Soulnote D-1 V2 Review: The $4,555 Giant-Killer DAC

There's a version of high-end audio that's about accumulation. More features. More filters. More processing. More ways the gear intervenes between the recording and your ears, each one justified, each one measured, each one making a small promise about what it's going to fix.

The Soulnote D-1 V2 is not that version.

This is a DAC built around subtraction. No oversampling. No digital filters. A fully discrete analog output stage that makes a deliberate, principled choice to handle the signal as little as possible and trust what comes out the other end. In a market full of DACs competing on what they add, the D-1 V2 competes on what it doesn't.

After several weeks with it in my system and having spent time with the original D-1 a couple of years back, I think that approach is worth taking seriously.

The Soulnote Philosophy: Why "Non-Oversampling" is the Cure for Digital Fatigue

Most DAC designers approach the conversion process as a problem to be solved. Digital audio has known artifacts, jitter, aliasing, noise at the filter edges, and the industry has spent decades developing increasingly sophisticated ways to manage them. Oversampling, noise shaping, apodizing filters: these are real engineering solutions to real engineering problems.

To pull this off, Soulnote utilizes the ES9038PRO chip. Now, I don't typically like to focus on the DAC chip used for a design, it matters, but never as much as the architecture around it, like the power supply and output stage. However, it’s worth noting here because the D-1 V2 manages to strip away that 'Saber glare' often associated with this chipset when it's not done right, proving that implementation is everything.

The magic isn't just in the chip, but in the Non-NFB (Non-Negative Feedback) fully discrete circuit design. By removing the feedback loop, Soulnote prioritizes speed and raw 'life' in the signal over perfect laboratory measurements. When you pair that with their NOS (Non-Oversampling) mode, you’re getting a digital-to-analog conversion that feels remarkably organic.

Soulnote's position is essentially that the cure has become part of the disease. The processing introduced to manage digital artifacts has its own sonic character, a kind of tension or edge that most listeners have simply learned to accept as the sound of digital audio.

The D-1 V2 is their answer to that. Non-oversampling. No reconstruction filter. A signal path kept as short and direct as the engineering will allow. The bet is that the artifacts you don't process away are less audible than the character introduced by processing them.

It's a bold position. And in my experience with this unit, it's one they pull off.

The Reference Rig: Testing the D-1 V2 via USB, Coax, and Roon

Before getting into the sound, it's worth being specific about the setup, because with a DAC this revealing, the source matters.

I ran the D-1 V2 through three different connections: direct USB from a MacBook Pro running Roon Core, coaxial from a Cambridge EXN100 streamer, and via the Innuos Streamer 3. I also tested several playback scenarios, DSD upsampling through Roon, native file streaming, and multiple input combinations.

The conclusion was straightforward: USB is the best input on this DAC. It handles everything you throw at it cleanly and consistently. Beyond that, you're really just hearing the ceiling of whatever source you're feeding it, the D-1 V2 itself isn't the limiting factor.

Sound Performance: A Massive Soundstage Without the Digital "Edge"

The first thing you notice with the D-1 V2 is what's missing. That's not a criticism, it's the point. There's an absence of edge here that takes a few sessions to fully register. Digital audio has a particular kind of hardness in the upper frequencies that most listeners don't consciously identify until it's gone. With the Soulnote in the chain, it's gone.

What replaces it is a presentation that feels, and I'm choosing this word carefully, relaxed. Not soft. Not rolled off. Not lacking in detail. Just free from tension in a way that makes long listening sessions feel effortless rather than earned.

But the thing that stopped me first wasn't the tonal character. It was the soundstage.

Placement and imaging with the D-1 V2 are exceptional and immediately obvious. The stage gets dramatically larger, and more importantly, it gets precise. This isn't the kind of wide, vague presentation where instruments blur into a general sense of space. Placement is specific. When a recording puts something somewhere, the Soulnote puts it there too.

The clearest way I can describe it: put on something with a busy drum kit, Tool, or Pink Floyd's The Wall, and just listen to where the drums are. A cymbal hit in the upper left of the kit lands in the upper left of the image. A kick that sits center and slightly back lands center and slightly back. You're not approximating the kit's position, you're hearing it. If you've ever stood in front of a live drummer, you know what that's supposed to feel like. The D-1 V2 gets closer to that than most digital sources I've spent time with.

It's even more apparent on recordings that capture real acoustic space. Listening to Ryan Adams' Live at Carnegie Hall, the cavernous room is just there, the distance between Ryan and the audience, the gap between his vocal mic and his guitar, the air around him on the stage. You don't just hear that it's a big hall. You feel the size of it.

Midrange and vocals are honest in the best possible sense. Clean, clear, present, and free from the kind of editorial softening or sharpening that some DACs apply unconsciously. If it's on the recording, you'll hear it. If it isn't, you won't. That's a harder thing to achieve than it sounds.

