This is a review written by Terry Ellis September 2026.

For my video review please see my YouTube channel link here

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I think in the last decade the HiFi industry has done an amazing job of making digital audio more convenient and Eversolo have been a big part of that with their DMP A6, 8 and 10, do it all for you in one box products. I am old school and have always preferred high quality separate HiFi components because I think that is how we get the best sound quality, but is that still true today? This is what I wanted to find out and more in my review of Eversolos flagship DAC Z10.

More than just a convertor

It’s wishful thinking that a new flagship DAC would be just that, we know in modern HiFi products need to do at least three additional things. The Z10 is no different, yes it’s a high end DAC, but its also a digital audio media hub to some degree and a preamplifier to some degree and also a headphone amplifier. What It does not do is any music streaming or playback so you will need a music source such as a digital audio transport. While all of the things it does might be very important to your use case I have focused 99.9% of this review on the Z10’s DAC performance because that is what excites me about it and where I think it has the potential to give us something more.

Lets start at the beginning, I want to say huge kudos to the Eversolo design team because their latest products the Play, the T8 and now Z10 all have a really nice aesthetic. They all look even more modern than what Eversolo has given us previously and that is largely thanks to the new front designs that have a more fully integrated screen as part of an almost full glass front. This is really very nice with the overall build quality being very also. I bet it will be the very high quality 8.8inch touch screen that is the most eye grabbing because it is a very nice screen and actually for once it being a touch screen makes sense. It is easier and faster to setup the Z10 using the touch screen rather than via on your phone but you can do both.

Being an Eversolo there is the expected huge amount of visual customisation options, from selecting your preferred colour and brightness for the volume control illumination and I I like to how your main screen looks. You can have a technical display which I chose because I am boring and because I liked the colours. You may prefer to have one of the many different vu meter options, some I had not seen in other Eversolo units at the time. You can have spectrums if you prefer the 80s vibe with some other ways to display, essentially the same technical information and the volume if your using the Z10 as a preamplifier.

More than just chips

Round the back the Z10 has both single ended and balanced outputs with a fully balanced design I believe. The obvious separation between the left and right channels gives a great indication for how separated the internals are and I like that . There are a multitude of digital inputs, you have an isolated USB, an Isolated balanced AES and two Isolated coaxial inputs, both RCA. I do wish one of one of these had a BNC connection as that would make more sense for a high end DAC connection. You have dual optical, i2s and a HDMI ARC connection and I can see this is being super useful to some people. More interesting to me are the dual external clock connections, 50 and 75ohm which can be selected for either 10 or 25Mhz clocks. I am really glad to see these options included as this is something I currently highly value with digital audio products. Maybe what I didn’t expect to see was an analogue input as that feels odd to me as a connection option on a DAC.

However this is modern HiFi and if your using the Z10 as a preamplifier and want to listen to records using it then this connection will be golden for you. Normally with at stage of a review I would pop the hood to show you the internals as I think they visually help explain the design ethos, however that was not so easy here as the screen is attached the whole outer frame. I did not get any good video to grab stills from for this written review and I apologise for that.

The Z10 has a very interesting and cool design, starting with what Eversolo call FIA or a fully isolated architecture. This is the complete separation of the digital and analogue domains within the DAC. They say this starts with three independent linear power supplies one for the left channel, one for the right channel and one to power the system. With each indendent DAC channel using its own  dual mono AKM DAC chips the 4191EQ and 4499EXEQ with their famed velvet sound. Each channel also has a balanced R2R based volume control and I could see the large gold coloured custom Eversolo custom OCXO 10Mhz clock that sits right in the middle of the DAC.  I couldn’t see the FPGA chip that can be used to refine an i2s signal for what Eversolo describe as optimising the signal to its purest form before interesting stuff.

There are 6 different DAC filter modes to listen between that you can easily select from the touch screen or using the Eversolo control app. This is impressive as the Z10 is not network attached so I assume this control happens by a bespoke wireless connection. You can also select the inputs and outputs, change the volume and all of the Z10 settings in the app. This is really great, however it’s quite slow to use the app, so it’s the same super slick experience you might be used to with other Eversolo products.  Maybe you would prefer to use the included very nice remote control. My only gripe with the very shiny rear is it’s a finger print magnet so if your OCD about cleanliness be prepared to clean this remote a lot.

