S8 Review - Head-Fi

Pros: Very compact design
Includes all cables needed
Volume controls
Clean and detail sound quality
Cons: Volume adjustment is not very accurate
Can be bright sounding / bass light

Price: US$ 79.

Available in Black and Silver colors.

The S8 unit was kindly provided by Hidizs company for the review.

The S8 arrives in a very small simple cardboard box. Upper layer inside holds the S8 device and below are all the possible cables with micro USB on one end to connect to the S8 itself and different plugs on the other: micro USB, Type-C, Type-A and Lightning for Apple devices.

The S8 DAC is a very small device. Build quality is solid for being so compact and light weight. The main frame is all CNC-machined aluminum with the top and back sides of glass, and there are two volume buttons made of plastic. There are just two connections, micro USB for audio input which can (potentially) connect with any digital audio device with the corresponding cables and standard 3.5mm output.

I have used the S8 with Win 10 notebook and different portable audio players with Type-C. It was compatible with Win10 system, no drivers needed, and also with Hiby and iBasso Android OS based players. It was not recognized by the Fiio M6 even though all the other DACs worked fine with M6. Do note that for the device to be recognized the headphones must be plugged first to the S8. Also, when unplugging the headphones music will be paused.

With iBasso players the audio volume can be only handled through the Hidizs S8 buttons, while with a PC and Hiby players it can be adjusted from the source volume too. The S8 has 16 digital volume steps. The volume changes are not subtle enough, usually either too low or too loud, so further adjustment from the sources may be needed.

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