 At the 2019 High End Munich show, Ilak showed the DDP2 pre-empt DAC streamer and rune endpoint to the public as part of the Alchemy series. Designer and head alchemist Peter Matnik told me about his design philosophy, making all the right noises so I had to review it. It is beyond the scope of this video to get into the history of audio alchemy that after the acquisition by Ilak was renamed to Ilak Alchemy. Let's just say that Peter Matnik's team has made a name for itself by designing and building equipment that sounds better than the price would suggest. The new series of Ilak Alchemy products include three models, the PPA2 Phono pre-empt, the DPA2 Class D Power Amp and the DDP2 pre-empt that is on review here. They all share the same philosophy of keeping chassis ground and circuit ground separate, having local voltage stabilization all over the circuit board and, for instance, using high precision clock oscillators not only for the DAC chips but also for the microprocessors and even for the small board computer in the DDP2. Time to take a closer look at how the DDP2 finds its place in your stereo. The DDP2 is connected to a power amplifier, like the DPA2 I mentioned earlier. The power amplifier is then connected to a set of loudspeakers. If you have active speakers, speakers that have the amplifier is built in, you connect the variable line outputs of the DDP2 directly to the analog inputs of the speakers. Most people use passive speakers so let's place back the amp. Then many sources can be connected, like a Phono pre-empt, for instance the PPA2 mentioned earlier, that is connected over either RCA or XLR cables, a CD player that can be connected either digitally or analog, a TV over an optical digital connection using TOSlink and, for instance, a game console using a digital or analog connection. And these are only a few of the possibilities. Link your smartphone tablet or computer to the DDP2 over Bluetooth and you can play music directly, with of course the quality limitations of the Bluetooth protocol. Connect the DDP2 to your router over either a network cable or WiFi and you can play music from your smartphone or tablet over AirPlay and use Spotify Connect. Install a DNLA server program on your computer and you can play music from your hard disk using a tablet or smartphone as a DNLA controller and a DDP2 as a DNLA renderer. Or install Roon Core on the computer to use the DDP2 as a Roon endpoint, again using a smartphone or tablet for control. Then even the volume control can be done from within the Roon software while the input of the DDP2 is automatically switched to Roon Ready when you start to play music in Roon. And even then there are many inputs left unused. All three ELEC Alchemy products use the same housing that has a black anodized aluminium front. They measure 445 x 50 x 380 mm. The DDP2 weighs 6.35 kg. On the front left we find the power button, the 6.3 mm headphone socket, two LEDs that indicate mute and headphone output, then buttons for mute, phones output and three buttons for menu navigation, one to select and two for forward and backwards browsing. The same functions can be controlled by the rotary encoder after pressing it. Normally it functions as the volume control. The display shows the input, filters and over sampling settings, the volume settings and the menu choices. On the rear we really see the potential of the DDP2. On the right the IEC mains input with fuse holder, then the network connector, the trigger in and out to control the power status of other devices in the Alchemy line, the USB audio class 2 input for hooking up the DDP2 as a DAC to a computer, two optical digital inputs for instance for connecting a TV or CD player, two spitter input, an AES-EBU digital input and two I2S inputs, one on Mini-DIN and one on HDMI. This is not suited for connecting the audio return channel from your TV. Then we get to the analog inputs and outputs, starting with a set of balanced inputs on XLR, a stereo variable output to connect to the power amplifier, a fixed output for if you want to use the DDP2 with an integrated amplifier, two sets of analog inputs on RCA and a set of balanced analog outputs on XLR for if your power amp has balanced inputs. When opening the DDP2 we find a comprehensive power supply on the left, or rather two power supplies. This part is the switch mode power supply that powers the digital electronics and this part including the toroidal transformer is the linear power supply that powers the analog electronics. The digital electronics is mounted on the left board while the analog electronics is on the right board, all to reduce leakage of the digital noise to the bare minimum. The digital inputs are all transformer decoupled to keep out external noise over the connection. The analog devices shark processor does the alchemy, audio alchemy became known for, upsampling and resolution enhancement. After that