Top 10 Best Digital Audio Converter 2022 Price and Feature Comparison

I bought this as a troubleshooting experiment because my PC’s on-board sound card was making a constant digital whistling out of my speakers when there was nothing playing that would go away when I moved the mouse but returned moments after I stopped moving the mouse.This unit does not include a power supply, instead it has a “barrel plug to USB” power cord. With the included barrel to USB cord connected to any USB port on my PC to power this unit the whistling is less obvious but definitely still there. BUT when I plug that USB cord into an old Blackberry mobile USB charger instead to power this unit the whistle is gone so that tells me the whistle is coming from something inside my PC, probably from the computer power supply but I don’t know.As for functionality, it does not support Dolby-Digital or DTS formats, it only recognizes 2-channel PCM stereo and does a decent job of processing that format. Not “totally amazing” but not terrible so far, although it does stumble a bit more on corrupted packets than high dollar DAC’s.I have an old Harman Kardon ADP303 Dolby-Digital decoder unit that is also a Digital to Analog Converter but it’s the size of a vintage stereo receiver so I bought this device in hopes of having a small device that would clear up my PC’s sound card whistle.Playing the same youtube video that has some digital skips in it, the skips are a good bit less obvious on the ADP303, shorter and smoother, but they’re still noticeable so for what this thing costs I can’t call it a bad deal so far. The analog preamp in this unit is obviously vastly inferior to the one in the ADP303 but the output of this device still sounds a bit cleaner and more detailed than the output of my PC’s built in sound card so we’ll see how this thing holds up and performs over time and I’ll update this review after I get to spend more time using this unit.I just got it an hour ago so I haven’t been able to leave it on to test for overheating issues or push it hard for very long to test its’ overall durability and its’ case feels a bit loose and sloppy but at the super low price this thing costs I’m not surprised by the build quality.If nothing else, the thin and stiff fiber cable, rca to mini-stereo adapter, and USB to barrel power cord were worth what this things costs.If you don’t care about true multi-channel surround and are clever enough to understand how to change the digital audio settings in your devices that you want to use this thing with then for the price, so far so good. If you’re having audio noise (whistle, whine, etc) and/or failures or overheating and such you might consider trying a separate USB power supply like a cell phone charger to see if the problems clear up.Update: A couple days in, so far still going. If you’re the type who is very detailed about audio quality then there are probably better options but if you just want to hear the music or movie sound it’s totally fine. I’m somewhere in between and if I didn’t own the Harman Kardon ADP303 Dolby Digital Decoder unit and know how amazing a Digital to Analog Converter can sound when it has a high quality analog preamp then I wouldn’t know what I was missing because this unit sounds “totally fine” but when compared to a DAC with high a quality analog output circuit instead of the basic amp chip this unit is built with the cheap design of this unit is obvious. That said, it doesn’t sound bad or terrible and most people will be totally satisfied with what this unit sounds like, and still for the price I’m happy with this unit so far because it’s probably about as good as the analog speaker jack on my PC’s built in sound card but without the annoying constant low level background whistle my PC’s speaker jack has… Note that the whistle is still there if I plug this device’s USB power cord into the USB port on my PC but with a cell phone USB charger powering this device instead that annoying whistle is totally gone.So with this device I can now leave my amp cranked up at all times and actually just use the windows sound mixers if I need to change the listening volume of youtube and media player and itunes and stuff instead of having to reach over and turn up the volume on my amp whenever I wanted to hear anything then reach over and turn it back down when the sound was over so that I wouldn’t have to hear the constant high pitched PC sound card whistle… So for what I paid for this device I’m happy with it… I wish it had a better analog preamp circuit but for the price of this thing I’m not surprised at all and definitely not disappointed with this purchase so far.

I want to connect my old, old receiver (no remote control, never mind Toslink, HDMI, or ARC-HDMI) to my new LG UHD (not OLED) TV, which has no audio-out connection. I want to be able to control volume remotely from my TV’s remote, and ARC allows that. At least one review indicates this box will do it, but it won’t for my LG with CEC enabled or disabled. I will either purchase a new receiver with RC or a DAC with its own RC and use Toslink from TV to DAC.Also, the box contained a short HDMI cable (3′?). It was too short for my setup, but might work for yours. Also, I don’t know if it was 19+1, though I would hope it is.Second, the device seemed dead at first. I swapped cables and inputs on the receiver. After proving to myself that the receiver worked, I turned everything off and then turned the 3 devices (TV, DAC, receiver) back on – then I got good sound.

Though our TV had a headphone jack, the volume for the headphones was controlled by and the same level as the TV speakers — not ideal for a hard of hearing viewer who needs the headphones for louder volume than those listening to the show via the speakers. This adapter let us connect to the optical digital audio out from the television and then use the 3.5mm jack for the wireless headphones. Since the Optical Digital Audio channel is independent from the speaker/headphone jack volume, we were able to independently control and amplify the headphone volume. Moreover, we could not use the TVs Bluetooth connection for the headphones because enabling Bluetooth disabled the TV speakers — not usable for viewers needing both speakers and headphones simultaneously active. If your TV has the same restriction and you want to utilize Bluetooth headphones or earbuds for a hard of hearing viewer, simply plug a Bluetooth transmitter into the 3.5mm jack on this adapter and you’re good to go! (We tried it and it worked.)All in all, quite a versatile little adapter for a very cost effective price. Only improvement would be to include HDMI ports or Bluetooth.

Excellent quality item and easy to install and use

For the Price, it worked Very well, Easy to Hook up. But, I was hoping to be able to control the Volume to the external speakers with the TV remote. The Volume is adjusted on the amplified speakers themselves. But for the price, I can’t expect everything.

I fully expected this cheap little box not to work, but it does! I just plugged it in and boom everything works! For some context i needed this thing because my tv only has optical audio, and my speakers are only auxillary. I thought there would be lag or something but no! This cheap little thing works just fine! Plug and play so to speak, super easy. For 10-12 bucks its worth buying just to have!

We used to have a Sony Air speaker that was in our kitchen. The speaker connected to a receiver connected to our TV in the living room. The receiver started to go, so I started exploring options. I quickly found out that many TVs will produce audio from both their internal speakers and an optical audio port at the same time. I bought this, ran a 50 foot optical audio cable from the TV, under our floor to the other room, and had this device at the other end. From there I just plugged in a 3.5 mm audio cable from this device to a speaker. Clear audio, no lag. Great solution.

Very good device to overcome digital vs. analog interface.

Remote is great. Sound is very clean.

Although the unit does not include a power adapter, it does include a micro USB power cable, an optical digital cable and an RCA to 3.5 mm adapter. Sound is very robust with clean bass and very neutral and detailed mid and high frequencies. Unbelievable quality for the Price. Just add any USB phone charger box as a power supply and a 3.5 mm headphone cable or a left/right pair of RCA cables depending on the device that you are plugging into. That’s it. No setup required for this device. Just enjoy.