Questyle CMA Twelve – Blissfully Biased
In this Article
Intro
The Questyle CMA Twelve (how dare anyone substitute a 12) DAC and Headphone amp combo is a solid hunk of amp with a very premium feel and a 2019 premium-ish price tag at $1499. All sorts of options up and down the scale. In my house the closest competitor is a whooping $200 stack of compact DAC and no frills headphone amp Liquid Spark + JDS Labs Atom.
Questyle has a wonderful track record for art and design however there is some not so happy thoughts on their customer service follow-through. The Questyle CMA Twelve DAC and Amp combo naming celebrates a whooping 12 year history in the headphone world. It’s a wonderful piece of machinery with a few minor near misses.
They claim a patented Current Mode Amplification technology sit inside cuddled up to Class A amplification. Sonically it does everything a premium product should do, powerful amplification, transparent noise-floor, butter smooth presentation with exceptional precision, I think I am in love.
Disclaimer
Let me first thank Audio46 for the opportunity to test this out in my home sanctuary. This is outside of the realm of equipment I usually consider so not a whole lot of equivalent equipment to compare it to. This audition audio tour sponsored on Head-fi set me back $20 in shipping, a small 1 week rental fee, how lovely.
Good Traits
- Solid Construction
- Excellent midnight black noise floor
- Resolution and clarity
- Input voltage for the masses, selectable 110/220V
Opinionated Commentary
There are only minor imperfections on the Questyle CMA Twelve
Low volume channel imbalance. It goes away after a few clicks up from 0 and is present on my normal setup as well. It should not a be a deal breaker, unless it exhibits this at listening level someone would actually use. There is also some electromagnetic feedback static induced into the circuit because it is motorized. Just more analog character charm.
The other strange thing I do not understand is if their claim to fame is the current mode amplifier running in their controlled/auto Class A bias mode, why is it not an option to toggle to headphone amp only mode with input from another DAC on the Questyle CMA Twelve?
A proprietary wireless receiver input that is not standard bluetooth. This is Apple thinking that the consumer will buy into a Questyle Ecosystem.
The last oddity is placement of the gain switches, there are 4 since they are independent for each channel (balanced). They are underneath. I understand from a circuit design perspective they wanted to keep it clean, but from a user experience it’s a tad annoying. If you never plan on using this with highly sensitive IEM’s no worries to be had.
Cosmetic Package
The design of the Questyle CMA Twelve has a geek side something that satisfies the more mature crowd without overly bright flashy displays, but instead goes for an engineer’s idea of a piece of lab testing equipment.
The indicator lights are not overbearing and very sharp looking. The toggle switches feel dainty, but my experience with these in my day job will no doubt prove to last a long time.
Power Consumption Tests
Seems silly to care but climate change anyone? No really my curiosity wanted to know how much extra power is used when switching into high bias setting on the Questyle CMA Twelve.
0.14/0.17A Standard vs High Bias
0.16/0.19A after warmed up
12W/15W Volume/load has no measurable bearing on this as expected for a Class A amp.
14W/16W after warm
Sound
The Bias switch does make a difference, I am glad they allow you to switch it on/off just to see the effect-show and tell. Bass has a little more haptic while the treble portrays everything more dimensionally.
Similar to going from a more dead room to a lively room, extremely subtle but still noticeable. The question is does this add coloring or remove coloring? I cannot answer but I would love to believe it makes it more expansive without coloring.
Testing the DAC output to my JDS Labs Atom, there was also a slight improvement in the separation of instruments, but as expected it is the total combination of the DAC and amplifier that are musical and organic.
The Questyle CMA Twelve treble comes off smoother and yet still more detailed. I found myself missing that extra little seismic information that it extracts when I went back to my Atom. Going from memory, I prefer the Questyle CMA also over the SMSL SH-9 due to the sterile cleanliness and the more analog volume control.
Power output should be plenty to drive almost anything, I don’t have anything besides the Sennheiser HD6XX that really needs the super power, but the Oppo PM-3 and JVC HA-FDX1 also benefited from the extra headroom. I pretty much used it in standard gain mode with everything since it was annoying to flip it over to make changes.
Other Fun Features
I am not really equipped to test these functions out but they are part of the Questyle CMA Twelve package for those interested.
- 4.4mm Pentacom or 4Pin XLR balanced output. I don’t have any cables to utilize.
- Balanced output into an amplifier as a standalone DAC. I have no 2 channel system that would do it justice.
- Proprietary 5Ghz wireless receiver input.
- DSD playback, not my thing
- Studio output, not a music producer/mastering engineer so no gear.
- The Remote, probably more useful in DAC only mode. Buttons appear to be fuzz magnets.
- Optical Digital Input
- SPDIF IN/OUT Composite
- AES/EBU input
Final Remarks
The Questyle CMA Twelve is a wonderfully sounding DAC amp combo that extracts the microdetails, plenty of connection options minus the ability to use it as a headphone amp only being the only drawback. If I had the desire to purchase gear over $300-400, this would be on my short list.
Since this product was released in ?2019 it doesn’t utilize the newest DAC chips or boast over the top SINAD numbers, yet it still sounds more musical and more transparent than my limited sampling. A caveat-I don’t want to pile on, but there have been some past complaints about support, and as you go up in price tiers the support is something you hope to never have to use.
Perhaps they will be more responsive if there is an issue, but this is something to consider with any brand in such a niche market. With that out of the way, overall excellent sounding DAC/Amp combo.
Specifications
DAC+Headphone Amplifier Section
Outputs:
4.4 mm balanced headphone jack
4PIN balanced headphone jack
6.35mm headphone jack
Max Output Power(Po):
247mW @ 300Ω; 900mW @ 32Ω(6.35mm headphone jack)
825mW @ 300Ω; 2W @ 32Ω (balanced headphone jack)
THD + N:
0.00070% @Po=100mW, 300Ω
0.00167% @ Po=50mW, 32Ω
Frequency Response:
DC-20kHz(+0, -0.4dB)@0dBFS, 24Bit, 192kHz
DC-80kHz(+0, -3dB)@0dBFS, 24Bit, 192kHz
SNR: 112dB, non-weighting
DAC+Pre-Amp Output Section
USB Type B Input:
Support 44.1kHz-384kHz/16Bit-32Bit PCM and DSD Native DSD64, DSD128, DSD256, as well as DSD64, DSD128, DSD256 of DoP format
(Note: support Win XP, Vista, Win7, Win8, Win10 and Mac OS)
Digital Input & Output:
SPDIF input and output, Optical input, AES/EBU input
Support 44.1kHz-192kHz/16Bit-24Bit PCM
Pre-Amp & DAC Section:
Balanced XLR x1 pair, unbalanced RCA x1 pair
STANDARD 14dBu: XLR: 5.084V RCA: 2.549V
STUDIO 20dBu: XLR: 8.887V RCA: 4.475V
THD+N@STUDIO 20dBu: XLR: minimum at 0.00085% RCA: minimum at 0.00115%
SNR: XLR:>112dB RCA:> 109dB (non-weighting)
(Note: FIX/ADJ: Fixed Output Mode or Adjustable Output Mode of the pre-amp.)
Disclaimer
Since Audio46 loaned this out, you can check out the QUESTYLE CMA TWELVE at their storefront. No affiliate links, no kickbacks.
Our generic standard disclaimer.
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