Eversolo T8 Review – Trusted Reviews

Price

In the UK, the Eversolo T8 costs £1,290. It is available from a usefully broad dealer network and can be purchased online if you don’t feel you are in a position to visit a physical store. In the USA, the T8 is available for $1,380 while in Australia, it costs $2,399 AUD.

It’s worth noting that the more conventional Eversolo streamers are not exactly shabby at being used as transports either. They have a selection of digital outputs that allow them to perform the same role so, if you already own one of those and unless you need the specific outputs that the T8 offers, you might at least want to start there.

Design

• Slightly less than full width design
• Superb control interface
• Looks and feels worth the asking price

Eversolo has elected to use casework that is 365mm wide for the T8 which means it’s about 10 centimetres shorter than the accepted full width size. Oddly, it’s also not a perfect match for the Z10 DAC already reviewed here so if you’re the sort of person who wants a neat stack of things the same size as each other, this might not be the product for you. The T8’s styling is usefully neutral though so it won’t look at odds with most other components.

Something that is carried over wholesale from other Eversolo devices is the control interface and this is emphatically A Good Thing. The main app is an absolute pleasure to use. The screen mirror function that Eversolo includes as part of it is still one of the cleverest and most underrated ideas doing the rounds in streamers (it makes adjusting the many setup menus a huge amount easier).

It looks and feels like software designed by people who have been using it day in, day out for years and who know exactly what matters. Eversolo also understands that you don’t want to have to whip your phone out every single time you want to do something which is why there are both front panel controls and a smart remote handset.

One key feature of how you perceive it is that the app assembles and caches a library on the device itself which means that moving around a large volume of stored content feels effortlessly slick (and means that browsing a library on a local drive feels exactly the same as using a NAS). If you have a large collection of your own music as opposed to mainly using streaming services, the Eversolo is pretty much as good as it gets.

Of course, if you do use streaming services, the Eversolo holds up pretty well there too. Streaming service provision is excellent and features like the Listen at Will feature that can shuffle from your library and subscribed streaming service as a single stream are really well implemented.

Connect functionality is present on the services that support it and it’s fully up to speed with Spotify Lossless as well. You also get AirPlay but no Google Cast or Bluetooth. This is also one of a tiny number of devices that can access Apple Music natively which puts it in pretty select company.

This is complemented by a standard of build and finish that justifies the term ‘immaculate.’ This isn’t a cheap bit of kit but the build and finish is pretty much flawless.

We place different values on this aspect of product design but having access to a large and easy to read display and a chassis that feels as confidence inspiring as this one does has some worth for me at least. If you are looking at a T8 as a front end for an expensive integrated amp with a DAC board or similar, it’s going to hold its own sat on the rack nearby.

Features

• Selection of digital outputs…
• …but no inputs
• Unique networking hardware
• Carefully designed internal circuitry
• Internal storage option
• Customisable EQ

The focus of the T8 is to provide a digital signal to an external DAC and to ensure that you have the most options available to do this, Eversolo has fitted it with a useful spread of connections.

As well as optical, coaxial and USB outputs (all of which are fitted to the one box streamers too), the T8 also has an AES balanced output and an i2S output which uses an HDMI socket. The USB and i2S connections support up to 768kHz PCM and DSD512 while the other three connections are 24/192kHz capable and can send DSD64 as DoP over these outputs if the connected device supports it.

I2S is an interesting connection and something that is becoming more common in the market. A high proportion of the top spec models from a number of Far East manufacturers include it (notably the Topping D900 reviewed here recently) because it offers a very high bandwidth clocked signal.

The catch is that ‘i2S’ covers off a wide selection of possible wiring patterns. It’s not a given your i2S equipped source will play nice with your i2S DAC. The T8 can be adjusted through no less than 8 different wiring profiles, with the different pin wirings being noted in the on screen menus. Under test, I have had the T8 work happily with i2S devices from completely different manufacturers which suggests that Eversolo’s diligence has paid off.