the signal goes to a jitter reducing chip. By the way, all internal signals are I2S. All streaming functions are taken care of by this small board computer running Linux. It also contains the radios for bluetooth and wifi. And as said, all processing is clocked by precision clocks, something I haven't seen before. Then just before the signal leaves the digital board we find the two DAC chips, the AKM AK4493EQs. I suppose that since one stereo DAC chip per channel is used they are set in balance mode. Directly on the other side of the wire bridge we find the passive analog reconstruction filters. This approach offers low phase shift. The filter settings are switched using sealed gold contact relays. Then we see the discrete drivers with JFETs and MOSFETs and the digital controlled analog volume control that has 199 steps of 0.5 dB. The analog input and output section also shows the high quality relays. Then all over the board we find local voltage regulators while DC servers make it possible to use direct coupling instead of capacitors in the signal path. Then one last remark about the wifi and bluetooth antennae that is placed internally near the front and connected to the radios on the small board computer over a shielded cable. I personally prefer this over an external antenna as long as it does not cause interference. And that's for the sound quality section. The alchemy products are deep and wide, something to take into account when buying a rack. If you use a 19 inch rack the alchemy products are one unit high. The DDP2 comes with a remote control that offers the same functions as you find on the front plus buttons for balance, upsampling and filter settings. On the front these can be set in menus. Also nice is to skip and play pause buttons that work for instance when using it as a rune endpoint. There are no direct buttons for input selection. This means that you have to scroll through the inputs, especially since the display is small, choosing an input from a 3 meter distance is rather difficult. In all honesty I wouldn't know how to do this better giving the large amount of inputs and the low front. I gather that after some time you will automatically make the right keystrokes. When a DAC offers several filters I always check them out. I almost always end up with the minimum phase slow roll off as favorite, regardless of the music played. Also in this case, especially with the upsampling switched on. Already in the audio alchemy time the upsampling was well respected and the upsampling here is of course based on that knowledge. upsampling makes the life of analog filters a lot easier since the resulting high sampling rate allows for milder filters and milder filters have lower artifacts. A second alchemy feature is the resolution enhancement. I cannot say what is the best on or off. The best result clearly varies per album, sometimes even per track. To me this feature is not of great interest. The sound quality with the filter setting 4 plus upsampling sounds great. It is not of the level of the MiTech Brooklyn Bridge with Syntax power supply. Using the Brooklyn Bridge with its own power supply brings them more on par. Here the character difference makes the choice more personal. I prefer the highs of the Brooklyn Bridge but the lows of the alchemy and the stereo image of the alchemy is more emerging. I wouldn't feel disappointed though with either, certainly at that price point. The DDP2 offers a lot of sound quality for its class. The Dutch list price is €25.99 including VAT and that makes it an attractive proposition. MQA will be added through a software update as soon as MQA certification is finished. It will be interesting to see to what extent the filter alchemy is influenced by the MQA filtering. In the meantime there is enough to enjoy on the DDP2. The sound quality is very good given its price and the enormous versatility. Digital inputs in all available standards and both balanced and single ended analog inputs and outputs. Furthermore there are both a switch mode power supply and a linear power supply. And before I forget, since the electronics is fully balanced it surely pays to connect it to other equipment using the balanced inputs and outputs. Obviously the manual really needs an update for it is rather restricted and contains errors, but who reads the manual nowadays, apart from me. And with this contemplation we are at the end of this episode. There will be a next one next Friday, as always at 5pm central European time. If you don't want to miss that, subscribe to this channel or follow me on the social media so you will be warned when new videos are out. If you liked this video, give it a thumbs up. Many thanks to all that support this channel financially, it keeps me independent and distrustworthy. If you also feel like supporting my work, 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. Whatever you do, enjoy the music.