AudioQuest Dragonfly Cobalt Headphone Amplifier/DAC Review

Listeners tend to consider an external digital-to-analog converter as either completely unnecessary or absolutely essential. If you believe bits is bits, you're probably perfectly happy with the converter inside your smartphone, tablet, or computer.

Outstanding sound from compact solution; Ample dynamics for a broad range of headphones

96kHz maximum PCM sampling rate; Requires extra-cost adapter for use with Apple Lightning devices

AudioQuest DragonFly Cobalt USB D/A-headphone amplifier

Unlike the world of recorded music, where streaming has decimated sales of physical products, book publishing is seeing the reverse trend: sales of eBooks are declining while those of both hardback and paperback books are recovering.

Almost like wearing a headphone in my helmet

This is a fantastic piece of kit. It was purchased as one of the component piece to drive a pair of Tesla speakers for my motorcycle helmet. I can say that the Cobalt really brought those speakers to life and I am now able to enjoy a musical concert feeling in my helmet on the highway at 70 mph

Aside from musicality the small light weight design makes it effortless to carry

I've not noticed any negative as of yet

Audioquest Dragonfly Cobalt

Cobalt is the latest flagship from from the Audioquest Dragonfly series of portable dongle style digital audio converter with built in amplification products.

Small; Pretty; Warm with proper "loads

Inconsistent Output; excessively noisy and almost energetic when over driven

Fantastic sound, simple action

After recently re-ripping CDs to Apple lossless, and doing a bit of research online this seemed like a good choice to get the most out of my digital music collection played from a Macmini.