A324 and the Trivista

Hi Chijo,

Not sure why you thought I had listaken the X-DAC for the A324; I did not mention the X-DAC once in my reply.

What I said was if one was to chose the A324 over the Trivista, then I would recommend adding the X10v3 plus power supply, maybe at a later date.

It seemed that Solentgreen had mistaken X-dac for A324.

Judging from the circuit board layouts, both units are very similar. Trivista has beefer power supplies, DSD DAC chip and, of course, the tubes though. It is unfortunate that MF did not use standard 75 ohm coaxial cable for digital signal transmission from the digital input RCA jack to the circuit borad--two loosely twisted wires were used instead. Despite its short length, using shield coaxial cable there reduces the noise floor quite a bit.

Shielding the pulse transformer makes it even better.

I own the Trivista 21 DAC, paid full retail price for it and never regretted it. It replaced a Theta G3 and bettered it in virtually all respects. The soundstage of the Trivista in particular is spectacular.
I have only briefly heard the A324 at a dealer and its difficult for me to compare with my Trivista at home. One thing I would recommend is that if you do chose the A234, you must get the X-10V3 buffer stage with its matching X-PSUV3 power supply, maybe at a later stage. The latter 2 is amazing and is capable of transforming even modest CD players into giant killers. A friend of mine even bought these 2 to tack onto his Trivata 21 though that may be going a bit toofar.
My understanding is that with these 2 add-ons to your A324, you are adding on the output stage of their higher rated DACs/CD players and I would expect this will significantly narrow the gap of the A324 to the Trivista 21.
Hope this helps.