I’m putting this 70 quid little box into thirty grand-worth of amp and speakers and it should sound pretty shit – it really doesn’t sound at all terrible and I’m not just talking for the money.

I did however have a problem with an audible pulse from the power supply as referred to by other reviewers. New: A brand-new, unused, unopened and undamaged item in original retail packaging (where packaging . Arylic advised to get a DAC as it sounds much better with the DAC) There are more modules in the offer besides the DAC, but I don't think they are really necessary for me to start with, that is, I can install them myself here. S10 is slightly above in clarity, definition and background noise to using a FiiO BTA30, but has a different usage scenario.However, at the level the S10 is pitched there will be few people that will find cause for complaint. I’ve seen stories online of people having issues with these units making hissing noise but the unit I had didn’t exhibit any of these problems at all. The biggest value of this board is its multi-room synchronized audio capability, which applies to floor-stand 4-way speaker build as well.

Up2Stream with additional DAC board (with Sabre9023 dac) sounds as a very good external DAC (With AD1864 and OPA2111). It might not satisfy the ears of an audiophile with deep pockets, but for most people the sound will be more than good enough. I don’t notice any major flaw in terms of noise and frequency response, just don’t expect to use as a high quality USB DAC given it’s 91db SNR rating. Still, it may be of use to a certain demographic of people and thus is still valuable to some degree.e. people who prefer using their phones to stream), and/or people who have older legacy-type systems, I think it’s a good option. The biggest advantage of S10 is the very low overall noise from all of its inputs, and the zero noise sonic performance from its ethernet input. There is almost no difference in sound between tweaked Audio Alchemy and Up2Stream with an additional DAC. From an early age Durwood liked to tear apart perfectly good working things to see what was inside, always an urge to understand what made it tick. I needed something that would stream from my music collection on a QNAP NAS to some wired speakers and the S10 looked very promising given that it claims to be able to play via Bluetooth, USB, Wifi and wired ethernet using DLNA.