Eversolo Comparison

Before we begin, we want to mention that anyone who purchases their Eversolo units from Audio Advice, will receive our free setup tips & tricks guide that will walk you through how to get up and running and be set up for the best performance from your system.

Eversolo seems to be a name that has taken the audio world by storm. While some audio companies have been around for decades and have set the standard for many of the great audio devices we know and love today, the Eversolo brand is relatively new to the game and is already playing in the big leagues. The Eversolo DMP-A6, DMP-A6 Master Edition, and DMP-A8 are their three streamer/DAC/preamp units that we will take a look at and break down everything they are capable of and what the differences are to help you decide if one of them is right for you. 

As high-resolution music streaming has taken off, we’ve seen more and more people add music streamers to their systems. However, these units from Eversolo are much more than just music streamers. The combination of being a streamer/DAC/preamp also allows you to choose your music, change the volume, and control everything from your phone without needing multiple apps or remotes. In addition, these units include just about every feature many people will ever need or want. But when competing in a category with brands like NAD, Naim, Bluesound, and more, there’s no doubt that Eversolo has a lot to live up to. 

Can Eversolo live up to the hype? Let’s find out.

Design & Build Quality

The build quality of each of these units was also impressive for the price point. They each have a brushed aluminum front faceplate with the Eversolo badge on the left and product name below it, with a frosted, anodized aluminum top and grills on the sides, which give it an overall clean, modern, and minimal look. On the right side of the front is a volume knob that is also the power button when pressed in. We were also quite happy to see an adjustable LED light around the volume knob, which adds a touch of elegance. These units, while light, feel well built and very solid overall, leaving us with no complaints in the build quality department.

But the star of the show here is the beautiful 6-inch (2160x1080) touchscreen that expands to the edge of the top and bottom of the units. The screen is bright and colorful and feels similar to an iPhone touchscreen. We’ve all used touch screens where you need to apply more pressure or awkwardly drag your finger and wait for the screen to catch up to you. This isn’t the case with any of the Eversolo units, as the glass touch screen is convenient to use rather than cumbersome. To many, the screen may not be a huge deal, as they will use their phone and end up sitting far away from it anyway. However, it does look gorgeous, and with the many display options available, it can add to the cool factor of your setup. We’ll dive deeper into the software and user interface on the screen in the next section.

The DMP-A6 and DMP-A6 Master Edition share the same size, except you get a gold Eversolo badge and nameplate on the front of the unit. (Even the LED around the volume knob is an orange hue instead of white) There are more differences than just the gold bling on the front, which we will cover in the next section. These units are about 10.6” wide, 3.5” tall, and 7.4” deep. However, they are not full-width. Instead, they are about 6.5 inches smaller in width, closer to the size of a Naim Uniti Atom, making them a little easier to fit in smaller spaces, like a desk or smaller shelf. 

The DMP-A8 has the same design as the other units but is in a slightly wider and deeper case with dimensions of about 15” wide, 3.5” tall, and 9.8” deep. These larger dimensions are due to the different components and inputs/outputs that the A8 provides compared to the A6 and A6 Master Edition, which we will discuss later. Everything else about the design stays the same as the other units, including the beautiful 6” touchscreen.

Features & Technology

Setup

Upon booting up the units, they all have the same setup process. It’s very straightforward and will have you up and running within minutes. However, there are a few tips and tricks we’ve discovered during our time of testing that we have included in a setup guide that we send to all Audio Advice purchasers. These minor adjustments, such as setting your max volume, enabling the highest stream quality available, and more, will ensure you get the very best results from any of these Eversolo units.

Processing Power

Each unit utilizes an ARM Cortex-A55 quad-core processor to run a custom version of Android 11 for the software. It’s clear here that Eversolo has really made some effort to make the user interface extremely intuitive and easy to use. In addition, the processor handles the software with ease, as every interaction on screen was extremely responsive, and we experienced virtually zero lag on any of the units throughout our testing. 

Each unit includes an XMOS 3rd Gen 16-core processor, which allows fast speeds and high USB bandwidth, ensuring the lossless transmission of hi-def audio data. The USB ports support DSD512 Native and PCM 768KHz/32bit. The optical and coax ports support DSD64 and PCM 192KHz/24bit. They can play back almost every format, including FLAC, WAV, APE, and more. Another really interesting feature shared by all three is an HDMI output that supports multi-channel DSD.

Interface

The home screen will have icons for music, streaming, files, sources, and settings. Below those main controls, you can customize a row of apps to show your most used streaming services, apps, or music cloud drivers. And what’s really nice is as you click on each of the main icons, it teaches you how to use the interface as you go. For example, it shows you that you can swipe from the left of the screen while in your music screen to show the menu bar or click the top right button to get back to the track that is playing quickly. These quick tips only show up the first time you enter certain sections, and then they do not show again.

