I didn't want to spend much because I didn't know for sure that I would hear a difference. Boy, did I! It was well worth the price. It's much smaller than I expected, very portable. If you follow the directions on the product page, you can control the volume from your phone. Very cool DAC/Amp!

(Update: Shortly after writing this review the Sonata HD V died on me. I plugged it in to my laptop before going to bed and used it to drive a pair of tripowi Mele iems. I quickly fell asleep with music playing and when I woke up 6 hours later no sound was coming out the iems and the HD V showed the red light. I first thought maybe I jostled the USB cable in my sleep so I when to unplug the cable and plug it back in but nothing changed. I then tried the same on the dacs end and when I grabbed the HD V I instinctively let it go immediately. It's always very very warm in use but this time it was hot. Not hot enough to cause burns but got enough to turn any skin that touched it red. I let it cool down and tried again but nothing changed. Just a read light and no audio output recognized. Oddly it recognized a microphone input but even that didn't actually register and audio input from a mic. It's seems the moral of this story is to not use the Sonata HD V for extended listening. It apparently has no limit to how hot it will get and has no problem cooking itself if left to build up enough heat from use. As much as I enjoyed it's power and sound I can no longer recommend this product. God forbid if someone else falls asleep like I did but rolls on top of the HD V and makes it heat up quicker. Someone could potentially be burned or worse yet have a fire started. Even after it was dead it still heated up like it did with normal use and it still sucked juice from a phone. It's a very strange and inexcusable failure.)For starters this is not a 5 star dongle dac/amp regardless what some reviews may say. It does sound better than ESS based dacs of the past but there are issues which I will talk about first. Idk if it is because of the dual es9219 dacs it uses but with some apps like Hiby, it only outputs audio from one channel if you don't use the hardware volume function. That isn't much of an issue since you want to be using the hardware volume option anyway but it's an annoyance when one of your devices doesn't allow you to use that feature with this dac/amp. The big problem for me is how it functions when you want to use the automatic bit rate and sample rate options. All my other dac/amps or dongle dacs will match the output of the music being played but this doesn't. I have an old FX audio dac/amp that is the same form factor as this one and it adjusts perfectly like my cheaper dongle dacs. The Sonata HD V seems to default to 48khz regardless of what the songs sample rate is. If a song is 192khz all my other ones will change to 192khz or whatever the song is. The Sonata HD V will not and there is a noticable change in audio quality when it plays at a different sample rate than the song. Considering the Sonata HD V is "certified" by Hiby and none of my other portable dac/amps are it's odd the HD V doesn't work as smoothly as the others. What that means is you now have to manually set the sample rate everytime the sample rate of a song changes if you want the best listening experience. It very annoying and has resulted in me using my older FX Audio i01 more often than the HD V. Another issue is the MQA playback. Depending on where you look it claims it is capable of 8x unfolding or 16x unfolding. I have yet to see either of those reached. More often than not it outputs at 2x which Hiby does with any dac/amp since it does that in software. Sometimes I will see 4x unfolding but it's less than 50% of the time. I have the MQA subscription for Hiby and it is a listed certified device so I am not sure what the problem is but no matter what phone or computer I try it on I never get above 4x unfolding. The last thing I can remember is the heat. The Sonata HD V gets very warm. It is by far the warmest of all my portable dac/amps. I don't want to call it hot because it won't hurt you but it is very very warm.Now on to the positives. Unlike the older ESS based dacs it isn't a cold overly analytical sound. It sounds like it is edging closer to my preferred AKM dacs. It's slightly warmer and smoother than the FX Audio i01 which uses the es9018q2c if I remember correctly. It sounds equally as detailed except is a touch more natural thanks to the added smoothness. It's audio quality matches some older desktop dacs I have that use ESS dacs but at a fraction of the cost and size. It's rather impressive how far audio has come in the past 5 years. I thought the same with the FX Audio i01 which is even cheaper so take that for whatever it's worth. It's relatively powerful and showed great benefits with planar iems like the 7hz Dioko and the s12. It really brought them to life compared to the dongle dacs I own. Again the FX Audio did the same cheaper but if you have planar iems you really should get a portable dac/amp like the HD V or i01. Some dongle dacs do fine but you notice the extra power from the bigger dac/amps like these. The extra power they offer brings the bass to life while adding crispness and speed the dongle dacs can't match. Overall the Sonata HD V is a quality and capable dac/amp. The MQA issues aren't much of an issue since both the 2x and 4x unfolding sounds really good and better than the normal streaming. I just don't think it sounds better than streaming something that is natively 24bit 192khz.Things are at the point where most dac/amps like these sound really good. For me the current deciding factor should be price and that is where I see the Sonata HD V struggling. I paid less than $30 for the FX Audio i01 and even though I paid $49 after tax for the HD V it's hard to justify the extra $20. It's supposed to be nearly twice as powerful but it doesn't seem it. It also comes with less cables than the FX Audio i01. The i01 came with a cable for every device. It had USB C, micro, lightning and a regular USB C to USB cable for the computer. The i01 also uses USB C despite being older while the HD V is micro USB. I don't understand why they didn't use USB C. Personally I wouldn't pay more than what I did for the HD V. It sounds really good but so do other things that are cheaper. You just have to look to find them. At $50 it's an ok buy but personally I'd like to see these things be at $40 or below. There's no reason why you can buy desktop dac/amps with similar components at a similar price. Regardless of my cost preference I can't imagine anyone having a complaint about the performance. It's incredible where portable audio has gone. I nearly forgot but make sure you look at the bottom of the box under the foam insert. It has wipes and screen protectors included. They don't seem to fit well but if you don't want to scratch the glass up you will want to use them. They very small and hard to put on but the seem to stay on pretty good once you get it on.

