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In Reply to: RE: CD Player Upgrade / DAC Thoughts - Sanity Check posted by Mike C on March 20, 2014 at 04:45:24
With your talk of how much you enjoy your analog rig, I think you might also consider
taking a listen to a Metrum Hex NOS DAC.
There is an excellent review of the Hex on the 6moons website. The thing I enjoy most about this DAC is the way it handles the attack & decay of notes. I listen to acoustic based
music (mostly classical) almost exclusively.
I had'nt listened to LPs for several years, & one of the earliest impressions of listening to music through this DAC is how much closer to the way instruments & voices to how they sound in Analog, I've often wondered how much time designers of digital equipment spend
listening to Analog music ,as most seem to disregard or consider certain characteristics
of "live" music to be unimportant.
I don't know what the tradeoffs in design may have been, (& honestly don't care), but this may be one of the best choices of a DAC you can make if you spend most of your time
listening to acoustic music.
Follow Ups:
Hi,
It's always hard to act on every suggestion (no matter how good!). I did look up this unit and it seems very promising with several strong recommendations here.
I bore that in mind to try, but I have tried the MSB first. And that's it, so good and so to my taste that I'm going for this.
Which doesn't mean that I dismiss your suggestions!
Thanks and best regards.
How much does it cost?
Where can I buy it?
I've looked and looked and can't seem to find answers to either one of these questions.
Thanks,
John Elison
Hifi Heaven might still be the exclusive US distributor of this DAC..
The price has come down a bit to a little under $3100. I'm kind of surprised I don't see
more talk about this DAC. My only guess is that there are a lot of listeners who don't see
the "leading edge" impact heard on most recordings as a flaw. I was a little surprised to
find out this was'nt necessarily how the music was recorded, but how most DACs present the
music.
As I've said before, if you really prefer a more Analogue perspective of acoustic based music
this DAC may fit the bill. I purposely avoid listening to much "popular" music due to the
aggressive sound perspective the producers choose for the recording.
Thanks for the information. I prefer accuracy in a DAC because I listen to digital copies of vinyl records mostly. I have no trouble making accurate 24/96 copies of vinyl with my Alesis Masterlink. I thought maybe this was a less expensive DAC. It's a bit out of my price range.
Thanks again,
John Elison
That being the case the Metrum Octave Mk11 might be in the range you were interested in.
(I really hate to sound like a "fan boy", but I started out with the original Octave & someone
mentioned to me he thought the Mk11 version was closer to the Hex than the original was..)
Happy "hunting" on whatever you decide to go with.
I'm a huge fan. I finally posted my review above.
Edits: 03/22/14 03/22/14
Thanks, this looks interesting. It seems to have an 'analogue' nature very similar to the MSB, and in fact one review suggests exactly this.
I have some more planning to do, to get to a very short short-list; this may well be on it.
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