 The X-Saber 3 is rather small and yet remarkable heavy. Not only in weight but also in features. It offers Roon endpoint, DNA rendering, Spotify Connect, MQA, DSD 512, a linear power supply, remote control and so on. The X-Saber 3 is to be connected to analog line inputs on your amplifier, like CD or aux using either XLR or RCA cables. The amp needs to be connected to a pair of loudspeakers or headphones. If your computer holds your music, you need a bit perfect music player software, like Amara or Ivana, J River Media Center or Roon. The computer then is connected to the DAC over USB cable. Or if you want the computer placed elsewhere, you can connect it to your network and use the DNA or Roon loud protocol to send the music over the network to the X-Saber 3. You control your music player software then using a tablet or a smartphone. For Spotify Connect or Tidal Connect, you use the Spotify or Tidal Connect app on your phone and link it to the DAC. Since the X-Saber 3 has several digital inputs, you can also connect other digital sources like a CD player, game console and TV. The X-Saber 3 itself can be controlled from the front or over the remote control that comes with the unit. The compact cabinet is totally made of black or silver anodized aluminium, with a top of tempered glass. It measures 310 x 218 x 43 mm and weighs only 3.5 kg. The front holds a glass strip that, when switched on, shows a series of touch sensitive backlit buttons and a small color display. To start left we see the standby button, a button to dim the backlight of the buttons, the input select button, a mute button, the display, the filter selector, the button for sync mode and the button for the setup menu. Completely right the infrared sensor. The up and down buttons on both sides of the display function in several modes. Normally they are the volume control but they are also used in the input menu and setup menu. The rear is rather crowded with, on the right, the IC mains inlet with next to it the trigger input and output that facilitates automatic standby switching in conjunction with other devices. Then the Ethernet socket and the digital inputs, USB audio class 2, transformer decoupled spidive, toss link and I2S on HDMI. This I2S input, by the way, is not compatible with the HDMI connections on your video equipment and is for connecting digital sources that have an I2S output on HDMI connector. Then on the left the analog outputs. Two balanced outputs on XLR and two single ended outputs on RCA. To open the XSaber 3 the bottom plate has to be removed. This cannot be done without breaking the warranty seal and thus the warranty. The top and sides of the chassis are machined from a slab of aluminium as Apple does for their laptops and for instance air acoustics for their top of the line amps. This produces an extremely rigid chassis with integrated shields between the power supply, digital electronics and analog electronics. On the left we see a 33VA Noratel UK to ROIDAL transformer that is connected to the mains inlet over a 150-230 volts voltage selector. The secondary side is connected to an isolated part of the circuit board that holds the rectifiers and buffer capacitors. Note the separation between this part of the PCB and the part below. That part holds the digital audio electronics and, on a piggyback PCB, the WiFi radios. This side of the PCB again is galvanic-y separated from the right part. The connection between the two is over galvanic isolators, both on this side and on the flip side. It brings a digital audio signal to this part of the PCB where the DA conversion takes place. From here the analog signal goes to this part where the analog circuits are. When we look at the flip side of the board we see the rectifiers and the 16 NishiCon 1000 microfarad capacitors for buffering. On the input side the Ethernet connector with the Realtek interface chip. The SPDIF input is transformer decoupled and has a TOSLink input next to it. The I2S input is directly to the left of it. The number crunching is done by an XMOS microprocessor that probably does the interfacing and exiling Spartan that might do the filtering and MQA processing. Like on the other side of the board here galvanic separators to avoid a dirty ground pain on the audio side. The ESS9038 Pro DAC chip does the digital to analog conversion with next to it the Loface Crystek CCHD950 series clock crystal. It is remarkable that the ESS chip rests against a protruded aluminium support in the chassis. From the DAC chip the analog audio is sent to both the balanced output stages ending in XLRs and the single ended ones ending in RCA. I don't like to talk much about the measurements I always do since the relation between the measurements and the sound quality are very hard to establish. In this case I would like to mention that the measurements show an extremely clean result with noise, distortion and linearity showing very low figures. The output voltage on the XLRs is 4.9 volts and half of that on RCA's. That is slightly higher than Redbook specs but will cause no problem. Given the size of the XSaber 3, the user interface is very clever but also a bit fiddly. But the infrared remote makes the use of the controls on the front only necessary on setup. Choosing an input is a matter of pressing the input selection button on the remote until the wanted input is shown in the display. Or use the input button on the front combined with the left or right button. All kinds of settings can be made in the setup menu, like for instance whether you want to use a cable network or Wi-Fi. For these settings you need to be directly in front of the DAC to be able to read the small characters in the display. The settings you might want to change during normal use, like input or filter type, all have direct access buttons on both the front and the remote. The selection of the 7 filter settings the ESS DAC chip offers can be done from the front or over the remote control. The display shows numerically which of the 7 filters is selected but which filter is behind what number is not documented. If MQA files are played, the only option is the MQA filter since that is fully compensating for the DAC's time smearing. Another interesting feature is the sync mode that lets you select between synchronous and asynchronous feeding the DAC chip. If the digital source has a very good clock, you select synchronous. If not, you let the internal clock take over which is effectively reclocking. This of course does not work over the network since that is asynchronously by nature. All popular audio formats are accepted up to 768 kHz PCM, MQA 384 or DSD 512 over the I2S and USB inputs and up to 192 kHz PCM and DSD 64 over SPDIF and TOSLink. The X-Saber 3 was connected to the Air Acoustic AX5-20 amplifier that drives the PMC FACT-12 signature loudspeakers on I2S-2 isolators over AudioQuest Robinhood 0 loudspeaker cable. On the other side the X-Saber 3 was connected to the internet over an SOtM SNH10G network switch over an AudioQuest Diamond Ethernet cable that was in turn connected to my router. The X-Saber sounds very open, has very good detail and deep lows, very high resolution mids and fairly clean highs, all within the price bracket of course. The spatial information is what to be expected in this price range with more width than depth and fair focusing. Timing is rather good while sibilance is well controlled. This is a very good sounding DAC for the money that surpasses my reference in my setup 1B, the MiTech Brooklyn with Firm Hipsus and LOUSBREED signature. Although the Brooklyn also has analog inputs, even for phono. The X-Saber 3 is very well designed and built. It is versatile in accepting popular physical inputs, USB Audio Class 2, SPDIF, TOSLINK and I2S and it accepts several streaming sources over the network, Airplay, Tidal Connect, Spotify Connect, DNLA UP&P AV and RoonRoute. I like the compactness while it does have an inbuilt linear power supply. Since there is a built-in volume control, you can use it as a digital pre-app. This is a very attractive DAC for the € 3000 it costs. This brings us to the end of this video. As usual there will be a new video next Friday at 5pm CET. If you don't want to miss that, subscribe to my channel or follow me on the social media so you will be informed when new videos are out. Help me reach even more people by giving this video a thumb up or a link to the video in the social media. It is much appreciated. Many thanks to those viewers that support this channel financially. It keeps me independent and lets me improve the channel further. If that makes you feel like supporting my work too, the links are in the comments below this video on YouTube. I am Hans Beekhuyzen, thank you for watching and see you in the next show or on theHBproject.com. And whatever you do, enjoy the music.