Soulnote D-1 V2 vs. V1: More Detail, Lower Price, Better Balance

I demoed the original D-1 about two years ago, which gives me some useful perspective here.

Both are exceptional DACs. The core identity is completely intact, the V2 is unmistakably a Soulnote, built around the same philosophy, delivering the same fundamental character. The soundstage size and precision that define this design were present in the V1, too.

Where the V2 moves forward is in how it handles detail. With the V1, I occasionally felt like fine detail had a slight forwardness to it , nothing dramatic, but noticeable on certain recordings. 

The V2 resolves that. Detail in the V2 is just as present, but it arrives more naturally , it surfaces from the music rather than being pushed toward you. That's a meaningful refinement, and it's consistent with what Soulnote was trying to do with the design in the first place.

System Matching: A Foundation, Not a Flavor

Here's what I'd push back on with the typical "system matching" framing: this DAC doesn't really need to be matched. It fits more systems than it doesn't.

What the D-1 V2 actually is, and this is worth sitting with, is a foundation. If you already have a great system, it slots in and elevates what's already working. If you're mid-upgrade, still building toward something, it's the kind of source that informs every decision you make further up the chain. Get the digital end right first, and you'll hear your preamp, your amp, and your speakers more clearly. The upgrades you make next will be better calibrated because of it.

That last point cuts both ways. The D-1 V2 is detailed and revealing, genuinely so. It may surface weaknesses elsewhere in your system that a softer DAC was quietly papering over. If your preamp is the weak link, you'll probably start to hear it. Same with cabling, amplification, and speakers.

But, and this is the important distinction, it doesn't do that in the way some highly resolving DACs do, where everything becomes clinical and analytical to the detriment of actually enjoying the music. The detail here arrives naturally. It's revealing in the way a really good room sounds revealing: you hear more, but nothing feels forced or fatiguing. Listenability is never sacrificed for resolution.

That's a harder balance to strike than it sounds. A lot of DACs in this category pick a lane, either you get musicality, or you get detail. The D-1 V2 doesn't ask you to choose.

The $4,555 Value Proposition: Is the D-1 V2 the Best DAC in its Class?

I want to be careful here, because I'm not someone who leads with price tags. In this hobby, cost and quality have a complicated relationship, and "best DAC at its price point" is a phrase that gets thrown around so often it's almost meaningless.

But I'd be doing you a disservice if I didn't say it plainly: the D-1 V2 at $4,555 is, in my opinion, one of the best DACs available at that price right now. Maybe the best.

What makes that more remarkable is the context. The V1 of the D-1, which I spent time with a couple years ago, was already punching well above its $5,999 price tag. I put it up against the Aqua La Scala and came away genuinely impressed with how it held its own against a DAC that costs considerably more. Keep in mind the La Scala, depending on the version, is close to 10k.

The V2 improves on the V1 in meaningful ways, and does it at a lower price point. That's not something you see often.

At $4,555, it sits in the same conversation as DACs like the Weiss DAC204 MKII. Different philosophies, different strengths, but genuinely competitive. And if you're open to the used market, V1 units represent exceptional value. Either version is a relatively safe bet in a category full of options that aren't.

If You Already Own the V1

Short answer: You don't need to upgrade.

The V2 is better, the detail retrieval is more natural, and the slight forwardness I noticed in the V1 is gone, but not in a way that should make you feel like you're missing something. The V1 is still a serious DAC and a great one to own.

What I would look at instead is what you're feeding it.

The source matters more than you might expect with this DAC. The Soulnote will return whatever investment you make upstream. A better streamer is going to show up clearly in the sound, that's a feature of how transparent this design is, not a flaw.

The USB cable also matters more than I anticipated. I tested several, and the difference wasn't subtle. The best pairing I found was the Synergistic Research Foundation XL USB cable. It brought out the best of what this DAC does without adding anything of its own. Worth the audition before you consider any hardware upgrade.

One note: the power cable made less of a difference here than I typically expect. Minor improvements, nothing dramatic. Put that budget toward the USB cable instead.

The Audiophile’s Exit Ramp: Who the Soulnote D-1 V2 is Really For

The listener this DAC is built for has usually been around the block. They've owned resolving gear. They've heard what precision sounds like. And at some point, they started wondering if precision was actually the thing they were after, or if they'd just been chasing a metric that didn't map cleanly onto what they actually wanted from music.

If that description fits, the D-1 V2 is worth a serious audition. Soulnote doesn't have wide distribution, and these don't surface on the used market often. When they do, they tend to move quickly, and for good reason.

The Bottom Line

The Soulnote D-1 V2 makes a case that the most sophisticated thing a DAC can do is know when to stop. It's not for every system, and it's not for every listener, but for the right pairing, it's one of the most musically satisfying digital sources I've spent time with at any price.

Some DACs try to impress you. This one tries to disappear. In my experience, that's harder to engineer and harder to give up.

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