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amazon Luxury & Precision W2 reviews
Today we will be hands-on with Luxury & Precision W2 products. That is a DAC / AMP Portable model in the Flagship W series of Luxury & Precision. Recently, compact portable DAC / AMP models like the W2 have become very popular since it has brought smartphones that have not been favored for music playback to a new level. It turns your smartphone into a Hifi/Hi-res music player and is close to some DAP models. With Luxury & Precision, there are currently two models for this line, W1 and W2.
PACKING AND ACCESSORIES
Luxury & Precision W2 is packaged in a rectangular cardboard box. With a picture of the product on the front and some info on the back.
Opening the box, we have the Luxury & Precision W2, a USB-C to Lightning cable, a USB-C to USB-C cable, and a USB-C (female) to USB-A (male) adapter. Surprisingly, the W2 has a very strong black color, but the company decided to include two white cables; if it comes with a black cable, it will probably be much more synchronized and beautiful.
DESIGN AND FINISHING
As a DAC / AMP Dongle, the size of W2 is not much larger than other products with dimensions of 60mm x 22mm x 12.5mm and weighs only 22g. The Luxury & Precision logo is prominently designed; the lower part is a 0.91 inch OLED display screen.
On the back, we still have the logo and the company name printed on the carbon background to highlight and increase the product’s aesthetics and luxury.
On the top side, there will be three control buttons. The shorter button will be the “Enter” button; two longer buttons will be the volume up or down or left/right selection. The right side will have Pentaconn’s balance port 4.4 and single-end 3.5 port.
Port 3.5 will be used to output SPDIF. On the left side, we have a USB-C port used to connect the W2 to the source. Note that we cannot start W2 without plugging in the power source because W2 has no battery. When the W2 is plugged into a source or smartphone, the OLED screen will light up.
SPECIFICATIONS AND HIGHLIGHTS.
First, to mention a few significant upgrades, arguably the most important, we look forward to the most. This portable DAC/AMP has two Cirrus Logic CS43198 DAC chips running in dual DAC mode. And perhaps this is the biggest difference between W2 and W1, while junior W1 is only equipped with 1 DAC chip, CS43198. In addition, according to the company, the W2 is also equipped with a “High-Gate-Count FPGA” chip for EQ processing, giving users the experience of “professional sound effects” and “Lossless EQ” in parallel with the DSP decoding process.
Luxury & Precision is currently using an energy-efficient MCU chip to operate and control the W2 model. Currently, the company has not announced which chip it will use. But it will be separate from the USB chip, and then the USB decoder chip will only handle the data transfer. In addition, W2 also owns a high SNR rate of 131dB; according to the company, we will have a quieter background, on par with Flagship TOTL products, and no longer worry about noise problems.
About the Cirrus Logic CS43198 DAC DAC chip
“The CS43198 DAC chip is the standard for the most advanced and modern DAC generation, a chip that consumes extremely low power while providing an extremely high-quality sound system without consuming a lot of battery capacity. The CS43198 chip features an internal resistance of 600 Ohm, a dynamic range of up to 130 dBA, a THD+N distortion ratio of -115dB, and the anti-noise ability inside the chip>110dB. Comes with a patented DSD decoder chip that directly decodes Direct Mode up to DSD256 to retain the most realistic sound quality through an extremely complex volume control system accompanied by the 50kHz filter system recommended by the Scarlet Book documentation. And the volume adjustment between the analog output and the chip’s volume mixer provides an almost unrecognizable experience when converting from DSD Direct to PCM and vice versa.”
According to the specifications, Luxury & Precision W2 will give output through a single-ended port of 125mW, up to 230mW at 32Ohm if using a balanced port. The number is almost double according to the company’s announcement. One of the equally impressive parameters is “0 noise floor” – “no background noise.” The company claims that the Luxury & Precision W2 can deliver a very loud audio output but still comes with extremely low to zero background noise on a micro board.
In addition to the “0 noise floor” mentioned above, they also offer “astonishingly low distortion.” According to the company, total distortion is as low as 0.00012% at 300Ohm and 0.00048% at 32Ohm. Surprisingly, it is even lower than the parameters that the CS43198 DAC chip is available. Although we do not know how the company did this, it must be said that it is very impressive.
