BorderPatrol USB DAC SE Review by Scot Hull

But hereís the real reason why you should care ó the BorderPatrol DAC Sounds Great, Fully Capitalized. If you’ll pardon the hyperbole, at $1,850 with all the bells and whistles, this DAC blows the doors off of just about everything else. And no, not just in its weight class. I mean I just about everything else. To clearly better it, I have to go to extraordinary lengths (and budgets) ó and thatís crazy.

My favorite experience with the DAC was very recent. I had the little bugger hooked up, via USB, to a $17k Aurender W20. Yeah, I know. That’s a 10x difference in price, but that Aurender is so damn good it’s really hard to not use it. Anyway, I had queued up one of my current reference tracks, the title track from the Reference Recordings CD of Coplandës ìFanfareî. Right at the beginning, there’s a couple of cymbal crashes. With the BorderPatrol DAC, this passage redefined ìrealî in my hi-fi world. My head whipped around, my eyes flashed whites all the way around, my pupils dilated, my nostrils flared, and sweat popped out across my forehead. That was brass!

‘I cheerfully confess that this DAC has been the most entertaining thing to hit my rack in years. The performance easily earns the BorderPatrol DAC SE an Editorís Choice award, but also puts it firmly into Best of the Year territory. An absolute must-listen.’ Scot Hull, Part Time Audiophile