Questyle CMA Fifteen

The Questyle CMA Fifteen is a flagship desktop DAC and headphone amplifier built around the company's Current Mode Amplification technology and the ESS ES9038PRO DAC chip. It handles 32-bit/768kHz PCM and DSD512, plus MQA full decoding and LDAC Bluetooth. That means you can feed it anything from Apple Music lossless to ultra high-res files, wired or wireless, and it will decode them properly. The ES9038PRO is known for low distortion and excellent dynamics, and paired with Questyle's amplification it should deliver clean, powerful sound with any headphone you connect.

Current Mode Amplification is Questyle's signature approach, designed to reduce distortion by using current rather than voltage as the signal carrier through the amplification stage. The result is typically a very quiet noise floor and fast transient response. The CMA Fifteen also works as a preamp, so you can connect it to powered speakers or a power amplifier and use the volume control and inputs for your whole system. At this price it is a serious piece of gear that should handle demanding planars and sensitive IEMs equally well.