MSB Diamond DAC V

Maybe my ongoing experience with the Select (the current top of the line) with dual power base can help. I’ve had it along with another top-end DAC (Ideon Absolute) at home on evaluation for about a month now.

The MSB is beautifully engineered, easy to set up & use. I am using my local music library thru a MUSICHI player & either a BFA integrated or an SL Kraft class A amp with Borbely Ref pre. Proac speakers. I listen mostly to classical, but in this instance mixed in lots of blues, jazz, and rock. Wherever poss I listen to hi-res files.
The overall effect I’ve had is of loss of frequency extension at both ends of the spectrum. Indeed in the low end, I seem to be missing an octave or so (may be aggravated by the lack of higher frequencies?). There is a euphonic bloom in the lower midrange and the mids are very pleasantly forward, but I lack three-dimensionality and detail in the soundstage, and dynamic punch. A full orchestra sounds somewhat veiled

I have tried changing cables & such & am still working on it; adding a signal reclocker / reviver improved things.
Work in progress, I suppose—or I just can’t get used to the "ladder" sound.
Good luck!

Same here, MSB's R2R dacs have an awesome tight bottom end that needs to be dug out of the floor and your guts it’s that low, but only when it’s presented in the music.
Obviously that owner has a serious defect somewhere in the chain, if he says that the bottom octave is missing, and he’s blaming the wrong thing unless it’s faulty.

Sorry, but no.
My MSB units are beautiful condition & checked by the dealer. Nor is it a  problem (if problem it is) elsewhere in the system -- such as my system is, of course -- because I do get  " an awesome tight bottom end that needs to be dug out of the floor and your guts it’s that low " using the other DAC on loan.

To be clear, the Select is a serious product and it plays music well.
It's just that in my environment, the other machine outperforms it by a wide margin. Regards

@blumartini

Again thank you for your input and my next question is what Dac is that you now have on loan and what is it doing differently in your system?

Sorry it took me so long to respond -- the other machine is an Ideon Audio "Absolute" (latest edition, I’m told).
Differences: the Absolute has much more dynamic impact, it presents a more 3dimensional soundstage with better - holographic - imaging, I get clearer and lower bass notes and more upper-end extension and significantly more clarity on low-level detail.

Subjectively, more naturalness (for example, it’s easy to distinguish between tambourine, hi-hat, snare, & cymbals).
What hits me immediately every time I switch between the two is the difference in bass energy and upper-end extension the Absolute produces --

The impression I get is the Absolute somehow extracts and presents me with much more info from the source file and outputs more energy.
Regards and good luck!

@blumartini
Hi, I just checked their site and the US importer is Audioskies. In Europe, it costs around 30k euro, so I'm guessing it's under 40k in the US (not peanuts, but a lot less than my MSB)
Regards