Introduction

In the past couple of years, the market for DAC's with USB inputs has really taken off. As people move their whole music library over to a music server, and lossless and high resolution downloads of albums starts to become a reality, getting that audio from your PC to your stereo has become increasingly important. NuForce made a splash with their original Icon DAC, which featured a USB DAC, a couple analog inputs, a 12W amp for a stereo speaker setup, and a headphone output. They have come back and improved upon that by releasing the new HDP model. The HDP drops the speaker outputs, but adds support for 24/96 USB audio, digital inputs that can handle 24/192 signal rates, and a more powerful headphone amp. While it seems like an ideal device for a desktop headphone setup, NuForce also says the DAC is good enough to be used in your main stereo setup, so I eagerly requested a review unit to see if I needed to replace my original Icon.