Again, the entire interface is relatively simple, and we expect most people to pick it up quickly after playing around with it for just a few minutes. However, in our setup guide for Audio Advice purchasers, we show you can take it a step further and customize the interface to your liking.

One of our favorite aspects of the interface was the screen when you have music playing. In Qobuz, it shows the artwork, song title, artist, album, song resolution, output resolution, and more. But the cool part is you can change that screen to many different layouts, giving you options on what you want on screen while your music plays. They even have three different VU meters you can have on-screen, too!

Eversolo App

While a remote can be purchased separately (it comes with the A8), we found ourselves using the app and touchscreen exclusively with no issues.

Music Apps

When you tap the streaming icon, it will show you the music services that are already installed and tailored to work seamlessly on the Eversolo units, such as Tidal, Qobuz, HIRESAUDIO, Amazon Music, Deezer, Internet Radio, Radio Paradise, SoundCloud, and Calm Radio. In addition, multiple third-party apps can be sideloaded, like Apple Music, Spotify, TuneIn Radio, and more. We found that even the sideloaded apps still look beautiful, even though the UX isn’t quite as good as those designed for Eversolo. So, you're covered if you are looking for Apple Music or Spotify. Remember, you will have to use the touchscreen or the screencast method to control the music in a third-party app instead of the Eversolo app.

All of these apps, even the third-party ones like Apple Music, can still play the original sampling rate thanks to the EOS (Eversolo original sampling-rate audio engine), which was developed to completely bypass the Android SRC restriction. So yes, no matter what your streaming app of choice is, you will get the highest resolution offered when using its app. 

In addition, each unit is Roon Ready, supports Tidal Connect, Qobuz Connet, DLNA, Airplay, and has Bluetooth 5.0.

Local Music

Each unit has a small hatch on the bottom that supports a 4TB M.2 SSD with music loaded on it. You can also attach a network storage device, and it will retrieve the music metadata from the cloud and build a custom music library by matching artists, album covers, and more. However, in our testing of this, there seemed to be some missing artwork still, and it didn’t always work perfectly.

To add music, you can use one of the USB’s on the back to connect to a PC for local file copying and management. You can also use the SMB function to share files from your device, essentially turning it into a network storage device to play your files on other devices. This is probably something that most people won’t end up using, but it’s a really cool feature that we will show you how to utilize in our setup guide.

In addition, you can connect a CD player and utilize the CD Rip app to rip CDs directly to your device. It does all the work for you and losslessly rips tacks and generates the artist and album info.

I/O

Let’s move to the back of the units. We will begin with the A6 units since these share the same inputs and outputs. There are three antennas: one for Bluetooth and the other two for WiFi. You get a gigabit ethernet port, HDMI out, USB-A for connecting to an attached drive, a USB-A (audio out), coax digital in, optical digital in, USB-C for computer audio in, RCA analog outs, and balanced XLR analog outs.

The A8 includes everything the A6 versions have, except the USB-C input is USB-B. In addition, it has an HDMI IIS out, which can connect to DACs with different IIS signals. It also has more digital inputs, including two coax, two optical, and an HDMI ARC. It has two analog inputs, one RCA and one balanced along with the same output set as the A6 units. Finally, a trigger out port to link with power amps.  This gives the A8 a ton of input flexibility, making it a full-feature preamp. 

EQ

Both units include an option to adjust a graphic and parametric EQ on the screen or in the app. However, the A8 adds an FIR filter, a compressor, delay, and a high-pass and low-pass filter option—although the last one is of no real use. 

We like the fact you get parametric EQ on these, which sets them apart from most streamer/DAC combos on the market. Just about any room will have peaks at certain frequencies based on the shape of the room and the way the frequencies interact. These peaks greatly color the sound, which is why we are such big fans of systems with automatic room correction. You generally see this in home theater products, and while it's a bit more work to use a parametric EQ, it can do a great job at removing the peaks. Some units might have tone controls that give you fixed frequencies to adjust, but the parametric EQ in the Eversolo units lets you adjust down to a specific frequency and adjust how steep or wide that adjustment is. So, if you have peaks at 37hz and 121hz, you can dial into those specific ones. You will need to use something like Room EQ Wizard to find these peaks, but if you want to really get into it and fix your room, it's great to see these tools on hand.

