Reviewer: Marja & Henk
Financial Interests: click here
Sources: PS Audio PWT; Dr. Feickert Blackbird MKII/DFA 1o5/Zu DL-103; Phasure XX-PC;
DAC: Phasure NOS1 DAC; PS Audio Direct Stream DAC [loaner]; DiDiT DAC212 [in for review]
Streaming sources: XXHighEnd; iTunes; Devialet AIR; La Rosita Beta; Qobuz Desktop
Preamp/integrated/power: Audio Note Meishu with WE 300B (or AVVT, JJ, KR Audio 300B output tubes); dual Devialet D-Premier; Hypex Ncore 1200 based monoblocks; Trafomatic Kaivalya; Trafomatic Reference One; Trafomatic Reference Phono One; Music First Passive Magnetic;
Speakers: Avantgarde Acoustic Duo Omega; Arcadian Audio Pnoe; Podium Sound One; Sounddeco Alpha F3; dual Zu Submission MKI; Soltanus Virtuoso ESL [in for review]
Cables: complete loom of ASI LiveLine cables; full loom of Crystal Cable cables; full loom of Nanotec Golden Strada; Audiomica Pearl Consequence interconnect; Audiomica Pebble Consequence; Audiocadabra Optimus Dual Headed USB cable [in for review]
Power line conditioning: PS Audio Powerplant Premier; PS Audio Humbuster III; IsoTek Evo 3 Syncro; AudioMica Allbit Consequence
Equipment racks: Solid Tech and ASI amplifier and TT shelf
Indispensable accessories: Furutech DeMag; ClearAudio Double Matrix; Franc Audio Ceramic Disc Classic; Shakti Stones; Akiko Audio sticks; Kemp polarity checker
Online Music purveyors: qobuz.com, bandcamp.com, amazon.co.uk  
Room treatment: Acoustic System International resonators, sugar cubes, diffusers
Room size: ca. 14.50 x 7.50m with a ceiling height of 3.5m, brick walls, wooden flooring upstairs, ca 7 x 5m with a ceiling height of 3.5m, brick walls and concrete floor downstairs.
Price of review component: €2’995


When looking at the above words ‘Country of origin: The Netherlands’, a very Euroskeptic but proud patriotic feeling arises. Our small patch of land, mostly below sea level and protected—we hope—by ingenious systems of dikes, sluices and water works, is a global player nonetheless. At exports we excel. Think about tulips, cheese and Blue Delft. Less obvious but still important are our ship builders and offshore industry next to moveable car mirrors (you’ve got one!), Gatsometer (you get the speeding ticket!), NedCard (check your phone’s SIM and your credit card!) and Quooker for instant boiling tap water. And there are of course the famous names only the few have access to: Rembrandt, Van Gogh, Escher and Doutzen Kroes.


So yes, our people are busy behind them dikes. That goes for audio too. Being a niche market which is amply populated by providers of gear from all over the world, Dutch brands still have conquered a highly ranked place. To drop a few names, Kharma, Siltech, Crystal Cable, Pluto, Tent Labs, Hypex/Mola-Mola, Metrum Acoustics and Prima Luna all wave the red, white and blue with pride. And now there’s a new kid on the block: DiDiT.


Frankly, that kid already has quite some mileage on its clock. Founding fathers Patrick Schoon, Sebastiaan de Vries, Roy van de Hulst and Rients Steenbeek go back a long time, mainly in the pro audio arena. Sebastiaan and Patrick for instance are the developers of Focal’s SM9 and SM11 active studio monitors and now responsible for technical design and PCB layouts. Roy is the team’s industrial designer. He is responsible for the looks, the packaging and marketing tools like the website, brochures and manuals.


Of course the whole gang loves music and in 2007 they founded DiDiT High End which is an acronym for Different in Design Different in Technology. The first product to hit the market is the DiDiT DAC212. As stated above, the audio market is a crowded niche market. To make it there, you really need to show up with substance. The fact that they took 7 years to even come out in the open shows proper business insight right off. Rushing to market is a trap unfortunately too many new companies—even some Dutch—fall into.

From the design table of Sebastiaan, we learn that the DAC212 was conceived around multi-layer circuit boards. With multi-layer board designs, one layer is assigned to form an unbroken ground plane to result in a very low inductance with reduced crosstalk. Next, all power supply layers are blue-printed in differential pairs. High and low current traces are paired and separated from each other. Layout is performed with advanced CAD/CAM computer simulation methods. This makes it possible to drastically reduce distortion below the 0.001% barrier. Good grounding is essential for any audio design. When multiple circuits or stages are combined, they often use a common ground return path. This gets connected somewhere to the chassis which in turn connects to earth. In such situations, it is hard to control current loops. More importantly, interferences from circuit to circuit and from the outside world in are induced in/by the shared ground lines. This raises distortion and noise. In the DAC212, the line amplifier stages float with no reference to ground. To accomplish this, the internal interface from the DAC to the voltage gain stages is truly balanced. This makes the circuits more immune from ground loops and interference; and increases headroom.


To take independence from a common ground even further, the line amplifier stages are configured in an "equal impedance differential" setup. Here the output of a TL031 DC servo serves as ground point to provide the zero-voltage reference instead of the common stages being driven direct-coupled. The input circuitry literally floats above ground. No ground noise can possibly enter the line amplifier stage anywhere. This insures high common-mode rejection of hum, noise and other distortions. Internally, balanced lines always pair as differential pairs and low-pass filter stages are configured differentially with equal impedance legs for positive and negative.