BluDento BLT-2 Bluetooth DAC, first impressions

Equipment / Electronics / Gear / Accessories DACs
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Just received my BluDento BLT-2.
This does AptX (352kbps max?), but NOT AptX-HD. So, it’s for mp3s only (even though my .wav files sound great anyway).

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"Phone -> Bluetooth -> BLT-2 -> RCA out -> Denon AVR-1312 -> Sennheiser HD280 Pros".

Definitely no hiss, no weird artifacts or whatever. First impressions? It’s as loud as the source itself. The silence is cleaner from the BLT-2 (i.e.: Silence IS silence in electronic music, for example), and this tiny little blue thing sometimes pushes more details into my ears than my headphones plugged straight into my “old” Denon.

Little paper says “(…) enjoy the crispness of your music”. My guess is this thing is upsampling to 384khz before outputting to the RCAs. Makes it sound thinner, or “cleaner” ? You decide.

CONS: No on-off switch. Why? The damn blue light won’t stop flashing if you don’t use it (still flashing after 10 minutes here), so get a USB power cable with an on/off switch (yup, this exists).

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Yup, confirmed. Spent the last hour A/B-ing with my HD58X. Negligible difference.

I don’t think I hear more details coming from the BLT-2, though. Still. BLT-2 sounds a bit more airy (10+khz).

Impressive, considering nobody will ever use this as a headphone amp anyway. And it’s 100$, and I’m comparing it to a 500$ Denon receiver from 2011.

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Back from the dead to resurrect this thread from the dead because now I got a SMSL Sanskrit 10th and this BLT-2 and I can A/B with Liquid Spark + T50RPs… Way better than a possibly “stupid” comparison with an AVR with a possibly bad, really bad, headphone out… And yes, a correction was definitely needed, for the best. Here we go.

(TL,DR: This thing is impressive. AptX + Burr-brown smoothness.)

Optical out:
Well, this is a “stress test” obviously, because optical out just… sends compressed data to the DAC, and nothing else. With .wav files, there’s the odd “what is this… maybe… crackling-like noise” in the background, lack of sub-bass, and some kind of treble “veil”… and a total lack of air. What can I say except “yup, that’s compression”.

With .mp3 files, that’s totally different. Remember: Aptx does 352kbps max. Technically, it shouldn’t make any difference – it should be able to send “bitperfect” 320kbps mp3s. And… yup. I heard “interferences” and said “this suddenly sounds badly recorded”… until I realized all that was actually in the .mp3 files I tried. It might sound a tiny bit thinner via the BLT-2. Lack of depth. With planars. Plugged in a Liquid Spark. But, who uses a (desktop) bluetooth receiver like that, lol.

Now the real test: The BLT-2 DAC test. (You shoudn’t pay that much for a receiver if there’s no DAC in it).

RCA out: (I’m using a “Gohifiaudio S3” switch.)
And… dang. Yeah, use this. This DAC might have more “soul” in it than my 100$ Sanskrit 10th. …i.e.: In non-audiophile terms, they clearly added a DAC with a bit more mids to compensate for the lack of mids in some bluetooth modes. You will notice a lack of “air” in .wav files, and that’s about it. I’m pretty sure I also hear more subtle details from this DAC than the Sanskrit 10th. Detail that possible should not be there? Possibly.

Oh, man. I just did that for fun tonight, but I did not expect to be “wowed” by this DAC. This suddenly became my best DAC to listen to mp3’s with my T50RPs. Yup. If your system lack “soul” (i.e.: Mids, depth), and you mainly listen to mp3s, try this BLT-2.

Oh, yeah, I forgot, it’s not a DAC, it’s “only” a bluetooth receiver with an integrated DAC. :flushed: Yeah, you guessed it, I definitely recommend it. This is impressive stuff. Specs say it’s a “32Bits Burr-Brown PCM5102A” chipset. If you want that “Burr-Brown smoothness”, you will definitely get it with this one. :ok_hand: