Dunu dtc 480/800 DACs

Good day everyone, so here is my review of two new dongle DACs from the brand Dunu, the DTC480 and the DTC800. First off a disclaimer, Dunu did provide these to me for review free of charge, and all they asked for was my honest thoughts. That said, all opinions here are fully my own and I have made the attempt to review these as if I had bought them with my own personal money. So with that out of the way I'll continue with the review.

Starting from the unboxing experience, the boxes are small and simply designed, nothing particularly special or extraneous about either of them. Everything came well packaged and seems like it would be enough protection to prevent any problems during shipping. Both DACs contain the same accessories, a cloth sheathed USB c to USB c cable and a USB c to normal usb adapter. The cable feels quite high quality and resistant while still being quite flexible. I have confidence they will last quite a lot. I didn't have any problems connecting it to either my phone or my computer, it's as simple as plug and play, no software installation was needed at any point.

Now for the DACs themselves,in terms of build and design, they are both quite cool in my own personal opinion, very brutalistic futurism, and the machining feels quite well done. The coating is a nice touch and makes them feel premium in the hand. They both feel solid without being heavy. All the controls are done via just two buttons on the side of the DACs which click very satisfyingly with a solid, bouncy action. They have led lights (the 480 on the side and the 800 on the top) which display the mode they are currently in (they have a couple of different modes, more on that later) Only complaint I could have about the design, which all in all is quite minor, is that the dtc480, since it's so short and thick, has gotten caught in my pants pocket, but that could just have been a me thing. The dtc800 doesn't have that problem due to its shape. Overall I prefer the aesthetics of the 800, but the 480 is also very well designed. Having had limited experience with two products that are direct competitors to these two in the moondrop dawn pro for the 480 and the aful snowynight for the 800 I can say that in terms of build I prefer the DTCs over both, while the moondrop and aful feel fine in the hand and the sound is comparable to my ears, the material build on the DTCs is better, they feel more solid and better constructed, and I, very subjectively, just prefer them in terms of aesthetic.

As for how they sound, I can hear a slight difference between both of them and my usual DAC, the fiio BTR13, they both seem to sound a bit more spacious (with the dtc800 having a larger effect than the dtc480), but that could just be a psychological trick on my mind. They both function excellently as dongle DACs and are priced appropriately in terms of their sound and build. They have no problems with noise floors on any of my iems (even when plugged into the balanced outputs) and can power them to volumes that are far too loud for normal use (even from the 3.5 port). They also power my full sized headphones very well, and while I dont have any massively hard to drive headphones, just based on specifications they will drive most things to a very satisfactory volume level.

As for the modes, the DTC800 has three of them, PCM, DSD and high voltage, while the DTC480 has four, the three aforementioned ones plus UAC 1.0, as well as coming with five different filters. To be fully honest I couldn't hear any major difference between any of the modes (once adjusting for the volume increase of the high voltage mode) so I just left them on the default mode, but maybe a more seasoned audiophile than me will appreciate the options these DACs provide. And switching modes is as simple as long pressing the volume buttons.

I do have a complaint about them, the different modes they have are a bit confusing and nothing in the package indicates they have different modes, to find more about them you need to look at the listing or promotional material, I have communicated this to Dunu and to their credit they did indicate they are planning a way of solving this but as it stands currently I feel this must be mentioned.

In conclusion these are two excellent dongles that I would greatly recommend to anyone that needs something simple and with a great form factor that they can always carry around and simply plug and play into anything they need at any given point. They are competitive at their price points and do what they are designed to do excellently.

I am happy to answer any questions in the comments and I hope y'all have a very nice day.