North Star Design Essensio (£825)

摘要

Among cost-conscious hi-fi enthusiasts, Italy's North Star Design company has a reputation for making cutting-edge digital audio products that sport sensible price tags. Its latest Essensio DAC is a new entry model in its portfolio that undercut: the price of its existing £1420 USB dac32 by dispensing with balanced outputs and AES/EBU (XLR) digital input sockets. Also missing is the RJ45 socket for I2S interfacing with North Star's £1750 Model 192 Mkll CD transport. And like all the company's DACs it is simply stereo. Only one set of single-ended (RCA) outputs is provided for hooking up to an amplifier's line input.