This is a review and detailed measurement/comparison of SMSL SU-8 DAC and Topping D50. It is on a kind loan from a member who had it drop shipped to me from Massdrop. Since there has been so much interest in this product, I decided to test it immediately.Overall, the first impression is quite positive. Package is very nice and the unit has quite a heft and quality feel to it. It is a far more substantial unit than the Topping D50 due to inclusion of mains power supply and balanced outputs:The display is kind of tiny but does the job. It came with a remote which is a great bonus (I did not unpack it). The only minor gripe is the very short AC cable. I think it is 2 feet or something as opposed to typical 6 foot. So like me, you may need to supply your own.The retail price is $249 with free shipping on US Amazon right now. I am assuming Massdrop price was lower. The Topping D50 is also $249 so if the SMSL SU-8 matches its performance, it is quite a bargain. Let's see how it did in measurements (all done with default filter setting).Let's start with Topping D50 so we have a good reference:As noted, I powered the D50 using a Samsung charger I had laying around. Let's compare that to SMSL SU-8 using its unbalanced output:We see fair bit of power supply noise at 120 Hz and other harmonics of mains 60 Hz. We take a 4 to 5 dB hit in SINAD (signal above distortion+noise). Still, this is respectable performance with healthy output of over 2.1 volts.There is fair bit of interest in balanced outputs of the unit so let's see how that did:Distortion climbs unfortunately reducing SINAD to 86 dB. As you see in this IMD graph, this is due to the output stage saturating:The balanced output in red clearly starts to saturate the output stage with distortion climbing past -7 dB or so. I guess if you keep the volume control down, you can reduce the impact of that.Other than that, the performance of SMSL-8 SU-8 unbalanced output is pretty similar to Topping D50, both suffering from that mid-level "hump" courtesy of the ESS DAC chip used. Topping has slightly lower noise and distortion which we had seen in better SINAD numbers before.Here is the spectrum of THD+N versus frequency:This is done at 0 dBFS like the dashboard so obviously the balanced output does poorly with tons of distortion that gets worse with higher frequencies. I ran it again (not shown) at -5 dB and it was still worse than unbalanced (in red) but much more manageable.The topping in green is well behaved with again, showing a bit less noise and distortion.Here is a fun little graph/table I have started to show where each device lands with SINAD at 1 kHz:We see a bucket of state-of-the-art on the left, then a mid-tier, and then the bottom on the right. Please remember that THD is not a very good measure of audibility so don't worry about small differences.Finally, everyone's favorite measurement, linearity:Here, tables turn and the balanced output of SMSL SU-8 (green) does much better than unbalanced (red). The Topping D50 as with other Topping products nails this test with perfect score.Finally, here is the jitter and noise test:Not much to note other than power supply noise in SMSL SU-8 on the left in red. And some USB packet noise in Topping D50 at multiples of 1 kHz and a couple of tones at 16 and 16.5 kHz. All inaudible due to their low level and our very high threshold of hearing at low and high frequencies.The SMSL SU-8 seems to be a competently design DAC with superb feature set at an amazing price of $250. Some lack of hygiene exists which brings its measurements slightly below Topping D50. The other issue is the saturation of balanced output.Overall,to anyone who needs balanced output and in-built volume control with remote. It would make an excellent pairing with a couple of powered speakers like JBL 305.-------------As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.If you like this review, please consider donating funds for these types of hardware purchases using Patreon ( https://www.patreon.com/audiosciencereview ), or upgrading your membership here though Paypal ( https://audiosciencereview.com/foru...eview-and-measurements.2164/page-3#post-59054 ).