FiiO D3 (D03K) Digital to Analog Audio Converter - 192kHz/24bit Optical and Coaxial DAC

Bought this to remove computer noise from Sound Blaster Z gaming setup without using an external analog chain device, have been using ART DTI, which does a great job of removing computer noise, though it is still faintly audible and very high volumes, that said I wanted to not have it in chain and also have it available for other applications. The FIIO D3 works perfectly and easily from the sound blaster Z optical connector at 24/96 khz, passing through the Z pro studio effects with no issues (setup the digital out on Z, check pass stereo mix to digital out in the z control panel advanced features, and the default out has to still be Speakers not SPDIF-OUT only trick to it, which i found with a quick google search, if you want the pro studio processing.) It sounds cleaner and perhaps a bit more resolute that the Z on its own, but again the Z suffered from computer noise, and/or the inclusion of the ART DTI in the analog line. I could never have the Z analog by itself in my setup the noise was unlivable, my computer has a lot of stuff and usb devices, etc audio runs to a yamaha mixer and studio monitors. Setup is simple, nothing to do on the D3 except select optical or coaxial little switch on bottom. Computer noise totally eliminated, just do not try to power it from a USB port on your computer or you will get all that noise passed through to the analog outs. Using its included USB power adapter plugged into strip sound is clean, clear, and totally meets or surpasses my hope and expectation.EDIT: I meant to include that it is tiny, elegant, and solidly built. It has the air of a high-end piece of gear, and that is no exaggeration.

Well, here is a quickie review on the 3rd gen D03K that may help others trying to research for specific uses. For the $$ this nice little piece is a great, fun DAC. I am a big music library fan, with a nice networked music library ripped in bit-perfect wav files. I had added a Sonos Connect (ZP90) player to my not so bad of shop stereo comprised of some great, mid-fi, mostly outdated components laying around: PSB large format bookshelf speaks, HK analog Pre/Pro, Onkyo discrete stereo amp, decent interconnects, etc.This system has a pretty nice level of fidelity to where you can hear things and I was experiencing one of the only weaknesses of Sonos, their DAC is a little disappointing when playing on higher fidelity setups where you can hear such things. The analog outs on the ancient Sony DVD unit I was using to play CDs was slaying the Sonos in SQ.Enter the FiiO unit. Set Sonos to uncompressed (if your files are lossless), fixed volume out (for full bit depth), coax digital to FiiO/analog to pre. Yes!! The result is blacker background, increased precision, tightened yet solid bass, in this case it did cure the minor dissatisfaction of listening through the onboard Sonos DAC. Since I had both Sonos/FiiO connected to the amp, asked my audiophile in training kid to do a blind A/B (I level matched between switching, so there was a 4 sec delay) he chose the FiiO every time in random selections over a several minute period.So, not saying this will beat a Benchmark, or mod the opamps to TL^%$$^ or anything like that. (it's a shop stereo man!)But it is pretty fun to enjoy a marked audio improvement with this cute, no-brainer install, under $30.00 little DAC. Sure it works great for stereo TV if the set is outputting PCM too.

This FiiO D3 was the last of 5 different budget-range DAC's that I purchased while setting up my new AV system...and the last one I'll ever NEED to purchase. As I described in the reviews for the other DAC's I bought, I had various issues ranging from bad interference through the speakers when the optical stream was turned off, to crackling during certain sound effects in games. I was getting frustrated because of these issues (especially as the problematic DAC's had good reviews) until I bought this FiiO D3. Immediately out of the box, the quality difference was evident. Instead of having a simple bent piece of sheet metal with a single Phillips self tapping screw holding it on, like some of the other DAC's, or a cheap molded plastic case, the FiiO has a nicely finished fully enclosed metal shell with end caps attached by machine screws, as well as flush-mounted status LED's on the top.Whether it looks like junk or not, however, is less important than whether or not it works correctly. I'm happy to report that the FiiO D3 works perfectly. There is no crackling, no interference, and no weird transient noises after the optical stream is turned off, like another of the DAC's that I had which was otherwise fine: this indicates to me that the signal conversion circuit is well isolated from the power supply circuit. Also unlike one of the other DAC's I bought, the R/L RCA outputs are not reversed, but actually output right and left stereo channels correctly.Please note that, like just about all DAC's in this price range, this device is only designed to handle conversion of a stereo signal. If you switch to 5.1, 7.1, Dolby DTS, or any other format besides stereo, you'll get an atrocious noise from your speakers and nothing else (I learned this early on with previous DAC's when my speakers happened to be turned up rather loud...it was not a good experience).Basically, the FiiO D3 is THE DAC to purchase if you need to convert optical stereo to analog stereo. It costs a few dollars more than the wide range of random off the shelf DAC's currently available on Amazon, but I find that a few extra dollars is more than worth it for a quality device that functions correctly.