Luxury & Precision is currently claiming that the W2 is the only DAC/AMP USB Dongle on the market with SPDIF output. To be portable with smartphones and their setup, export SPDIF is not beneficial, but according to the company, that function is possible. And the compatibility of this portable DAC / AMP is almost the most optimized when it can be used for all phones and tablets from Android to iOS on the market.
USER INTERFACE
The interface and menu on Luxury & Precision W2 are very simple. It is very easy to use but can be difficult to use because three control buttons limit it.
With W2, we can update the new firmware as announced by the company. To check the current firmware of W2, first, disconnect the source. Short press the “Enter” button, hold down, and reconnect the cable to the source. The current firmware will show up for a few seconds when W2 starts up.
The menu on Luxury & Precision W2 has a total of 8 main functions. To access these functions, short press “Enter,” then the functions will appear. Then keep pressing “Enter” (do not hold) to move through other functions. To change custom functions, press the left/right button to select.
EQ: Normal, Game, Movie, Bass, Jazz, Classical, Pop, and Rock.
SDF: Normal, Xelento.
Gain: Low, High.
FLT (Digital Filter): Fast roll-off, Slow roll-off, Low Latency Fast roll-off, Low Latency Slow roll-off, and Non-Oversampling (NOS).
SPDIF: On/Off.
Display: Manual, Auto. With the option to manually turn off the Manual screen by pressing the “Enter” or Autokey if you want the screen to turn off automatically after a few minutes.
HID: On/Off. When left On, W2 will also adjust the volume of the source. When to Off, the volume button on W2 can only adjust the volume of W2, not the source.
Tune: 01 and 02. According to the company, Tune 01 is “Gentle Tune,” the sound will be more elegant, Tune 02 is “Refine,” the sound will be more delicate.
where can you get a Luxury & Precision W2 online
Luxury & Precision W2 Portable USB DAC/AMP Headphone AMP: Buy it now
SOUND QUALITY
Does Luxury & Precision W2 have a “0 Noise Floor”?
One of the impressive announced parameters of the company is that there is no background noise. After comparing with the original LG V40 and DAP Cayin N3Pro phones, a Luxury & Precision W2 controls noise very well, almost no noise. There is noise in the background compared to when plugged in through LG V40 and Cayin N3Pro. That reminds us of the Opus #1 music player when Opus #1 also uses Dual DAC CS43198, and its background noise is almost non-existent, similar to Luxury & Precision W2.
In terms of sound quality compared to LG V40, when through W2, the sound quality is improved. And indeed, the sound quality can be equivalent to today’s mid-range DAPs. First of all, the background is very clean, with no noise, the sound is clearer and more detailed. W2 does not add color or raise any band above all; it retains the inherent sound quality, thickens, and separates more.
Dynamic range is much improved than when plugging in the V40; the bass is stronger, deeper, has a better body, and hits quickly, without much tail drag. When turning on Xelento mode in SDF, the sound seems to be boosted by V-shape a bit, making the music seem more energetic but will make the vocals fall back and dry slightly. The environment is not the strong point of W2 when it has improved over the plug, but the feeling is just enough, neither narrow nor wide. While the image, the W2 performed quite well when the instruments and singers were arranged quite accurately, not overlapping.
CONCLUDE
Overall, Luxury & Precision W2 is an extremely impressive Portable DAC/AMP, from sound quality to convenience. The sound quality of the W2 is completely comparable to that of mid-range music players, which can even be more prominent thanks to the clean background and less distortion.
When most recently released smartphones have the 3.5 port omitted, or if they are, they are often not taken care of, combined with DAC / AMP W2 can bring your experience to a level with mid-range music players without no less competitive.
But if possible, for the price, we should probably own cables with better quality core or umbrella (and the black color is nice). The cable that comes with the machine is not finished well and may not be durable during long-term use.
Another pity that maybe the company can update via new firmware is the memory function in the settings. With a fairly small set of control buttons and many menus, every time we finish customizing the menu and exit when we re-enter, we will be jumping back to the first menu, and we will have to press and hold and press until the last menu. That is quite annoying in the test of the difference between Tune 01 and Tune 02 when the Tune menu is at the bottom, and every time you exit, you have to press a while to get to it.
When Luxury & Precision defined the segment for W2 as the Flagship line for DAC / AMP Dongle, at a price that is not cheap, W2 gives us an amazing sound experience, improved sound quality. Much better than expected, ignoring a few difficulties when choosing in the menu and accompanying accessories, it is clear that Luxury & Precision does not disappoint us with a Flagship product with excellent sound quality.