In the world of personal audio, Hidiz has spent the last several years making waves. We’ve reviewed several pieces of their gear, covering everything from earphones to personal audio players. Today, we’re looking at the Hidiz XO Balanced DAC/Amp Dongle, an external audio processor capable of acting as a soundcard for your PC or smartphone and completely replacing its built-in audio and offering extra power for demanding headphones. Coming in at $99, it’s tiny, portable, and powerful with a sound to match.
Specifications
- Current Price: $89 (Hidiz)
Hidiz XO - What Is It? (Design and Features)
The Hidiz XO is a complete audio system that comes ready to attach to your smartphone, tablet, laptop, or gaming PC. Inside of its tiny shell is a specialized audio processor called a DAC, or digital to analog converter, which is designed to take the ones and zeroes output by your computer and turn them into sound that can be played through your headphones or gaming headset. It pairs this with an amplifier, so even if you’re using audiophile grade headphones or in-ear monitors (high-fidelity earbuds), you’ll be able to listen in confidence knowing that you’re hearing them at their peak potential — within reason of course.
You might not guess it given its pocketable design (seriously, it measures only 2.2 x 1.0 x 0.4 inches), but the Hidiz XO is ready to completely replace and upgrade the audio built into your device of choice. It is a sound card by another name, though if you’re like me, that brings to mind the old add-in PCI cards we used to use 20 years ago. The XO uses a simple USB Type-C connection and you’re off to the races.
That Type-C connection is part of what makes it so versatile. It’s instantly compatible with the devices mentioned above — and if you don’t have a Type-C, Hidiz has included a helpful C-to-A adapter in the box. My PC and Android phone both instantly recognized the XO and handed off all audio processing duties to it. You can even use it on Mac and iOS devices, though you’ll need to use a Lightning to Type-C adapter which isn’t included in the box (any will do, it doesn’t need to be specific to this device).
Dongle DACs are nothing new and the XO is entering a crowded market that only gets busier with each passing day. Despite the plentiful competition, it manages to stand out from the pack. Its construction is solid with a heat dissipating aluminum chassis, but there are two RGB strips that run along each side.
There are also two face buttons, an X and an O, which is also surrounded by an RGB ring. The X controls the RGB lighting. The O button swaps between two filter modes that act as EQs by modulating the higher frequencies. When tapped and the light is blue, Hidiz tells me that the high frequencies are reduced by 20-30%. Tap and turn the light to red and they’re reduced by 30-40%. This rebalancing to scale back the highs also makes the lows sound more prominent (though there’s nothing actually changing about them within the tuning).
Now, you might be asking why you would choose a device like this over the built-in audio of your phone or PC. After all, many gaming PCs boast high-quality audio chipsets and specialized shielding to prevent interference. There are two reasons: removing the audio completely from the PC or phone is almost always a good idea and two, the components in this device are designed specifically for high quality audio and have improved capabilities versus what a phone or computer can do by default.
Let’s start with that first one. While yes, great gaming motherboards can indeed offer very good audio, it’s just an established fact: if you want the highest quality audio, you should have a device devoted to that. Even the best motherboards are balancing their audio components with, well, everything a gaming computer can do. The XO has one job: to deliver high quality audio and high quality audio only. It does one thing and does it well.
The second point requires us to delve into the internals. First off: the DAC chip. This is using two ESS Sabre ES9219C DAC chips capable of 32-bit/384kHz audio. It offers support for all of your high-resolution audio formats, including FLACs, WAVs, and MP3s. It offers full decoding for Tidal’s highest resolution Master Quality (MQA) tracks. It even offers support for Direct Stream Digital up to DSD256. It does all of this with vanishingly low levels of harmonic distortion (118-119dB) and a very low noise floor, even with sensitive in-ear headphones.
If that sounds like a lot of audiophilia, don’t worry. All you really need to know is that this chip can produce outstanding audio and will work with just about anything you care to throw at it.
The Hidiz XO is available in black, silver, or rose gold colors
Along with that is the amplifier Hidiz has built in. From its 3.5mm port, it can output up to 78mW of power. That’s enough to drive most consumer headphones and IEMs with ease. The XO also supports balanced output through its 2.5mm jack, which increases the total output power to 195mW. It’s quite a bit for such a tiny device and should suffice for the majority of headphones this side of demanding planar magnetics and high impedance classics like the Beyerdynamic DT-990 Pro and Sennheiser 6XX.
Now, the XO isn’t exactly at the top of its class when it comes to specs, but it’s close. The Hidiz S9 Pro still bests it in output power and its signal-to-noise ratio, but it’s the more expensive device. And, for what it’s worth, I find the XO to be much nicer to look at to feature a more robust construction for daily carry. I do wish Hidiz would swap the 2.5mm connection for the more common 4.4mm balanced Pentaconn connection, however, as 2.5mm is becoming increasingly less common (I have exactly two earphones that use it natively in a collection of more than 20 sets ranging from $10 to $1000).
