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An afternoon with the Meitner DAC

Posted by Ted Smith (M) on February 8, 2003 at 20:34:29

Howdy

You all know that I don't hold with swearing or with superlatives, but Rass 'm Frass 'm Meatballs! Does the Ed Meitner DAC sound good!

I was just over to MikeL's house (http://cgi.audioasylum.com/systems/663.html) and we listened to the Meitner DAC alongside his Linn CD12 and Marantz SA-1 for about three hours. I'm getting one.

The short version:

Mike will be listening more critically to the differences between the Linn and the Meitner as the Meitner breaks in and may have more to say later.

As some might expect the Rockport turntable bettered any of the digital including the Meitner, but I've expressed myself on this issue before.

On SACD, the Meitner DAC is just better in every way I can think of than any other digital I've heard and in particular Mike's Marantz SA-1, my Sony SCD-777ES, my modded SCD-XA777ES, and my other players.

The longer version (this is from memory, I didn't take notes):

After the first couple of cuts we stopped listening to the Marantz at all. The Meitner DAC had a deeper more layered soundstage, it had a lower noise floor, the instruments had more body and detail... Just no contest in any dimension that we could come up with.

The detail that I never heard before:

Blues in Orbit: The spit in the slide of the trombone, the F-attachment hitting the stops and causing the bell to ring a little.

Glen Gould: We all know that he hums, but I thought he just hummed now and then, but he hums all the time.

Tiny Island: so much more is going on that I ever noticed before, I have to listen again tonight to see if it's the same disc :)

But that isn't what moved me. I was expecting the Meitner to be better, given it's reputation and pedigree. What I wasn't prepared for was: It retained the best of everything I'd ever heard on digital playback, but it also fixed my pet peeves with every disc I put in:

On Muddy Waters, the voice can bloom and become a little harsh, not on the Meitner.
On Rebecca Pigeon's Spanish Harlem, the reverb seems a little excessive, perhaps even unnatural, not on the Meitner.
On some of the Steve Hoffman remastered discs, the treble can seem a little hot, not on the Meitner.
At times Keb Mo's voice wasn't smooth, but on the Meitner it always seemed natural and controlled.
Zombies: let's just say that it wasn't one of my favorite discs. On the Meitner it came alive and I really enjoyed it.

We enjoyed many other discs as well, I'm just floored at how much there is left to hear in SACD. As I said above I need to get one of these.

-Ted

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