Price

The Z10 has a lot going on inside and out, some of it seems new and exciting for Eversolo but some feels maybe just a little familiar to other products on the market. One thing that really stands out to me is the price, the Z10 costs £1940. This is a lot of money of course but I can some seeing see the Z10 as a high end audio bargain compared to the cost of some of its competitors, depending on its sound quality of course. I have done a serious amount of listening testing and comparison with it and the other DACs here at the same time.

Setup

To give myself a baseline for what the Z10 can do I thought it made sense to use it with an Eversolo digital transport and their best offering at the time was the T8 that costs £1289. The T8 has three main digital outputs USB, i2S and SPDIF and I wanted to initially find out which of these I preferred or thought sounded the best. I think USB seemed to give the clearest and maybe the most “squeaky clean” sound, however I preferred the i2S in combination with the DAC filter mode linear phase fast roll off. This combination seemed to have the best bass, with the most pleasing tonal balance overall without a trade off to anything else.

Listening to the T8 Z10 pairing through the Galion Navy preamplifier, my reference power amplifier the Esoteric S03 and the Revival Audio AGR speakers I could tell this is very solid, very good in all regards digital front end that listening to in isolation was difficult to fault or critique. The timing was very good, the sound stage was precise and clear with a solid overall sound including a solid bass. I enjoyed very nice tonality to vocals and instrument and again there was not much to complain about but I knew listening in isolation never tells you the full truth. It’s with that in mind that I wanted to test initially why someone might choose the added expense and inconvenience of separate HiFi boxes when instead they could use one simple all in one such as the Bluesound Node Icon. So that was the first listening comparison I wanted to do.

Worth the extra?

The Bluesound Node Icon costs around £900 so we are talking a lot less money and it stands out as a HiFi product for offering a lot at that price but how much difference might there be for its sound quality compared to the Eversolo pairing. I found there to be a massive difference in relative terms. Of course Michael Jackson did not all of a sudden have the tonality of Pavarotti, the nuts and bolts of the music were still the same but the way the music was presented was not. The Node Icon sounds very clean clear and organised with everything in the music being exactly in the right place but it sounded slightly less clear compared to the Eversolo’s but like it was trying really hard to sound as clear. So it’s music delivery sounded more forced, more hard in the edges or what some would call more etched sounding.

I think it also sounded more grey in terms of the varied tonal palette of a selection if music. I noticed this most in the lower vocal region so vocals sounded tonally undernourished and a bit more bland. The biggest difference or the worst bit for me about the Node Icon is it sounds very mechanical like the music is always being processed by a calculator. This affects the flow of the music and how dynamic contrasts then sound one dimensional, again compared to the Eversolo pairing. I found the Eversolo easier to enjoy a wider variety of music because there was more to it, it was more engaging to me and justified the big price difference.

This first listening comparison was interesting but it only  showed me what I expected, that a separates HiFi system should us better sound quality and it did. But it also showed that different digital audio products do not all sound the same.

A tougher comparison

I wanted to test this more and would there still be the same sonic benefit of a separates system compared to a higher quality and higher cost all in one solution such as the Eversolo DMP A10. Factoring in Eversolo have three tiers of quality 6, 8 and 10 being the current best so with the A10 we have an Eversolo 10 level product throughout. Whereas with this separates system yes I have a 10 level DAC but only an 8 level transport, however the Z10 DAC seems more comprehensive in its design compared to the DAC in the A10, so this was a really interesting comparison I thought.

Listening to the A10 as the source and DAC the music now, no surprise sounded a lot closer to the T8 Z10 pairing with probably more similar than was different. In fact depending on the DAC filter mode they could sound very similar, however that was when I was not getting the best from either.  The A10 has a very full, solid quite warm what I would call a pleasing sound and I do like that about it, but it can sound a little dark and a little thick at times too. That is the first difference I noticed the T8 and Z10 always sounded just a smidgen clearer and crisper with the music transients while sounding as smooth but not quite as warm. I found myself not needing to concentrate as much to hear the smaller details in the music either they were presented more easily to hear indicating I think better clarity and timing.

