Any OP knows that after launching a thread into the air here it's impossible to account for what direction it may take. Nevertheless, as this extensive thread is now one year old, permit this OP a few words.
The designer/manufacturer of this DAC has produced several DACs over the past 10 years or so. They have been sold world-wide, though mostly in Asia, principally in Hong Kong. Over the years this very small producer has gained a following. His following has been uniquely on the basis of his DACs' sound quality. There is no promotion; there is no hype; there is no advertising. In all the reading I've done I have never before come across a set of measurements for the DACs going back to the LKS MH-DA002. Several folks here, including me, have had an LKS MH-DA004 and on the basis of listening, basically said to themselves: if this is what he can do for about $1500, I MUST hear what he can do for $3200. Others, here on this list and elsewhere, bought this DAC based on the reports only of sound quality. I think it is fair to say that, by and large, they like what they have heard and they are quite satisfied with the purchase. They have written as much. Their DACs sound just as good this week as they did last week.
The designer has written that he designs by ear and not by measurement. He says designing for measurement is realtively easy. At various stages he says he made changes that could improve measurements but reversed them if the sound quality, as he heard it, was not as good. If that makes people very uncomfortable, they should probably look elsewhere for a DAC. Over the course of this audio hobby, and some of us have been into it for a long time, that approach to design used to be lauded. The designer has given an example in the lack of any feedback in his analog stage. A lack of feedback is often advertised, and is generally understood to yield better sound quality but poorer measurements. Op amp chips with feedback are thought to yield a kind of clean but sterile sound, well recognized in several popular DACs on the market. In many other areas of audio, decisions are often made in favor of devices with poorer measurements than alternatives. That would include tubes and analog sound generally.
No one here has ever said that the Musetec is the best of all DACs. Like any DAC it may not be for everyone. So please, let's keep it civil. If someone says he likes another, perhaps even less expensive, DAC better than the Musetec let's just accept that and move on.
And can we please move beyond toddk31's adventure. That seems to have been a very personal set of decisions, and it is over. It certainly has opened up a useful discussion of measurements versus listening as criteria for audio component design and selection, and I do not mean to discourage continuing dialog on that. It's as old as audio as I wrote before noting that early solid state electronics was "proven" by measurements to outperform high quality tube units. Modern solid state? Modern tubes? Who knows?
Finally I agree about the measurements on the Musetec web site and have written to the maker about that. I know nothing about business practices in China and what criteria obtain there. That site is written in Chinese; the English is Google translate. Nonetheless, it is what it is and should be changed or deleted.
