Alpha Design Labs - Cruise Headphone Amp / DAC

First, the build quality is phenomenal. It has a good weight to it, and the carbon fiber finish is stunning. It also seems resistant to most scratches- I've been pretty rough with it and it still looks nearly new.The 24/96 dac in it is a Wolfson WM8716 and is of high quality. I use it to replace my onboard soundcard in my 2011 HP laptop and it is an obvious upgrade. The overall sound signature is very balanced & smooth. The highs are never sibilant and the low end packs a decent punch. It also helps the mids shine, most notably with female vocals (I listen to a lot of electronic dance music)It is also a nice amp that compliments my pair of 32ohm Fidelio X1's well. Amping them is unnecessary, but I like to anyways as I feel it also sounds nicer than my the audio out on my HTC One M7 smartphone (even though this phone's stock audio does sound very nice on it's own). I hear that the amp is however not powerful enough to drive a higher impedance headphone such as the Sennheiser HD600.Overall, I think this is a very sharp piece of technology. In my opinion, as a portable dac/amp it looks nicer than any of it's competitor's offerings (Fiio, JDS labs, Aune, etc), and competes with all of them quality wise. I really like how this piece is small enough to take as an on-the-go amp, but also stylish enough to be used as an at-home desktop dac.June 2015 EDIT: I have now upgraded the items in this review, so while at the time I wrote this I had an HTC M7 + Fidelio X1, I now have the HTC M8 + Fidelio X2. I am changing my review from 4 to 5 stars, as this little dac amp is amazing for the price. While the M8 (and M7 for that matter) are probably the best audio-focused phones available in my country at this moment, they are still not as great as the ADL Cruise. I love how this thing feels in my hand, while being small enough to comfortably fit in my pocket.

The internal batterie didn't work ! It's not charging m I receive the approval for the return but , I think that I shouldn't pay for the shipment . I should receive a guide for any courier , but, it must be pay for the manufacturer.

I ended up with this ADL after a mix up for a more expensive iFI DAC, I gotta say I am impressed. Stuck with it, battery lasts about a month even with me listening for hours every day. The sound is super flat and neutral( good for EQ guys) with an impressive soundstage and little too no noise. I should mention I love critical listening of all genres. I usually have this guy paired to a Note5 and a set or the wonderful SRH1540s and I can say the ADL is not the bottleneck. Adjusting the volume has more than enough room to keep turning up those wav files until my ears bleed and still have perfect clearity. The first one seemed to have gotten rattled a little too hard on delivery, I had some noise and the power just was not there. I got in touch with ADL and they exchangedy unit for a different one. Glad I bothered because this has become my favorite travel amp.

TCG T-BOX+から此方へ変更、音源はwalkmanのNW-A857でDOCKケーブルのデジタル接続ですTCGよりも音がクリアになり、バランスよく聴けるようになりました。音の混ざりが少なくなり、ボーカルの後ろで別のボーカルがラップなんかしてるのもはっきり聴き取れますド下手がやった「取り敢えず音源重ねればミックスだろ」的なミックス曲もある程度聴き取りやすくなるのは凄かったですね。ただ唯一気に入らないのはハード面で、電源スイッチが尻に付いていることですかね。付属の保護袋に入れれば当然、一々出さないとオン・オフできないわけですしまあ、必死でこすれば袋越しでもなんとか可能なんですけどね、それでも本体まるごと腰から下げているキャリーポーチから出す必要はあるのですが。なぜオンオフスイッチをライン入力側、頭の方に付けなかったのか・・・PC接続してのDAC機能もありますが80時間稼働可能なバッテリー搭載の時点でポータブル重視な訳ですからね。設計者と使用者の意識の差というやつでしょうか？