Shanling’s SM90 DAC is a compact, do-it-all music streamer

Shanling’s latest music streamer has many talents. Not only does it play digital music from all manner of streaming services, it works as a digital-to-analogue converter (DAC), plays locally stored music, has Bluetooth for wireless playback from a mobile device and can hook up to TVs, CD players and amps for whole-system integration.

Its custom streaming platform is based on Android, and lets you access such streaming bigwigs as Spotify, Tidal, Qobuz, Apple Music and Amazon Music Unlimited straight from the touchscreen. You can stream from your phone using Tidal Connect, Qobuz Connect and Bluetooth, while AirPlay 2 and DLNA let you play from a networked device.

It also supports USB drives, NAS drives and M.2 solid state drives.

It is powered by a 64-bit ARM Cortex-A55 CPU, with 4GB RAM, promising “stable, smooth and intuitive operation”.

The dual AKM AK4493S DAC set-up promises a “rich and natural” sound signature, while the OPA1612-based analogue output stage should help the presentation stay balanced. Jitter performance is optimised by dedicated 45.1584MHz and 49.152MHz crystal oscillators, giving precise audio decoding for hi-res formats up to 32-bit/768kHz PCM and DSD512.

Like all Shanling products, the SM90 promises a style akin to analogue. This is helped in this case by the linear power supply, including a 35W toroidal transformer, to deliver clean, stable power.

It boasts an impressive array of connections, including a Gigabit LAN port, dual-band wi-fi 6, Bluetooth 5.2, coaxial, optical, USB DAC, HDMI ARC, as well as RCA and XLR outputs. It supports the LDAC, AAC and SBC codecs.

It has the same design language as other recent Shanling products, with a sleek aluminium chassis and glass front. And it is small enough for versatile placement.

The Shanling SM90 is out this month, and costs £999 / $969 (around AU$1900).

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