What you don’t get though are any digital inputs. There is a reasonable argument for removing them because some signals (HDMI being one of them) simply won’t be passed to a USB output rather negating their worth and it is reasonably likely that the device the T8 is outputting to will also have additional inputs.

Another feature that is unique to the T8 is an SFP fibre optic network connection which sits alongside the standard gigabit LAN port. Some of the claims being made for this connection (not really by Eversolo I hasten to add) are… probably optimistic… but it might be better to see its inclusion as a potentially handy bit of future proofing.

If there is a move to SFP equipped network hardware in the future, the T8 will converse with it without needing any form of conversion. The good news is that if this all sounds a bit much you can ignore it and there is an excellent Wi-Fi 6 implementation too.

Internally, the T8 differs from its one box streaming relatives. It has been designed from the outset with a view to keeping electrical and mechanical noise to an absolute minimum. A custom 4N oxygen-free copper toroidal transformer is partnered with internal wiring shielded with Teflon insulation.

Eversolo claims noise levels as low as 30μV with suppression of high-frequency interference and ground noise through precision voltage regulation and high-grade filtering components. The T8 proceeds to add an ultra-high precision femtosecond clock to the circuit for good measure; so when you do use a connection like i2S, this should ensure performance is as good as it can be.

Something else you’ll find in the casework is a hard drive bay on the underside. This can handle up to 16 terabytes of storage which should be enough for most needs. This means you have the scope to operate the T8 with little to no additional network hardware and no unsightly drives hanging off the back off of it.

The last feature the T8 offers is an interesting one. Eversolo has updated their EQ system to include a feature they call Evotune. This can use your phone’s microphone to take readings that can be fed back into a 10 band EQ which supports frequency, gain, and Q values to adjust output to compensate for the room.

It also supports FIR filter import, loudness control, and dynamic compression. This is an interesting place to implement EQ because it shouldn’t technically affect the ‘character’ of your decoding and amplification. There are more sophisticated rival systems but this is a useful extra function to have.

Performance

• Will be governed by the performance of the decoding it is connected to
• …but superb performance is possible with upsampling and the i2S connection
• Operationally bulletproof

Compared to the marathon length sections I’ve had up to this point, this one will be briefer because, even allowing for the care and attention that Eversolo has lavished on the T8, the performance of the digital input it is connected to is going to have more of an effect on your overall sound quality.

Modern DAC chips are better at rejecting errors in the incoming signal than was the case previously so the benefits of scrupulously removing them are less than they might once have been.

This isn’t to say that the T8 can’t prove its worth. If you have a DAC with an i2S input, the performance I’ve obtained using this connection on both DACs I’ve tested with it has been superior to any other option available. It’s not a night and day difference but Agnes Obel’s lovely Philharmonics has been slightly better defined and tonally believable played back in this way. The nature of this connection being ‘clocked’ between the two devices does seem to help with the overall performance.

If you choose a different path to using the T8, it has other virtues too. When you switch to Roon as a control point (for which the Eversolo is fully certified), the upsampling facilities become available and this works to the. Using the T8 connected to a Cambridge Audio Edge A via USB with DSD conversion enabled (so that all signals are converted before they reach the Eversolo) is something that benefits the ESS based digital board of the Cambridge Audio considerably and gives a richness and immediacy to Air’s Love 2 that is hugely engaging to listen to.

There is one other aspect of performance too and it’s arguably more important than detailed aspects of sound quality. The T8 is operationally bulletproof. This sample has been here a while now and at no stage during intensive and heavy handed use has the T8 so much as hinted at needing attention.

I’ve hotplugged it, moved between the dedicated app, Connect functions, Spotify and Roon at will and across multiple control points and generally behaved in a wholly unsympathetic way and it hasn’t missed a beat. Google Cast aside, it will receive content pretty much any way you choose to send it and it ensures that it never feels highly strung or demanding to use.

Ultimately, streamers have to give you a user experience that makes you want to keep using them and the T8 delivers on this superbly well.

Should you buy it?