The YULONG DA-ART Aurora is an interesting product. YULONG was late to the MQA train and made it a big part of the marketing for the Aurora, although unfortunately I personally could not care less. But don't let me stop you from enjoying MQA on Tidal though, and in that regard you will see the Aurora providing nearly the full folding/rendering experience (8x on-board rendering) courtesy the ESS Sabre ES9068AS DAC used here. There is also a newer XMOS USB microcontroller, compared to many others in the price range or higher, and the ASIO wired experience with the YULONG Aurora over USB is excellent for the money. The amplifier section also is arguably overbuilt for the $500 market, whereby seeing a solid-state Class A headphone amplifier/preamp is uncommon. There's a lot of power too—up to 4 W from this compact form factor that conveniently fits on your desk.

Unfortunately, it's how this power is accessible to the end use that becomes an issue. There is no gain switch meaning the YULONG Aurora is permanently on high-gain mode and relies entirely on the volume knob to determine how much power is being taken up by connected headphones. This means it is not as versatile as many other competitors in driving more sensitive earphones/IEMs. At the same time, the linear amplification is predominantly voltage-driven, so headphones with relatively low sensitivity will get loud but not sound ideal. Where the Aurora shines over others is with higher impedance dynamic driver headphones, as well as many planar sets that are not as demanding as, say, the HIFIMAN Susvara. This covers pretty much all headphones on the market today, yesterday, and tomorrow too.

There's certainly a lot to like here, yet issues still remain which keep me from fully recommending it. The weird Bluetooth functionality feature being region-relegated for the moment makes non-Chinese customers feel like they are getting an inferior version, even if there's a decent reason for it as mentioned on page three, and also if you never plan on using it. The I/O and user interface could also have been refined further, although I appreciate that a good chunk of the engineering team's resources went into putting out a DAC/amp using an ESS Sabre DAC that doesn't just sound exactly like the rest of them. It's subtle in some aspects, and more appreciable with mid-forward music genres, but it does seem to be something everyone who's listened to the YULONG Aurora can agree with. If you are in the market for a desktop DAC/amp with MQA support and Class A amplification over multi-watts of power, I suppose you should consider the YULONG DA-ART Aurora.