.....i wish i could write like that. as always; full of useful detail and specifics i struggle with so much. above is a picture of todays session with the CDSD and DAC6e.
i really appreciate you taking the time today to come over and give me your perspective. it was also nice to have a solid known reference to compare the Playback Designs to.
when i started to listen critically yesterday and i realized the performance leap i was hearing; there was an uneasyness that maybe my reference is just off and what i was hearing was not that much better. my ears were telling me one thing; but there was a conflict. as i tried more and more discs and continued to hear new things, not by a little, but by a lot, on my trusty references......i became confident enough to post my rave below. still; i did not have anything to compare it to on hand and no other person to confirm what i heard. i was on a high wire without a net.
i was not surprised by the huge difference Ted and i heard today; but i was relieved that my ears had not betrayed me. i have done many dozens (maybe over a hundred) digital player comparisons over the last 10 years. for a player to be so much better than another player that is very close to the current reference is unheard of.
the MPS-5 has by far the lowest noise floor of any digital i have heard. this allows for a level of ambient information that can only be described as vinyl-like. there is a real, vivid, yet natural texture to musical lines, and compared to other digital; the soundstage is so 'normal' and not reproduced sounding.
i have not had digital in my room for 5 weeks until the MPS-5 showed up yesterday. the MPS-5 sounded very natural right out of the box. but it wasn't until i heard the EMM Labs gear in contrast that i realized just how non-digital the MPS-5 is.....and the EMM Labs has certainly not been what i consider 'digital sounding' in the big picture of digital players.
there are practical things i really enjoy about the MPS-5. maybe it's because of the Esoteric disc drive; but it reads both redbook and SACD much faster than the EMM Labs CDSD and after initial read is very quiet. it's too soon to say it reads all discs without incident but so far it reads 100% of the one's i've tried the first time; some of which always took 2 or 3 tries with the CDSD.
compared to Saturday evening; the MPS-5 has gone farther in terms of refinement and top end air. there is no longer any sense of being limits there i had percieved.
it is hard to get into absolutes at this point. certainly; this product is more than a few levels above any digital player i have heard in a controlled situation. these are not incremental differences; this is a leap of performance. but i have not heard everything out there.
anyone who is able is welcome to come and hear this for yourself.
the MPS-5 only has about 25 hours on it so far.
as time goes by i'll post some updates.
