500 The Dragonfly surpassed my expectations for models nearly twice the price. Having been in the high-end audio world since 1979 (and staying well away from the analog v. digital debate) the Dragonfly works well with my Shure SE535 and SRH1540 models as well as my Skullcandy Aviators :)

I bought this to listen to a growing portfolio of 320k MP3 and HD-FLAC files downloaded to a notebook...what a difference in the quality and robustness of the sound. This is a USB DAC that by-passes the PC soundcard. It is perfect with audio enhancing software and Windows Media Player. I have only used this with low impedence, around ear head phones (B&W P7, Bose QC-2) and Klipsh S4 IEM phones. All produce a much better listening experience than playing music through the PC soundcard. There is more and cleaner power driving the music when needed; and the sound of all instruments can be differentiated in passages not clearly played through the soundcard. Piano notes are clear and resonant and bass passages and drums do not run together or rumble. This is a great addition to any PC-based music experience.

Sounds is fantastic and rich but swapping between this and my external DAC (creative E5) can't really tell the difference. Definite Upgrade from PC internal sound card tho