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Musical Fidelity A3 24 What R My Ears Telling Me?

I think that I have finally lost my mind from tweaking! I was very excited about this product when I bought it. I thought that it made a tremendous differnce with the players I was using (an Adcom & Pioneer). The Soundstage was enhanced, the music jumped from the speakers. This was indeed the Holy Grail of Upsampling DACS. The problem started when I bought a new player...the new Sony DVP-NS999ES. Now I can have SACD and pristine Redbook SACD like quality CD's through the MF DAC! The first problem is that when the Sony is turned on with the DAC on. a pop comes through the speakers which causes the DAC to downsample to nearly Real Audio quality! This is remidied by turning the DAC off, then on. The "downsampling" happens every so often when the draw is opend and closed. I thought it might be the interconnet, so I swapped out a Audio Quest for a Tara Lab and it continued to happen. OK, so I could probably live with this since the vendors from both retailers I bought these items from have never heard of this happening. I went to the MF website but there is no email address for support or questions. OK, I can live with this. Now here is the tricky part. I decided to play some CD's through the player bypassing the DAC and for Gods sake...they sound better without upsampling! The bass extension is better, the music has more "oomph" and clarity (how can that be??) and the sound is warmer. Can the DAC's be better in the Sony than the MF? Did I trick myself into believing that the MF worked to begin with? Have I completly tweaked myself out of my mind and ears? I have done countless A-B comparisons during the past 2-3 weeks and I must be honest, the CD's sound much better without the MF DAC. Any comments and opinions would be apprecitated.

-Joseph Benzola-
jbenzola

Showing 1 response by jbenzola

jbenzola OP
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Thanks to all for the response. This is a very difficult situation in that I really want for the MF to work, but I believe that there are some problems. According to MF, this DAC was made with the sole purpose of working with all transports of all quality levels. I don't buy the Sony is trash theory because MF uses Sony transports on their CD and the DVP 999ES is a $1500.00 unit, certainly not the top of the line for Redbook or SACD but certainly a very respectable player. I have thousands of CD's and my main purpose for buying the MF DAC was to unleash the "sonic magic" in them. I bought the MF in late September/early October of 2002 so I believe that it is one of the later units shipped. Now that I recall, I remember doing A/B comparissons with my other 2 players and I would have to say that it was 50/50 on the improvement side depending on the music. There was usually an improvement with the high end and some harmonic excitement but I'm really beginning to wonder how much of a difference it actually made. There were times when the "downsampling" took place, so I'm sure that this is not an exclusive problem to just the Sony. I'm pretty hard to fool as I have a home recording sudio and have done a number of remastering jobs. Sometimes we find ourselves convincing ourselves that things are are such and such a way when they really are not...this could be
the case here. I boght this because of the Tellig article. When I heard a demo of the unit, I really did not hear much of a differnece but I chalked that up to being in a demo situation and since I had 14 days to return the item, I decided to take the plunge. My ears are telling me that the sound of the Sony by itself (using Tara Lab interconnets, ML Aerius i with ML cables, and Classe amps) sounds superior to that of MF processed sound. On follow up articles, Tellig also admits that at times he cannot tell the difference between the processed and unprocessed sounds (In particular with the New McIntosh Multi disc player and others). My 0.2 cents..or actually $1300.00 worth!

-JB-
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