- Wide headphone support plus aptX lossless and LDAC
- Can record analog sources to external storage and PCs
- $899 (so around £675 or AU$1,352)
Questyle is the company behind the brilliant little QCC Dongle Pro, which is an excellent audio upgrade for smartphones: it’s a tiny transmitter that adds all the major hi-res and lossless codecs to phones, tablets, gaming handhelds and more. And now Questyle has launched a bigger and much more powerful unit, the Sigma Pro Portable DAC and Headphone Amplifier.
The Sigma Pro is a new version of the company’s flagship DAC, and it promises desktop-class specs and sound quality from a smartphone-sized device. It may be small, but it contains four sets of amplifier stages, a dual-mono ESS ES9069 DAC array and a USB interface with support for PCM 768kHz/DSD512 and full MQA unfolding.
Questyle Sigma Pro: Key Features and Pricing
The exterior of the Sigma Pro is made of sandblasted aluminum and Kunlun glass, and in a nice touch, most of the front is transparent so you can see its electronic innards.
The Sigma Pro has two USB-C ports that allow you to recharge the Sigma Pro while you listen to it, and you can expect up to 12 hours of playback in battery mode. There are 3.5mm single-ended, 6.35mm and 4.4mm balanced outputs, SPDIF and optical digital inputs and both 3.5mm and 4.4mm balanced stereo inputs.
Bluetooth is 5.4 with LE Audio, Snapdragon Sound, LDAC, aptX Adaptive and aptX HD lossless sound in up to 24-bit/96kHz quality. Specs to rival the best headphone DACs we’ve tested so? You bet.
The discrete, fully balanced current-mode amplifier has a maximum output power of 8W, and Questyle promises ultra-low-load distortion and “exceptional” noise control.
One of the interesting features of Sigma Pro is its recording support. You can connect its 3.5mm or 4.4mm inputs to analog audio equipment, then turn the audio into a digital file for external storage or for a PC or Mac.
The Sigma Pro has a suggested retail price of $899 (approx. £675 / AU$1,351) and is available in the US direct from Questyle, from hi-fi retailers and from Amazon. There’s also a more affordable model with a different DAC setup, the $599 Sigma.
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