Shanling UA2 | Portable Balanced DAC/Amp

SHANLING UA2 PORTABLE DAC AMP
- Hi-Res Audio VGP 2022

The Shanling UA2 is a portable amp/DAC dongle with balanced 2.5mm output and up to PCM 32/768 and DSD512 decoding. The Shanling UA2 is a larger and more powerful version of the UA1, aimed at being the audio companion of your smartphone, tablet, PC, or even game console, the UA2 has a very decent power output while being smaller than my thumb. This Lilliputian-sized device surely has a lot to offer. Also, unlike the UA1, the UA2 has a removable cable. This has the great advantage of letting you choose the cable you prefer or need: the one included in the box is of high quality, but you may want to use a USB-A to USB-C cable, or one that is Lightning to USB-C in case you want to use the UA2 with an iPhone. This also has an effect on the design: the Shanling UA2 is small and flat, with round edges that won’t scratch your precious devices. The only peculiarity is the “mode” button on one side that switches between the “normal” mode and the Nintendo Switch mode.

There are two jack connectors: one is 3.5 mm and supports unbalanced devices (although it does support headphones with a microphone and a TRRS jack), the other one is 2.5 mm for balanced headphones. There is a status LED between the jack connectors that lights up in various colours to inform you of the type of stream being played (e.g. DSD64, 44.1 kHz PCM, etc).

Shanling buit the UA2 entirely out of metal, with no plastic in sight: even the cable housings are made of metal. This bestows upon the device a feel of durability and quality that no plastic can give.

In terms of compatibility, the Shanling UA2 runs fine with practically every operating system out there. The only issue that may be concerning is that the volume seems to do some random things under Linux: it starts playing sounds around 10%, but then it reaches maximum output around 20% and goes back to no volume right after that.