Playback Designs MPS-5 CD/SACD Player

Worry not Dave, we will reschedule the Austin meet before long! By the way, the DCS stack in question is not mine but Gshelley's. I run a TEAC X-01 Limited. G.

Thanks guys. I'm not a "reviewer", so my references are just what I have, unless I get a nice invite for a session, as extended by Neli and Mike.

Unfortunately, family medical issues will keep me from going down to Austin to meet Guido and compare to a dCS stack. Oh well. Maybe at RMAF I'll get more chances.

Dave

Wow, that was one great report !

i completely agree. this 2nd review seems more credible than the Jun review (comparing a $10k CDP to a Pioneer universal player just doesn't make any sense to me).

anyway, thks for sharing. hope you had fun doing the A/B comparisons!!

Fab report Dave, can't wait to hear your MPS-5 in mid September!

Yesterday I travelled up the mountainside, literally, to visit Neli and Mike at Audio Federation. I’d ordered some HRS isolation bases through them and the main purpose of my trip was to pick up my new HRS bases (review to come). Neli suggested that we also use the visit for me to hear their other products and take the opportunity to compare my Playback Designs MPS-5 to their Meitner CDSA-SE (with the latest German transport).

I spent a total of two-hours checking out their wares before we got around to comparing the CDSA and MPS-5. This was a very informal comparison that lasted just over an hour. We didn’t precisely match levels and we physically swapped out the Meitner and the Playback Designs in the Meitner’s position on their very nice and substantial HRS rack. We used the same power cord and ICs into a Lamm system driving $295,000, 70” tall Marten Coltrane Supremes. The room had good volume with about a 20’ ceiling and easily handled the big Marten’s. Neli and Mike thought that they had over 1,000 hours on their CDSA-SE and I think that I’m between 300 to 400-hours on my MPS-5.

Both units have stout chassis and look to be very well built. Neither is out of billet aluminum, but the chassis are thick enough that RFI containment and rejection should be at a high level. The PD does have the advantage of a full complement of digital inputs, which the Emm totally lacks. I already use the PD’s digital inputs as a DAC when playing DVD-A and other oddball disc formats that the MPS-5 can’t handle on its own. I also plan to make the DAC the foundation of the music server system that I plan to build or buy in the next year or so. (See the Stereophile review of the Sooloos and the poor performance of that $10,000+ unit’s DAC). If you’ve already got a really good standalone DAC this wouldn’t be an issue, but those digital inputs are a big plus to me. The DACs within both these machines are both in the top echelon of DACs, so it’s nice to be able to use them in different contexts.

The reader should treat the following comments as “first impressions”, since there was no rigorous matching of levels and we only switched the players in and out twice. We played a wide range of CDs and SACDs and we’d all hear something, but not investigate further to totally define what we were hearing. The PD was cold when it was thrown into the home of the Meitner, etc., etc. Despite these shortcomings, I feel like the differences were actually relatively obvious and deserve to be added to the comments already made by Mike Lavigne, Ted Smith and others in other threads.

Let’s start out by talking about what both units do very well; they both remove the digital glare that plagues so many otherwise good CDs. One of my favorite CDs for demonstrating that is “Trumpets in Stride” with five trumpets, tuba and piano playing old songs in stride style. A great cut is “Cornet Chop Suey” which gives you all five trumpets, solo trumpet, solo tuba and solo stride piano. Played on lesser machines this wonderful music just eats up your ears with trumpet blare and piano jangle and edge everywhere. It’s clearly a digital artifact added somewhere along the chain to mastering. Before the CDSA/MPS comparison we listened to this cut of this disc on a couple of lesser players in lesser systems and the edge was apparent. With both the CDSA and MPS-5 the glare and edge was gone. Highs weren’t chopped off, they were cleaned up instead.

The imaging of both units is stellar, rendering a bigger soundstage that “ordinary” CDPs and giving coherence to the presentation. Odetta’s performance of “America the Beautiful” on the CD “Strike a Deep Chord” can sound disjointed on lesser machines. Dr. John’s out of tune piano solo can sound harsh and jolting. With both the Playback Designs and the Emm the image and performance was a whole solidified. Yes, Dr. John’s piano was still out of tune, but it fit into the studio and had a full image of a complete piano.

