Comparisons with OPPO's spectacular UDP-205EU [HFN Sep '17] are instructive, for the Sonica shares the same flagship ES9038Pro 8-channel, 32-bit Sabre DAC and, on the face of it, the same balanced analogue output stage. Differences in distortion, S/N, jitter and low-level resolution are sufficiently small to fall within the sample variations of one particular product, let alone two different models! The principal difference is one of configurability, for while the UDP-205 releases seven of the ES9038's digital filter modes - five with 'fast' (sharp) roll-off characteristics and two with 'slow' (gentle) treble roll-offs - the Sonica uses just one (Minimum Phase Fast). Thus stopband image rejection is fixed at 53dB (48kHz media) and the responses are exceptionally flat - within ±0.02dB from 20Hz-20kHz with 44.1/48kHz media, ±0.1 dB to 45kHz with 96kHz files and ±0.2dB to 90kHz with 192kHz files.
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