This is a review and detailed measurements of the Aune S8 Balanced USB DAC. It was kingly sent to me by the company a few weeks ago. I searched but could not find any pricing or availability online. Hopefully they were not waiting for my review to release it.The Aune S8 has a similar design language to the rest of the Aune products with slightly curved up and slanted sides:In white, it looks quite striking and a departure from its competitors.The large and detailed high resolution display is also quite attractively designed. Filter settings can be instantly rotated through for those of you who want to mess with that. A remote control is provided which is typical of the breed.The back panel is as you would expect:My overall impression is positive.As usual, we start with our dashboard view of 1 kHz tone with output adjusted to nearest 4.0 volt from XLR connectors. USB input is used:Frequency is right on the money at 1 kHz to 5 decimal places. Distortion is below threshold of audibility at -120 dB. Some mains spikes are visible. They are below -130 dB but curious that they are there given the balanced output.The combination of noise and distortion create a SINAD of 116 dB which places the S8 in the top 10 DACs tested regardless of price:Dynamic range is just shy of state-of-the-art:Jitter and noise performance (over USB) is excellent:32-tone test signal resembling "music" shows very low distortion levels as well:Linearity is near perfection:Intermodulation and noise relative to signal is very good sans our old friend, the ESS DAC chip rise in distortion at mid levels:Maybe Aune can tune the design as others have done to eliminate this.Filters are just numbered from 0 on:Post running the above test, I noticed that filter 0 rejects ultrasonics better.Finally, there is THD+N versus frequency:I was surprised by this rise in distortion with frequency above 500 Hz. Analysis of the spectrum showed both harmonic distortion and aliasing due to filter setting.Performance seems quite solid from cold to operating temperature:Above is with lower output voltage so don't worry about the SINAD being lower than the dashboard.The Aune S8 shows off its good looks which sets it up above many of its competitors. From engineering point of view, it is just shy of the best of the best. Audibly that won't matter and the performance is still good enough to land in top 10.Overall, I can recommend the Aune S8 DAC.------------As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.To economize as much as I can, when I want fast food, I go to Burger King and get the Whopper Junior Hamburger. This sandwich used to fill me up but now Burger King has made it smaller to the point where it is just 3 to 4 bites and it is gone!So reluctantly I have to get full size Whopper now which costs more money. Or be hungry after lunch. Help me not be hungry after lunch bya few dollars using