Silverstone SST-EB03 Amp & SST-EB01-E DAC Review

Performance

Testing audio equipment is a very subjective matter, you can have all the high-end analysis equipment in the world telling you something sounds great, but if your ears don’t agree, then do the numbers really matter? Of course they do, but the end result is that you either like what you hear or you don’t.

I love music, there’s not a single day where I don’t listen to at least a dozen albums from my collection of 1200. My collection is purely digital, some downloaded from various music services, some ripped from my CD collection, some ripped from Vinyl, all in a variety of formats that I have amassed over the years, ranging from fairly standard 192 kbps quality mp3 right up to 1000+ kbps FLAC and 96/24 bit AIFF and FLAC. So having a device that can do the higher end formats justice is important to me and lining out via HDMI to my AV received isn’t always ideal when I just want to listen to music through my desktop speakers or through headphones while I’m working.

Setting up each device was straight forward enough, the EB01-E needs some drivers installing, but that only took a few minutes to go through, then it’s simply a case of connecting the USB cable and should you need to, an optical or digital coaxial cable (not included). You then need to configure windows sound manager to output the correct formats.

With the EB01-E hooked up to my PC, I then used the RCA male-to-male cable to connect it directly to the EB03 headphone amp, I then used the RCA to 3.5mm Male cable to connect the line-out of the EB03 to my speakers (Creative Gigaworks T20). This configuration means I can use my desktop speakers as I normally would, but can use the EB03’s amp for my headphones, with the added bonus that both the headphones and my desktop speakers can use the EB01-E DAC.

Having a greater dynamic range and a signal that has been cleaned up using what I can only summarise as digital wizardry meant there was an immediate and noticeable improvement in audio quality on my desktop speakers. The EB01-E may not have any knobs and dials on it, or make any noises of its own, but it’s certainly doing something. Bass and treble were really well-balanced and there’s a little more detail to the sound at quiet and less distortion at higher volumes than usual. It’s hard to quantify, but it just sounds better, especially so on sound samples that are of a lower quality, which seem to upscale very well. While HD audio tracks sound a little better, it’s harder to notice the improvement as they were already very good quality files.

The EB03 on the other hand has very noticeable effects on sound quality, I have yet to grow tired of finding new headsets to connect to it to test what they can really do, which is no bad thing since I actually do this kind of thing for a living. Testing something like my desktop PC’s onboard audio, then plugging into the EB03 is like going from SD to 4K, your ears will very much notice a big shift in sound quality. This is partly due to the high quality amp, but also because of the DAC and combined they make one heck of a team.

The EQ is really clean, never pushing bass, mid or treble out of balance and the sound is flawless from low to uncomfortably high volumes. Nothing worse than a muddy sound when you’re wanting a quiet relax or a head banging thrash through some of your favourite albums.

Being able to drive up to 600 Ohms is pretty crazy, it’s likely most of you don’t own a set of headphones that needs more than 32 Ohm of power to max them out. The power output on the EB03 is enough to drive most headphones beyond their limits, so best to take it slow with the volume dial or your headphones and your ears will be blown in next to no time. If you own a high-end set of headphones such as Sennheiser, Marley, Sony and countless others, then you’re not going to see their full potential without a decent amp. However, I’ve noticed the biggest improvement of sound quality from headsets such as the TteSports Cronos and Attitude 1 Almaz, both sub £100 sets, but it’s nice to see that the EB01-E and EB03 had massively noticeable benefits to any set of headphones I used them with.