With crisp lines and a clutter-free layout, the ST-Amp looks fresh and won’t find it too difficult to blend in any living room or listening area. The blockish chassis has a completely different vibe bringing in cues from both classic and modern styles. Still, it is a different matter when we begin to compare the facade with a clear distinction that the design inspiration of the ST-Amp came from elsewhere. Since adding the ST-Amp on top of the pile stacks very well, this makes me wonder if this is a preview of what’s to come. The unit weighs 1.1kg and is also being held up by the same tall feet EarMen used previously. If you’ve had the pleasure to check out the other desktop offerings of EarMen, the ST-Amp uses the same footprint as the CH-Amp and Staccato. While it’s nice to have some flexibility in this regard, it’s not a deal breaker in my book unless you require some serious horsepower. What I didn’t notice immediately when I was using the ST-Amp is that it has no gain setting.
This should be enough for most gears out there and shouldn’t be scoffed at unlike the more anemic 0.5W output of the amp when plugged in using single-ended connections. In a balanced configuration, with the inputs and outputs all set properly, headphones get to squeeze the ST-Amp every ounce of its 1.85W maximum power. The ST-Amp shows off its fully balanced circuitry with no less than three 4.4mm jacks around with the third fitting turning it into a proper standalone amplifier. The higher-end standalone desktop DAC of EarMen, the Tradutto, uses the more popular ES9038Q2M chip. The EarMen ST-Amp uses a single ES9280 DAC chipset capable of up to PCM 32BIT/384 kHz and DSD128 over DoP.Ĭhecking with its peers, only the Eagle had a similar DAC configuration which is an ES9280 C Pro. So as a pioneer in this new market segment for EarMen, I believe there is a huge expectation here for the ST-Amp.
#Earman eagle portable
The closest cousin to the ST-Amp is the more expensive Angel which is in the portable segment.
Let’s remember as well that so far, this is the first desktop-class design by the company that serves those shopping for an all-in-one. It is arguable that the new EarMen ST-Amp is not the usual DAC with an amplifier combo but rather an amplifier tailored with a DAC.Īs I understand from the write-ups of EarMen for the ST-Amp they wanted to deliver an amplifier that can fully reflect the DAC installed or any downstream signal coming from an external DAC.
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