The main reason I purchased this DAC was to stream music from my iPad and laptop computer to a vintage Nakamichi receiver. This DAC is pretty much plug and play. Sound quality is also acceptable for my configuration. Since I really have no other dongle style DAC's to compare the Sonata HD V to I am giving it 4-stars for SQ only. I have tried the HD V with my AKG K271 MkII headphones which are rated at 55 Ohm impedance and 91 Db efficiency and the HD V drives these cans with ease.Now the negative side of the HD V is the failure by TempoTec to provide any operational info whatsoever. So I have a multicolored indicator that I have no idea what the different colors mean. All I know is I get red for no input present and green when it is outputting an analog signal to my rcvr. It doesn't matter the format or sampling rate, I get a green indicator. My Dell E6440 laptop does not recognize the HD V when connected to any of its three USB 2.0 connectors. The output driver that the HD V uses when playing through my laptop is called TT USB which I was able to configure to 32 bit, 384 kHz output resolution. The TT USB output driver only shows up when the HD V is connected so I can only assume that it is inherent to the HD V itself. I use FooBar 2000 to access my stored music and this seems to work well. A little research shows that TempoTec provides a USB 2.0 driver that can be downloaded from their website. Once again, no technical support for this driver from TempoTec. I downloaded it to my laptop and from what I can tell it is not functioning at all. Let me clarify, it does react by displaying resolution parameters which I am able to set when I connect the HD V but it does not recognize it; the Device indicator displays Not Available where I think HD V should be displayed when connected. As far as I can tell it does nothing more than what I just explained. I also detect no interface with ASIO4ALL other than TT USB AUDIO showing up on the WDM Device List. Once again, no functionality other than that.Sorry for the long-winded review but these issues may be important to someone considering the HD V. I stand by my 4-star rating only for the ease of plug and play and sound quality but I have no idea if it is playing the high res files properly or not.

El producto realmente hace que la música suene muy bien. Lo tengo conectado a la PC, y uso la aplicación de Tidal Hifi. Regularmente escucho música en calidad máster, y con éste dac se oye muy bien, en un altavoz Marshall Acton II. Es el primer DAC que tengo, no tengo experiencia como para comparar con sus competidores, pero a mí me gusta, realmente valió la pena.

Tiene un sonido nítido..claro y musical muy agradable.

no trae los adaptadores para un LG y no se escucha

excelente DAC, cumple con lo que promete lo único por lo que le pongo 4 estrellas es porque el volumen se sube al máximo cuando se conecta por primera ves , casi me quedo sordo. por lo que ten cuidado cuando lo estés configurando.

Este Dungle DAT si procesa archivos MQA, su luz cambia a morado pero hay que manejarlo con mucho cuidado porque el volumen no lo procesa y puede iniciar por sorpresa a niveles que podría dañar el oído, ajustar volumen en el dispositivo, fuera de eso su suavidad y proceso de frecuencias altas, media y en especial bajas es impresionante... recomendable usarlo con Tidal versión premium para obtener niveles de reproducción sin pérdida, calidad Master... y esta muy bonito