Exogal Comet First Impressions

I received this DAC last week with upgraded PSU. Jplay playback on semi-optimized gaming PC. XMOS chip works flawlessly without further tweaking where a former C-Media input DAC played highly distorted unless I swapped around settings. Testing was done exclusively with speakers as I do not own a dedicated headphone amp at this time: Triode Lab Parallel Single-Ended EL84 Tube Amp & FAL FLAT Supreme S Widebanders were used exclusively. Music includes predominantly low-fi black metal, contemporary classical, and electronica(early/experimental/dark ambient.) Metal is the best test of transients, classical of timbre & dynamic swing, and electronica of 'honesty of color' & bass weight. By that I mean that I listen to stuff of varying eras going back to the 50s and its clear where things have been polished.

1st impression: UltraFi DAC 41 remains king-of-the-hill, transient/speed lacking in Comet. Bass notes seem to fire prematurely. Not sure I'd notice were I not coming from such a niche product. Confirmed with Exogal minimum phase filter used as I suspect freq-based phase shift. Cannot confirm cause, only correlation.

Over the week: Timbre is far superior to my UF. Bass actually has weight to it with this DAC. Less fatiguing presentation if timing isn't a pet-peeve of yours(UF presentation is gritty/rough.) Less treble energy, however my speakers/amp may not go above 18khz so not sure if thats true of the DAC. Bass may have slight emphasis, no bloat or muddying. Otherwise very smooth sounding. More dark than warm. Slight saturation without vividness, could be heard as wetness. Despite lower speed the Comet is better detailed than the UF, presentation is more 'rich' than 'detailed' as the marketing proclaims. Based solely on frequency response I would understand if someone called this a 'no compromise' DAC(detail v fullness.) My first impression holds on timing, I listen to aggressive generally low-fi music so proper timing is my first priority.

Closest DAC in price I have heard is the Questyle CAS192D which brand new goes for about half the price. Has not been in my system for a year however speaker positioning has. Compared to Comet the Questyle was less detailed and the wetness it presented sat over the music like a damp blanket. More 'wet' than 'warm' or 'rich.' Where the Questyle offered ability to select filters and could be operated sans-upsampling I could not find a setting which could keep time to my standard. Questlye had moderately superior timbre to my UF, smoother/wetter presentation. Less detailed. There was not much difference in sound between various settings, NOS was slightly coarser, OS slightly more liquid. Filters were as you'd expect: min-phase had subtle phase abnormalities, linear had ringing. I fiddled with the options for two months and filter preferences came and went.. nothing solid. Generally stuck with OS as it seemed to best align with the product's voicing. Overall the Questyle was a smooth unoffensive sound without tossing the treble. Comet is more tuned for 'analog sound' which is weightier and less focused on top-end extension. The UF could easily end up a problem in a system learning toward bright or harsh. Its strengths are in timing, detail, and timbre(for a select few instruments & vocals.. less consistent than others.) On dynamic swing the Comet gets it just right compared to the more damped Questyle & the likely 'enhanced' UF. I do like what the UF does for atonal classical as jump factor plays a critical role in some performances. Even as my favorite of the three the UF wouldn't win any awards on frequency response and I don't think it proper to talk about it being 'voiced.' Its no closer to neutral than the competition, there's just no flattering words for it & being my pick of the bunch I think trying to describe it would be doing you all a disservice.

As a quick aside the headphone jack on the Comet should be overlooked based on my experience so far. I am working with the company now on a channel imbalance issue(have yet to open her up, cable may just be loose.) My skepticism with it so far is based on the fact that it takes 90% volume to reach a good volume with the headphones I have on hand(equivalent to 25% on Realtek 1150 codec.) This would be 40ohm AKG K81DJ which are 'meh' efficiency/low ohm as well as 300ohm Beyerdynamic T70 which are beyond efficient with more resistance. From what I did hear from the good channel it didn't hold any surprises based on what I've already described of the DAC. Should the volume become more robust with the imbalance repaired I'll post an update and my thoughts on the matter.

TLDR Edition: I've had a NOS Filterless DAC for 6yrs now and I've become to accustomed to excellent timing performance. Even when presented with a DAC superior across the field I'm unable to give up what I've come to take for granted. This difference might be masked by other components in one's system, if I didn't have singledriver speakers it might be lost completely. However if I did have multidriver speakers the UF's lack of bass might also prove more offensive. The Comet politely reminded me that there is weight down below which other sources left at home. Worthy of note is that I still hear timing error in NOS mode on the Questyle which says to me that I either do not like Sigma-Delta chips or digital filters. Whatever the UF uses it is not a discrete array, it is chip based.