In the image above, you can see how the Hidiz XO is designed and the flow from component to component. The sound from your phone or computer is fed in through the USB port to the DAC stage. The DAC then feeds that into two separate channels for left and right audio. Each side of your headphones gets its own DAC/Amp stage, essentially eliminating any chance of distortion from those channels being processed at the same time (this is known as crosstalk). An independent crystal oscillator keeps perfect time within the audio processing, also reducing the likelihood of artifacts and distortion in your listening. This is then fed into a switch to either be combined for single-channel, 3.5mm audio or to maintain its split from the balanced output.
Another high point of the XO is its integration with the HiBy Music app. Within, you can enable USB device control, unlock volume steps, and take advantage of in-depth EQ settings. This includes a traditional multi-band EQ, as well as HiBy’s excellent MSEB audio tuning system that allows you to adjust the sound based on qualities you enjoy, such as bass texture or the forwardness of vocals. It’s excellent and increases the overall value of the XO.
With that background out of the way, let’s get into what all of this actually amounts to in the listening impressions!
Hidiz XO - Performance and Daily Listening Impressions
The DAC and amp really work hand in hand to deliver the upgraded sound experience. When the higher resolution audio of the ESS Sabre DAC is paired with the higher power output of the amp stage, you can audibly hear the sound improve compared to the built-in audio of your PC or smartphone. This is where we get into whether it’s worth paying around $100 for.
Plugging in the XO for the first time, I had to go into the control panel to manually enable 32-bit/384kHz audio. When I did, I plugged in my RODE NTH-100 headphones and loaded up some high-res audio tracks I keep downloaded to test DACs and amps.
The first thing I noticed was the extra volume headroom compared to my motherboard — and my motherboard is no slouch when it comes to audio. I use the MSI MEG X670E ACE, a $700 gaming motherboard that boasts about its audio quality. It even uses a similar ESS Sabre ES9280AQ DAC chip, but the Hidiz XO offers noticeably more power which translates to better sound.
That matters because that added volume headroom allows sound to “open up” and make detail more apparent. Small elements, like the texture of sounds in games and music, or minute details like which sticks or brushes a percussionist uses, are more audible here. There appears to be slightly more space between sounds, which can add immersion and competitive advantage for gaming. It also means that you’ll be able to use a wider variety of headphones.
The other thing I noticed was that the sound was more full when listening from my smartphone. This was less audible on my gaming PC, I suspect because the DAC chips are so similar. There was a bit more warmth than my Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra was natively able to provide. For PC gaming, games sound more bold, cinematic, and lifelike.
If you enable the filters, that warmth really begins to jump out. Enabling the blue filter rounds out the sound nicely. If you’re listening to a song or playing a game where sounds can be a bit sharp (like sniper rifles in Battlefield V), turning it on really smoothes out the listening experience without taking away too much detail in the high end. Taking it up to the red filter is a bit too much for my taste but can be good if you have sibilant headphones or really want the warm qualities of the DAC to sound the most prominent.
The RGB ring changes color to let you know what audio quality you’re listening at
Now, a good DAC isn’t going to color the sound too much if at all. Here, I don’t interpret these changes as overt color so much as richness and body. That is also due to the added power of the amplifier but also how that amp stage is integrated. It’s just a better listening experience.
It’s worth noting here that if you’re already using a great dongle DAC, the improvements will be more subtle than if you’re using onboard audio. Once you’ve made the jump to a high-quality dongle/external soundcard, you really come into the realm of features, total power, noise floor and distortion, and the subtleties of the amp stage. There are certainly audible differences, but in that case, you’ll need to look at the specs here and compare, as well as note the sound observations I’m noting.
In using it throughout the day, the biggest thing I found myself wishing for was some kind of on-board control. Having a button dedicated just to RGB is novel but feels like a wasted opportunity for something more useful, like a gain control. While the RGB definitely looks cool, I just didn’t find myself noticing it after a while, especially if I was using my PC or browsing my phone while listening.
Final Thoughts
While a device like this won’t be for everybody, it offers a good value for the money. What I find especially useful about it is that it’s a one-stop solution to improve your audio no matter where you might be listening. Since it works natively on smartphones and computers, you can move it from one device to another and have an upgraded listening experience on both, all without the need to install special drivers. This is especially great if you happen to use office or school computers where the audio quality isn’t the best.
At $99, it falls in the middle of the price spectrum for devices like this, but given its excellent build quality, moderately high power output, balanced headphone support, and highly portable design, it’s solid recommendation for an all-in-one audio upgrade.
The product described in this article was provided by the manufacturer for evaluation purposes.
