Helm Bolt DAC Review | Trusted Reviews

Verdict

Some niggling start-up points apart, the Helm Bolt is a satisfying plug-and-play DAC that’s accessible for a comparatively cheap quantity. Its headline function of MQA has been mitigated by Tidal’s current transfer to FLAC, however PC and Android customers will nonetheless be capable to profit from MQA rendering from the Helm Bolt.

Introduction

Nowadays there are many methods to enhance your audio expertise. You can subscribe to a high-quality service music, however that solely achieves a part of what you want. To finish the circle, you’ll want a DAC.

And with the Helm Bolt DAC, it’s a digital-to-analogue converter that goals to offer your audio an enormous enhance with out the necessity for an enormous funding because it’s now accessible for simply shy of £100 / $100. This places it alongside the likes of the Earmen Eagle, a DAC I preferred loads after I reviewed it. Can the Helm Bolt finest its efficiency?

Design

• Compact design
• LED indicator for sampling price
• USB-A adapter

The variety of plug-and-play DACs out there has grown in recognition lately, the sort of small, handy amplifier that might be used at dwelling however simply taken exterior of the home with a cell machine.

The Helm Bolt is one such DAC. It’s small at solely 95mm lengthy and a width of 11.7mm, with a compact essential housing that connects to USB-C enter by way of a versatile cable. It’s a lot smaller than a comparable plug-and-play DAC just like the Astell & Kern HC3.

The construct high quality is sweet for its small proportions, the versatile cable offers some leeway in the event you’re connecting to a supply in a good area, and it comes with a USB-A adapter to connect with a laptop computer, PC, or non-USB-C-compliant supply. It’s solely sufficiently big to incorporate a 3.5mm output to hook up a wired headphone.

There’s an LED that showcases file sort and frequency sampling price, in addition to a mushy carry pouch for transport, and that’s it for the Helm Bolt DAC’s design. It retains issues easy, which is able to attraction to these involved in boosting audio with minimal fuss.

Options

• MQA renderer help
• THX certification for low distortion/crosstalk
• DAC shielded from electromagnetic interference

The LED exhibits three forms of file/sampling price. Purple is MQA, utilized by the likes of Tidal music streaming. Purple refers to HD tracks better than 48kHz, and Blue equals SD tracks as much as 48kHz. The Helm Bolt can playback PCM and DSD as much as 384kHz and 5.6MHz respectively.

The Bolt makes use of an ESS Sabre DAC with a three-oscillator design claimed to be higher than a single oscillator design resulting from its “superior frequency lock”. The DAC is positioned in a shielded headphone connector for optimum EMI (electromagnetic interference) to isolate it from the USB and scale back crosstalk distortion (the place a sign on one channel leaks into one other). The shielded cable additionally helps to enhance the conductivity of the sign from supply to the DAC in addition to isolate from EMI.

It’ll additionally routinely decipher a headphone’s impedance and set the output ranges, both at 1V for headphones’ impedance at lower than 150ohms or 2V for greater than 150ohms.

There may be THX certification (just like the THX Onyx), and compatibility for Android and iOS cell gadgets, in addition to macOS and Home windows 10. The Helm Bolt acts as a renderer for MQA music information, so when paired with a decoder (the Tidal app), the Helm Bolt can carry out the ultimate ‘unfold’ and unlock the data inside the MQA stream for the best high quality playback.

Efficiency

• Clear sound
• Balanced however dynamic efficiency
• Niggly start-up points

A barely peculiar trait I’ve seen with the Helm Bolt DAC is that it doesn’t all the time play audio when linked. Whether or not it’s a compatibility difficulty or the DAC not absolutely working, I’m undecided. It has a thoughts of its personal, working advantageous on some events or refusing to on others, the system recognising it as “ESS USB Audio” as a substitute of “Helm MQA”. It may be very fussy.

However catch it on an excellent day – you may inform it’s within the temper when it goes via its correct start-up sequence of purple/blue flashing lights – and the Helm Bolt DAC strikes a clear and balanced tone with audio performed via a Sivga Robin SV021. There’s no apparent try of the DAC so as to add or alter the audio sign via processing whether or not via heat or crispness. It feels that what I hear is coming straight from the music streamer’s servers as meant.

Take a monitor like Bear McCreary’s Rodan from the Godzilla: King of the Monsters soundtrack (Tidal) the place there’s loads of vitality to the percussive beats, a surging ahead momentum and large-scale dynamics, and the Helm Bolt reproduces it in an unflustered method. The drumbeats carry loads of weight and energy however not in a fashion the place it turns into the main focus of the monitor.

The sense of surging momentum is carried nicely via the track, although maybe with not as a lot readability or element as anticipated – with some tracks Tidal sounds hotter than different providers, and a subsequent pay attention on Apple Music reveals a sharper sense of element and readability, in addition to a greater sense of small and bigger scale harmonics, plus a wider soundstage to bask in.

However that speaks to what I wrote earlier in that the Helm Bolt doesn’t add its personal traits, it merely accentuates no matter is supplied within the stream.

With Avishai Cohen and Huge Vicious’ Hidden Chamber (Tidal), there’s a satisfying richness the Helm Bolt extracts from Cohen’s trumpet efficiency. It additionally exerts tight management over the track’s dynamics, astutely capturing the smaller, quieter moments that enable the extra expressive components to face out extra. It’s a presentation that sounds fluid, dynamic, and vigorous, but in addition pure.

With Tidal including FLAC to its service, it’s turn out to be more durable to search out MQA information, specifically on iOS, which somewhat nullifies the headline function of this DAC in 2023. A change to PC and a take heed to Air’s Alone in Kyoto presents the identical type of management as earlier than with reference to monitor’s dynamics.

The brightness of the excessive frequency notes is introduced out with some good extension and readability: there’s an excellent firmness to the piano notes, the width of the soundstage is properly described, whereas the waves that crash within the background in direction of the monitor’s finish add neatly to the monitor’s general atmosphere. The Helm Bolt knits it collectively in a simple method. It does depart some element and sharpness on the desk when in comparison with the Earmen Eagle, which if I have been to decide on between the 2, the Eagle can be my most well-liked choice.

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