Guts of DACs Mentioned:
Exogal Comet: Proprietary DAC conversion based on FPGA utilizing the output stage of off the shelf DAC chips. External PSU, Upsampling Minimum Phase filter design. RCA/Balanced Out. External PSU. XMOS USB Chipset
Questyle CAS192D: Wolfson WM8741, Toggleable TI upsampling chip. 5 filter options IIR/FIR. RCA/Balanced Out. C-Media USB Chipset.
Ultra-Fi DAC41: Successor to DBaudiolab Tranquality SE. Uknown DAC Chip. Filterless/NOS. RCA Out. Driverless(unknown) USB Chip. 44.1/16-bit Only. FET Buffer on output(4V out)

 

The Exogal Comet Plus is a brilliant DAC. For pure listening, it beat out 10 other DACs here we have for review. I'll post a link when it's up.

Keep us updated as you use it for more sessions and discover more.

 

There have been a few issues which I pin as the result of my being the third owner of this unit, all due to cables coming loose from their housing/plugs. Exogal has been more than helpful with resolving these problems and have gone above and beyond considering I bought this DAC used.

The Exogal staff walked me through the disassembly process and the headphone port is now functioning perfectly. Volume levels are better than I reported before where I would throw away any reservation with very sensitive headphones. There is now enough headroom that I won't run out of juice with my T70s. Should be fine with low ohm or high sensitively headphones. Would be perfect if I still owned a pair of Ultrasone ED12s as I always had the opposite problem with those that amplifiers had excessive gain & when down to listenable levels attenuation related distortion raised its head.

On subjective impressions the headphone jack seems to provide an honest portrayal of the DAC's sound. The tonal balance is identical to my computer's onboard audio and the performance notably a fair few rungs higher. Great, should one be in the 'wire-with-gain' camp they now have a transparent reference as to what the DAC is outputting. Comparing with Realtek I fatigue slower with the Exogal yet I noticed after a day my impressions on the T70 took a strong turn to the negative. After a sudden thought that I needed to list the T70s for sale immediately and find headphones of the smooth variety. I stopped myself dead and started searching the house for a way I could leash my headphones to the UltraFi DAC for comparison. Against all odds a switchbox converting RCA to 3.5mm provided me with a solid reference point, listening levels hovering just lower than where I would listen normally. Baffled at my success going sans-amp I plugged in my AKG portables to see what would happen and they're barely audible. The Beyers flipped a coin and came up lucky.. moving on.

Sound with UltraFi -> T70 is warm, fast, and relaxing with lighter than neutral bass. The irritation is gone. This is not a long term solution however its the only of the three options I can use all day without ear pain. As the ghetto solution offered no adjustment of volume I ran the Exogal down to 84 and the Realtek to 18 for level-matching. The low levels(estimated at 60-60db) had zero positive or negative effects on fatigue level/time until fatigued. This revealed another difference between Exogal/Realtek in that the Comet gains weight with the increase to volume whereas the 1150 shouts louder. To test a theory on timing precision v fatigue(I read something in another thread which brought this factor to my attention) I played with the sample rate/bit-depth in Windows when using the HP out of my PC. Higher sample rates brought the edgy transient I hear with the T70s/Exogal. At this point I'd kill to know what the Realtek codec/Windows does with these settings. I don't understand what a 'codec' is or how it processes data. I can't imagine this technology is filterless so I assume we are dealing with filters which use the CPU for processing. This somewhat re-ignites my curiosity with software players such as HQplayer which provide software based filtering. My niche UltraFi tolerates little of the sort and the primitive testing(read non-recommended settings) I used in my test of HQplayer did not make a strong enough impression for me to remember what I heard. It could also be that Windows is limited in its meddling when the user insists on using low sample rate as well. Still it is not innocent on all counts, it simply fatigues slower. The timing imprecision is there with the codec as compared to my jury-rigged NOS filterless headphone rig. To my credit I did try a couple vintage receivers before the passive solution: timbre, richness, color.. and a noise floor that puts the worst tape hiss to shame.

 

@Dot I am intrigued as to what DACs your Comet faced up against. However as the conclusion has already been revealed I fear you will make us wait..

 

Benchmark Media DAC2 DX, Mytek Digital Stereo192-DSD, Resonessence INVICTA, Lavry DA11, Violectric V850 DAC, Violectric V100 Headphone Amp, Exogal Comet Plus DAC, Grace m920, Audeze DECKARD, Exasound E22 DAC, SPL Crimson USB Interface, Audient ID22 USB Interface

 

@MrTeaRex says there are three categories of rooms at audio shows: dumpster fire, smoothed over audiophool crap, worth a deeper dive. The categories for me are more like: horribad, not horribad, favorite if you put a gun to my head. It can be difficult to identify that last one.

Anyhow, at the recent Cali Audio Show, two rooms of maybe 4 or 5 in total that fell in the not horribad category were using Exogal Comet DACs. I think worth a deeper dive.

Unable to read the walls of text above due to ADD, who else has heard this DAC?

@ChaChaRealSmooth I think TTVJ may deal in these and has been open to gear tours previously. I'll bet the likes of @JoshMorr @MrTie @famish99 @frenchbat @brencho
@Parker Litchfield
@Xecuter @HitmanFluffy @BigD and the aforementioned @MrTeaRex would be down for a listen for starters. Just saying.