FiiO D3 (D03K) Digital to Analog Audio Converter - 192kHz/24bit Optical and Coaxial DAC

Well, here is a quickie review on the 3rd gen D03K that may help others trying to research for specific uses. For the $$ this nice little piece is a great, fun DAC. I am a big music library fan, with a nice networked music library ripped in bit-perfect wav files. I had added a Sonos Connect (ZP90) player to my not so bad of shop stereo comprised of some great, mid-fi, mostly outdated components laying around: PSB large format bookshelf speaks, HK analog Pre/Pro, Onkyo discrete stereo amp, decent interconnects, etc.This system has a pretty nice level of fidelity to where you can hear things and I was experiencing one of the only weaknesses of Sonos, their DAC is a little disappointing when playing on higher fidelity setups where you can hear such things. The analog outs on the ancient Sony DVD unit I was using to play CDs was slaying the Sonos in SQ.Enter the FiiO unit. Set Sonos to uncompressed (if your files are lossless), fixed volume out (for full bit depth), coax digital to FiiO/analog to pre. Yes!! The result is blacker background, increased precision, tightened yet solid bass, in this case it did cure the minor dissatisfaction of listening through the onboard Sonos DAC. Since I had both Sonos/FiiO connected to the amp, asked my audiophile in training kid to do a blind A/B (I level matched between switching, so there was a 4 sec delay) he chose the FiiO every time in random selections over a several minute period.So, not saying this will beat a Benchmark, or mod the opamps to TL^%$$^ or anything like that. (it's a shop stereo man!)But it is pretty fun to enjoy a marked audio improvement with this cute, no-brainer install, under $30.00 little DAC. Sure it works great for stereo TV if the set is outputting PCM too.

It performed exactly as I hoped... which was better than I expected for my situation.So, so I setup an outdoor movie theatre for my friends and family and here was my situation:- bluray player connected to a projector via HDMI cable- speakers connected to an amp with only stero inputs and stereo outputsI needed a device to take the digital coax output from the bluray player and preferably convert it into stereo LEFT/RIGHT analog connections or at a minimum just convert it to mono to send to both speakers. I also didn't want to pay for a new amplifier or receiver to do this outside. So, I tried this device. It works great so far. It translated the PCM signal from the bluray to stereo analog signals (RCA)With the location of the player and the speakers to the listening audience, I got lucky and connected the left/right properly as I noticed when vehicles zoomed across the screen. Something I should have double checked before the movie, but it was done correctly, and showed that this little DAC worked exactly as I hoped.** NOTE: If you're not getting sound, just check 2 things:1. Change your sound output on the bluray player to PCM2. Make sure the input selector (located on the bottom of the FiiO D3 is set to coaxial (not optical).I can not attest to it being great with 5.1 or 7.2 surround sound because I used it to feed the digital output from my bluray player and feed into a DAC (digital to analog converter) to make stereo sound for an outdoor movie experience (the HDMI went to the projector so I needed to get the sound out separately). In this capacity, it worked flawlessly. The sound signal appeared to be clean and pure, and I got great sound out of the speakers, which means that the components and cables in all phases went well. I bought this and another cable (a 3' from Monoprice - also has a review) in case 1 had an issue, but both worked beautifully.I expect this cable to last a long time and it works great, but I'd have no problems buying this again should I need another digital audio coax cable.

I have intentionally waited instead of rushing to write a review, wound up waiting for over 1 year. Bought this to connect a $39.99 Kodi box's (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01DZOBQ6O/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o04_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1) Toslink output to my stereo, hoping to provide reasonable good sound to the cheap-o HTPC setup. (Turned a then 7-yr old netbook into OpenELEC box, but found out it couldn't render 1080p smoothly. $40 seemed a great deal for a Kodi box!) The connected components are from the mid-90s: Conrad Johnson pre-amp, Aragon amp, Martin Logan speakers, MIT interconnects & AudioQuest speaker cables.After living with this little DAC for a year, watching many movies, TV shows & critically listening to music of various genres -- Bossa Nova, classical (symphonic, chamber, piano, aria...), jazz, vocal, Broadway, pop rock, New Tango... I would say that this unit has performed well, just not quite stellar. It's no doubt an improvement over the Kodi box's analog output -- crisper, more dynamic & much improved soundstage. Compared to my CD player's (Micromega, also from mid-90's) sound, however, it provides more presence at the expense of sounding somewhat 'bright' & induces some degree of listening fatigue. Not to the point of ruining instrument timbre, of course, but making some brass instruments and vocals sound harsher than hearing them live. I do wonder, though, if some recordings' intentionally boosted 10K-12K range (some older sound engineers' trick to make tracks sound more 'alive' on average playback systems) may be partly to blame. This DAC may have simply revealed that overcompensating flaws in the sound mastering.With that said, however, occasionally, sibilance in female voice can become overbearing -- 'Summer Samba' from Patricia Barber's 'Night Club' for example, whereas the Micromega CD player presented the sibilance just fine without drawing one's attention away the wonderful piano playing. It may seem unfair to compare this DAC to something 50X its price, but here it is anyway. 8-) I actually did hope that the past 20-yr+ of technical advancements in DAC would have made this unit at least on par with the CD player. To be fair, most recordings do sound wonderful, including remastered older analog recordings. Ella Fitzgerald's 'Nearness of You' simply oozes honey. Pretty awesome.In summary, a very impressive product for the price. I'm quite grateful that the unit allows the Kodi box (with a 3TB USB HDD attached) to become a nice sounding music server, allowing me to program 2 hours of music using my phone from the kitchen while the system is in the adjacent family room. Also, this unit is my first foray into a separate DAC unit, proving to me that perhaps any source of digital music, be it a phone, PC, Android box (with the right digital output of course) can be part of a great sound system with the aid of a modest DAC such as this unit. Maybe one day, I will upgrade to an even better DAC (by FiiO as well?) Either way, I'm keeping this little guy around.If you are looking to use your PC or Android box as a source of music playback, this unit should be on your short list!