Apogee Groove
USB 2.0 DAC and Headphone Amplifier

Latest User Reviews
Apogee Groove
This unit sounds great and drives my HD650 headphones with ease.
Very good little headphone amp and dac!
Good DAC
Really good and portable DAC. Kinda pricey, but quality is ensured.
Great for what it does !
This is the best portable DAC I have found, really good sound quality for low latency... The only thing you should ask yourself is: do I need it ?
Because without the DAC, using Asio4All and the builtin soundcard can be enough for a lot of use. This is maybe a bit pricy for just a little improvement in sound quality ?
If you need to mix/master on the go, that might be really useful though.
If I had to find a con, I would say the Apogee gets very hot very quickly. It's apparently normal, but it's good to highlight.
A bit overpriced but nevertheless great DAC/Amp
I bought this to use with my Sennheiser HD-650s and my Mac Mini. It works great, the build quality is excellent, the volume buttons are very sturdy, the led lights are helpful, the audio out jack is tight.
The most important one: the audio quality is simply perfect. But to be honest, the audio out of my Mac Mini is almost that good and the Mac Mini drives the high impedance HD-650 without any problems with volume slider at 50% already loud enough to hurt me ears. The only difference I could find so far is the Groove has a bit more detail and clarity in the bass region. But I would have to listen really hard to tell the difference. In my opinion it's a bit overpriced considering it improves my Mac Mini audio output only so slightly. If you have higher impedance headphones, e.g. 600 Ohm it might be another story though. It also gets slightly hot under normal operation which I understand is not unexpected.
Apogee Groove is a nice audio interface that gives me confidence I am listening to the very best audio quality possible, however it's a bit expensive for the slight improvement it offers over high quality embedded audio as in the Apple computers. Anyway, I am giving it max score because the sound quality is absolutely perfect and that's what people would buy it for.
No difference in sound quality :(
When connecting it to my mac, I didn't notice any improvement in sound quality using my Sennheiser Momentum. I also tried to download high quality 24-bit tracks from the internet. But it didn't seem to make any difference...
After about 1 day , the groove started to make strange noises. By disconnecting it from the computer and leaving it at the table, the noises did go away when trying to connecting it back again.
However, the built in amp was really good! The sound quality wasn't also affected by cranking up the volume at high levels.
Technical Data
- Manufactured by Apogee
- Released in 2015
- Average price : $295
- Up to 24 bit / 192 kHz
- ESS Sabre DAC
- 4 DACs per channel for highest dynamic range
- A-Synchronous Clocking
- Multi-color LED for status and level display
- USB Bus-Powered
- Aluminium housing
- THD + N: -107 dB at 600 Ohms load @ 16 dBu
- THD + N: -100 dB at 30 Ohms load @ 10.5 dBu
- Dynamic range: 117 dB a-weighted
- Frequency range: 10 Hz - 20 K +/- 0.2 dB
- Max. Output level: 225 mW 30 Ohm, 40 mW 600 Ohm
- System Requirements: Mac OSX 10.8 or later (no driver required), Windows 7 or later, 32 and 64 bit (driver download required)
- Dimensions (L x W x H): 95 x 30 x 16 mm
- Includes 25 mm USB cable, transport bag
- Built in the USA
You may also like
2023 100%
2023 100%
2023
2023
2023
2023
2023