This is a teardown of the Emotiva DC-1 DAC and headphone amplifier as a follow up to my review of that unit (see https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...surement-and-review-of-emotiva-dc-1-dac.2306/ ).Here is an overall shot of the unit:Overall layout is good. AC mains comes in from the right, goes up to the transformer. Below that we have the digital cluster and flow is to the left ending in analog and headphone outputs.Immediately though, there is a major source of concern. Check out the IEC plug:We have a 3-prong, grounded IEC socket but the ground lug doesn't go anywhere! It must be connected to the case as this is metal and an electrical short can energize it. Only a double insulated piece of equipment can be run on two wires. Which this is not.And look at how the mains hot leads are nicked due to inadequate room for them:There is plenty of space to move this board forward to alleviate this problem:Manufacturing people should have complained about this and forced a simple design change.Moving on, here is the main digital cluster:We see the classic CMEDIA USB input chip.And AKM4118 digital audio receiver:Not so typical is the asynchronous sample rate converter by Analog devices AD1896. This allows the DAC to run at a constant rate by resampling the input as it drifts. It is said that it reduces jitter but as my measurements show, they did not get there.What is also unusual is the inclusion of that Altera FPGA. I am not sure why it is necessary. Other DACs implement similar functionality without the expense of an FPGA.A pair of Analog Devices AD1955A provide the digital to analog conversion.After some buffering, the output of the DAC goes through a couple of MUSES analog volume controls:I am not sure if the OPA 2134 are for buffering the analog input or output.Next and final stage is the headphone amplifiers which are sitting next to the voltage regulators:BUF634T provides the headphone amplification:Some more ugly news in the form of dirt-cheap and unreliable electrolytic capacitors from Decon used throughout:Note the filter caps that were assembled but then cut out of the board. Hard to imagine why.BTW, the larger caps are Emotiva branded and have no temperature rating. Sitting close to the heat sink guarantees short life.Another thing that makes me grumpy is this hand soldering job:I prefer PCB mounted jacks to this ugly bit of work.From safety point of view, the Emotiva DC-1 gets a failing grade from me. There is no excuse for not grounding the chassis to the ground terminal of the IEC jack.Overall layout good with fair amount of engineering going into the many components there.Hand soldering work is poor as is the horrible selection of cheap and unreliable capacitors that are bound to fail. Not acceptable at this price point.