Internals

DACs

If you will be using the DAC inside these units, one of the most important aspects to many will be which model is used. For the A6 and A6 Master Edition, there are two ESS Sabre ES9038Q2M DACs. The A8 steps up to AKM AK4499EX and AKM AK4191EQ DACs. These are no doubt a big step up in quality, and it was evident in our testing.  Since we are audio geeks and like to really dive in, we looked up the raw parts cost difference in those two DACs. The AKM is a very expensive one as DACs cost about 2 ⅕ times as much as the ESS, which explains the audio differences we heard. And if you already have an incredibly good DAC without streaming, you can simply attach an Eversolo with any of its digital outs. 

Clocks

The standard A6 has two high-precision crystal oscillators to reduce jitter, while the A6 Master Edition and A8 step up to a femtosecond clock system with ultra-low noise and jitter for an even more pure sound. This is important because when a clock signal drifts even the slightest, it creates small variations between samples, causing timing errors in the audio signal being played. Getting this timing as accurate as possible is what really brings the music to life, making it sound more like a live performance.

Audio Side

All three units are fully balanced from the output of the DACs, which reduces noise to a minimum. Eversolo also paid a lot of attention to hand-selecting the parts used in all of the circuitry. You see names like Wima and Nichicon, which you normally expect to see in ultra-high-end audio components.  

This is also where there is another big difference between the basic A6 and the A6 Master and A8. The better units use OPA1612 op amps, while the A6 uses OPA1642, which costs half the better one. The OPA1612 offers a warmer sound while maintaining a silky smooth and extended top end.

Power Supply

The A6 models have the same high-performance power module, and the A8 steps up to a dual power supply. Anyone worth their salt in audio knows that the power supply can make a large difference in audio quality, as the better ones will have much less noise and better support all of the components. Again, we suspect this also contributed to why the A8 sounded the best of the three to us.

Volume Control

The A8 also includes an R2R volume control circuit. This is another high-end feature that is unusual for this price range.  The large board is all precision resistors and relays for perfect accuracy, even at very low levels, while reducing noise and distortion.

Performance & Testing

With all the fierce competition in the fast-expanding category of streamer/DAC/preamps, we knew Eversolo would have to do something special to stand out amongst the crowd. We put each of these units to the test against each other and then against some of the competition to see if they are worthy of your hard-earned dollars. 

We tested each unit with a pair of JBL HDI 3800 passive speakers running into an Anthem MCA225 Gen 2 using balanced audio cables.  In our testing, the DMP-A6 did really well with every genre of music we threw at it. If we had to choose a word to describe the overall sound, it would be “neutral.” There was a ton of detail in each track we played, and everything sounded wide open and lifelike. When we stepped up to the A6 Master Edition, you could tell it was cut from the same cloth, but the better analog output stage and clock revealed some differences.  The A6 Master Edition had a smoother and slightly more effortless top end.  Playing a very rhythmic track like “Pink Houses” by John Mellencamp seemed to come alive a bit more with the Master Edition due to the improved clock inside.   In our opinion, if you have speakers that are pretty revealing, the price difference between the two is worth it.  It will be the primary source for most people, and we always think you should put a good bit of your audio budget into your source components as if all the little details that make music fun never make it to your speakers; they can’t create them from nowhere.

The DMP-A8 was a different story.  AKM calls this new top-of-the-line series of DAC’s “Velvet Sound,” and that turned out to be 100% true.  The A8 produced an almost analog-like digital sound with an ultra-quiet background.  When we tested the classic “Time” from Pink Floyd, every single instrument felt like it had its own space with incredible separation.  We love it when a unit reveals even more tiny details yet keeps an ultra-smooth sound, which is exactly what the A8 did for us. Yes, it is more than either of the A6 units, but if you have a great system, you will easily hear the upgrade.

You will be able to add any of these units to a home theater system, integrated amp, or preamp.  If your unit supports balanced cables, we recommend going that way.  For those of you who want a simple but amazing system, adding one of these to a good two-channel power amp is a great way to go.  Your power needs will depend on your speakers and room, but there are a lot of great power amps from Rotel, Arcam, NAD, McIntosh, and more that will fit the bill. 

Now, we told you at the beginning we would let you know how these stacked up against the competition.  We felt these probably offer one of the best values in audio for their price.  When you look at all of the features and the level of components, they are pretty astounding.  But if the entry-level A6 is a stretch for you, one of our favorite DAC/preamp/streamers for the money is the classic Bluesound Node.  We did compare the A6 to the Node and felt it slightly edged the Node out but by just a little.  If you do not need a touchscreen and would like a subwoofer out and HDMI ARC input, it is hard to beat the Node for the money.  However, if you have or are thinking about getting high-performance speakers now or in the future, it is always best to get the best source you can.

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