This is a review and detailed measurements of the SMSL C200 Balanced dac amplifier and headphone amplifier.

The unit looks attractive enough for a desktop product. The LED is function but sadly displays the sample rate rather than volume (until you change that). Navigating the menus is a bit hard but the included remote helps some. It is very nice to see built-in power supply:

As well as balanced output in the form of TRS outputs.

SMSL C200 DAC Measurements
I expect excellent performance from SMSL and it delivers:

 

This easily lands the C200 in the upper section of our “excellent” category:

 

Sum of distortion and noise is well below transparency.

Dynamic is naturally excellent:

Multitone is naturally so as well:

And IMD:

Linearity is textbook perfect:

Jitter falls in the same excellent category:

We have the usual choice of filters:

Each naturally impacts ultrasonic noise so varies performance in our wideband distortion+noise sweep:

SMSL C200 Headphone Amplifier Measurements
Let’s start with noise performance:

This is well above average:

Power is most important so let’s see how well the C200 performs:

 

Both of these indicate available juice to drive 90% of the headphones out there to very satisfactory levels with superbly low noise and distortion. If your headphone has a different impedance, you can compute it using the following measurement (power = V*V/R):

SMSL C200 Headphone Listening Tests
I started with the Dan Clark Stealth headphone. Fidelity was excellent but power output was average. Switching to Sennheiser HD-650 fixed that with plenty of dynamics now and detail. You get a bit more power still with Drop Ether CX. I could not get the unit to distort with either one of these headphones.

Conclusions
You get a superb DAC in the C200. The headphone amplifier is also quite clean and competent but just shy of the power in the highest tier products. I suspect the price will justify this (will update the review if not). Really, not much else to say.

I am happy to recommend the SMSL C200.

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