I noticed this difference clearly when listening to the track Still a little something by Mulaa Joans. Then also as a difference and this is a harder one to describe because at times I thought the A10 sounded slightly better timed with some music but in the main its sound stage felt a little more pulled in on itself. Whereas the T8  Z10 did a better job at creating more of an audiophile sound stage with a little more spaciousness or what some people call airiness to the music. That gives music a little more 3D effect in the room but it was not always obvious it really depended on the music.

So there were some differences here but in reality the DMP A10, as I said in its review,  does give you a separates like performance in its own way from a single box solution and this comparison proved that to me again. However I still think I preferred the sound from the T8 Z10 by a hair because I think it opened up the window onto the music a little better, so each piece of music had more of its own unique drama and excitement about it with less of a play it safe nature. Again a separates system showed its strength for better sound quality but not by as much as I expected.

Next I wanted to test what I think is the main reason for having a separates system and that is the ability to choose whatever combination of products you prefer so that meant changing the music source to a different digital audio transport

Being transported

You may have the mindset that all digital transports will sound the same so why would this test matter?. With a DAC as good as the Z10 all I will say is maybe try some different transports and see what you think. I have two other very good options here in the HiFi Rose Rs130 and the Matrix Audio NT1. I tested both but ended up preferring the NT-1 for form factor reasons mostly.

I should point out how useful Eversolo’s implementation of i2S is because the different options for the pin out and mute made it easy to connect to the NT1 and get music playing correctly. The visual cues here from both manufacturers made something potentially confusing easy to follow so kudos to both manufacturers here, others should take note of this.

Using the NT-1 as the transport there was a better sound quality from the Z10 in terms of there being a audiophile music presentation, by this I mean a more open or airy, more precise, more articulate clearer window on to the music, with improved flow. Most importantly there was an improved micro dynamic contrasts in the music compared to the T8. By this I mean all music came across just that bit more lively and expressive and therefore sounded more interesting because its more varied in presentation. This showed a slightly different side to the Z10 and how it is capable of delivering a very high quality, high end audiophile sound, very impressive for what it costs.

DAC vs DAC

My last test was to compare the Z10 against a DAC I have spent a lot of time the HiFi Rose RD160 which very interestingly uses the same DAC chips as the Z10 but costs more than double. If you want to experience how DAC’s using the same chips can sound different book a demo of these two because they are really very different. The nuts and bolts of the music is the same between of course but the presentation is not. The Eversolo definitely has more of a velvet sound character you might expect from these DAC chips. It is without a doubt the smoother sounding of the two.

The Rose sounds more what you might describe as “lit up” in the high frequencies so treble details sparkle and stand out more. It also sounds the clearer of the two for the specific details in music and with a more raw, less filtered sounding nature. Sometimes hearing more in music is of course a good thing but sometimes it is less. I already know the Rose is not the best DAC to pair with the Matrix NT-1. The Rose sounds better paired with its matching RS130 transport, I have tested this a lot, but I used the Matrix to not give either the Eversolo or HiFi Rose any advantage in this comparison.

Which of the two DAC’s did I prefer, in this system it would be Z10 so given it costs half that is a big win, but I cannot outright say I prefer it at this stage, just with this specific setup.

If you aer interested in the quality of the preamplifier in the Z10 Eversolo told me its very similar to the preamp in the DMPA10 and hopefully that information is helpful.

Final Thoughts

To sum things up, for me the DAC Z10 is Eversolo at their best. They have made a DAC that stands out for its design, its sound and  for the full package. You do very much get what you pay for here and I think it will appeal to those who equally appreciate quality and value with a healthy boot of flexibility and niceties. Well done Eversolo, very well done. Ending

A Special Performer Award is Pursuit Perfect Systems highest accolade and is in recognition of exceptional product performance regardless of price.

For the full specification see the Eversolo website here