STAR PURE DSD DAC MK2 is awarded Editor’s Choice in the ‘Music Servers and peripheral products’ category

During the feature, they write:

From Italy (and of Vietnamese origin) came another highly attractive DAC offering, in a rather cool and stylish outfit. Based on the ESS ES9018 Sabre chip which is quite popular and could be found in many DACs but of course, the DAC chip is only one part of the whole story, the surrounding circuitry, the power supply and other components are highly important as well. There is some controversy in regard to importance of the DAC chip and many believe there are other things that play a bigger role in the sound of a DAC.

This year brought two brand new implementations of the Sabre32 ES9018 DAC to the diy community. One is the bare-bones $99 ES9018 board from diyinhk and the other is a fully assembled board from Quang Hao-Andrea, the “DAC-END R”.  There is a group-buy going on here: [link]

Another email, another brand. Before you yawn in blaséphemy, this sender was Danish, this brand Vietnamese. “HQ Audio are a small company in Vietnam owned by Mr. Quang Hao. He asked me to request a review of our newest DAC.” Signed and delivered by Morton Becker Saul to eliminate the language barrier, this email included many professional photos and a web link. With 6moons HQ in Ireland and HQ Audio’s second project engineer from Italy—Andrea Ciuffoli with his own site—multi kulti was in full swing. Equally swingin’ was the HQ9038 flagship DAC. Let’s