Questyle CMA Twelve DAC/Amp

Classy Class A

Sound: Effortless, satisfying. Operation: Pragmatic with some quirks, no DAC-AMP is perfect. Headphones tested: Beyerdynamic DT770 Pro, DT1990, Hifiman Arya, Audeze LCD-2 Closed. All switches set to Low gain. The Twelve drove all with authority and robustness. I find the presentation masterful: no dynamics lost, introducing smoothness without bloating the lower frequencies, and revealing, but not hyper-critical and unforgiving of sub-optimally recorded tracks as some of the THX amps like the 789. I now no longer fear to Shuffle All my entire collection! (with niche exception; see bullet point in the The Odd section below) Case in point, the Twelve is now my favorite source for my DT1990. Over time my set has mellowed out in that infamously spicy 7k-8K Hz region, and maybe some of that is brain burn-in, but I've found that some songs still have way too much sizzle with S-sounds in vocals and in particular, cymbals. Not so with the Twelve. I can actually sit back and zone out now. The Fun: -Hefty construction, able to plug in headphones one-handed without moving heaven and earth -Understated input/bitrate LED front display that is just pleasing to gaze upon -Motorized volume pot -Included remote! The Odd: -My Twelve seems to really hate switching back to PCM after playing DSD. PCM track A to DSD track A is fine; DSD track A to DSD track B is fine. But when going from DSD track A to PCM track A, there is an audible click, and then silence. At this point, the only way to "revive" the DAC is to cold restart the unit. I have not encountered this with any other DAC/AMP or DAP sources I've tested. I don't have much of a DSD collection so this has not been a dealbreaker, but it is a little disconcerting. My current streamer-NAS setup does not support DSD over DLNA anyway, so this has only ever interrupted my listening session when feeding the Twelve directly via USB-OTG. -On my unit, when using the Toslink/Coaxial inputs, there is a curious one note "chirp" sound, like a digital bird chirping, right before playback. It only occurs when coming from no playback, to selecting a track (not during continuous album playthrough). It's very quiet, and if there is some background white noise in my environment, I do not even notice it. The chirp is absent when playing from the USB input. In my opinion though, way less disruptive than a loud hardway relay switch click. -Gain switches on the underside of the unit -No analog input -Properietary 5Ghz receiver to be used with niche Questyle gear that all appear to be out of circulation. All in all, even with its minute quirks, the Twelve has found its place as the centerpiece to my system.