Chinese DAC ES9038

The most active thread on ES9038Q2M boards is:

ES9038Q2M Board

I have found (from buying the board recommended in that thread) that there is some assembly required to get good performance from cheap ES9038Q2M boards. It is a lot of work.

In other words to get the performance of the ES9038Q2M design more needs to put into the implementation than is supplied in the cheap boards. The thread has much more detailed information but a very quick (and poor summary) is that the power supplies, output section, clock, etc, on the cheap boards significantly limit/degrade the potential performance.


Hopefully this is a helpful reply.
 
This is the case with all DAC chips. There are DAC chips that supposedly may bring you to heaven but there are more mediocre performing DACs with it than those that are excellent.

It is even more the case when one spends 50 Euro and expects it to be a perfect device.

* Count on: reworking, replacing parts, testing, measuring, listening