It’s funny, the things we get excited about testing. On the hi-fi and audio side, the products we cover run the gamut of consumer audio – from budget headphones to premium turntables, from high-end CD players and DACs to cutting-edge active floorstanders.
In recent years, we’ve encountered Focal’s towering Grande Utopia Evo speakers, Gryphon’s sci-fi-looking Ethos CD player, Sonus Faber’s flagship Suprema system, Wilson Benesch’s quarter-of-a-million Prime Meridian turntable, and more. All thrilling, of course, and astonishing feats of engineering and hi-fi know-how. And yet, sometimes it’s the smaller, less flashy and sensibly priced products that more often than not get our reviewing senses tingling the most.
Case in point: in the week after we returned from the High End Vienna show, there was one product that was dropped off at the What Hi-Fi? offices that I immediately pounced upon: the AudioQuest DragonFly Copper DAC.
When the original AudioQuest DragonFly USB DAC first launched in 2012, we made it the lead story on our October 2012 magazine issue – and we laughed at how the picture on the cover was bigger than the actual DAC itself. Brilliant sound and hi-res file support crammed into the tiny proportions of a USB stick, the DragonFly was portable, supremely easy to use, affordable and immediately boosted the sound of your laptop/headphone combo beyond mere “audio”. It was revolutionary.
There have been various versions of the original Black, then the step-up Red, and finally the most recent DragonFly Cobalt, with five-star reviews and Award wins heaped on aplenty for the way it made our Spotify tracks, WAV rips and hi-res songs sound so detailed, three-dimensional, precise and dynamically exciting. But even as newer rivals appeared with fancier features, higher file support, more customisation, and more headphone connection options to cater to the demands of burgeoning head-fi fans, none of them could quite replicate the utter simplicity and appealing plug-and-play nature of the DragonFly DAC.
Even technophobes or those with zero interest in hi-fi could understand it: the USB end goes into your laptop, the wired headphone into the 3.5mm jack, and hey presto – there was no other feature to mess with. It simply worked, and its sonic effect was instantly obvious. I remember handing the DragonFly Black v1.5 (pictured below) to my husband, who had just bought a pair of Sennheiser HDB 630VB headphones, and saying: “Here’s a little gadget, it’ll make your laptop music sound better, just plug it in” with no further explanation – and he loved it immediately. To my eternal delight, he still uses it, and even got excited about a potential upgrade.
We thought the DragonFly USB DAC might be on its last legs as Cobalt supplies petered out, but the arrival of the brand-new Copper model, which promises to be more powerful and efficient than before, has me – and the rest of the What Hi-Fi? team – genuinely excited. It retains the portable USB DAC form, with the DragonFly logo lighting up to let you know what file type is being played – a little nerdy hi-fi nod, and it looks pretty – and it costs £229/$250. Not bad.
Portable hi-fi has evolved considerably in recent years, and the Copper does include a USB-C adapter so it can be used with the latest smartphones and MacBooks. But does it still offer the capable and satisfying performance as its predecessors did? I can’t wait to find out if the little DragonFly Copper has kept up with the times. Stay tuned for our review on whathifi.com in a couple of weeks.
Yes, we do have bigger, pricier and more technologically-advanced products currently in for testing as well – Denon’s flagship AVC-A1H AV receiver, Sony’s first RGB Mini LED TVs, and the Roksan Caspian 4G streaming pre/power amplifier are just a few examples – but finding products from less mainstream brands that are affordable, great quality and solve a problem so seamlessly is one of my favourite parts of the job.
🎶 What I’ve been listening to: awesome party, dude! by Sorry Mom
📺 What I’ve been watching: Agatha Christie’s Marple
⚡️ Here are some of my favourite articles from the past few days:
I spent a day fixing vintage hi-fi – here’s what I learned
“Never before in our industry has a format come back from the dead quite like vinyl” – turntable engineers discuss all things record-related, including one major flaw that needs addressing
Dali Sonik 5 floorstanders review
Cute little rascalls aren't they.