With regard to lack of digital glare and consistently throwing complete, musical images, I’d rate these two players very, very close. Removing that glare and replacing it with natural sounding music with smooth, realistic, sweet highs, makes either acceptable in a fine system. Without naming names, the improvement from typical $3,000 to $5,000 players is close to monumental. Now that I’ve heard this level of playback (no pun intended), I could never go back to those lesser machines. Some great CDs sound great on almost any machine, but average CDs and the worst CDs sound just nasty to me when played on lesser machines than either of these.

Let me talk more about imaging. When you throw “Dark Side of The Moon” at either, or Radiohead’s “In Rainbows” you get HUGE images, extending well out in front and to the sides and over the speakers. These images literally filled the end of Neli and Mike’s demo room, all the way up to the top of the 20’ ceiling. The Coltrane Supremes didn’t strain in the least in throwing these huge images. I’d rate these types of images as very similar, but different. So many sounds are coming at you from so many angles that it’s hard to keep track of them. Mike thought that the CDSA-SE kept better track of such things, with more stability. Perhaps that was because he was hearing what he was used to hearing. We all agreed that the images were different, yet both were very attractive. Of course with heavily manipulated studio masterworks it’s really impossible to say what’s right. If you like “blow your mind” style images, then either player delivers in spades.

A little more down to earth is Odetta’s “America”. The MPS-5 placed her higher and to the left in a larger space than the CDSA-SE’s similar placement. If the CDSA-SE presented a 6’ sphere of sound, then the MPS-5 was a 10’ sphere. What’s right, who knows?

While still on the subject of imaging, let me jump to the end of the session when Neli put on one of her favorite recordings by the Portuguese singer is Cristina Branco. OMG, it starts a capella with the song, “Sonhie Que Estavea El Portugal”. Both the artist and song are totally new to me, but the vocal floored me. With the Playback Designs it was like she was elevated between the two speakers with a voice that was several feet tall and wide. I asked Mike if he knew how they had miked that cut and wondered aloud if they had two mics and she’d stood between them. The timbre and richness of her voice was overwhelming.

What really confused me was when we put the Emm back into the system as I prepared to leave. One of us said, let’s listen to that again. When we did, the image was more like you expect, covering less space and seeming to come from one point rather than a much larger area. This difference was very large. We turned the volume up on the Emm to make sure that we were just hearing a gain difference, but the image stayed where it was.

We were at a loss to explain these imaging differences. When we listened to orchestral, or piano the images were much closer in size and placement and seemed “correct” on both machines. I’m thinking that there may be a little studio trickery in the Branco recording. It’s seems to be recorded in a very reverberant space with either one or two mics for the vocalist and maybe a touch of some processing added. I wonder if that processing is playing with the phase information on the disc and the two players are interpreting it differently. All I know is, they presented this disc very differently. Both were very pleasing, but considerably different.

One thing that we all noticed immediately and totally agreed on was the midrange presentation. On the Playback Designs singers and solo instruments are slightly more forward. There was only a step or so difference, but you notice this easily and quickly. Piano has slightly more body on with the MPS-5 and solo instruments had slightly more prominence.

What can I suggest to anyone that is choosing between these two machines, but doesn’t have the opportunity to compare them? First, you should rest assured that both are very good. Neither is obviously and clearly “righter” than the other. I can only offer this; if you like a lighter presentation with slightly more emphasis on detail, then go for the Emm. If you like a little more body and forwardness and you like bigger images, then go for the Playback Designs. You can take comfort that neither machine does anything wrong. If you could use an excellent DAC with external sources, then the Playback Designs has a clear advantage in this one regard.

Thanks to Neli and Mike and Audio Federation for their hospitality.

Dave

I think if you ask Mike, reading between the lines of his review, he'd say that he still prefers his $50,000+ TT system. I'm not certain. He has a thread here on A'gon, so you might see if he'll respond to a direct question there, in case he's not watching this thread.

I'd be curious to see how close he considers the two.

Dave

Dave thank you for your feedback. I just realized that you have been posting on AA as well and I have devoured that thread (and Mike Lavigne's thread) with a LOT of interest. For you to say that it equals your TT is high praise indeed. I am interested in sourcing one for my own evaluation. Thank you again for reporting your findings.

It equals my TT. I'm now indifferent to vinyl vs. CD vs. SACD.

Dave

Dave, your review has gotten me intrigued. How close do you think this player gets to your turntable?

I received my Analysis Plus digital coax cable this week and inserted my Pioneer Elite DV-58AV universal player (modified by Ric Schultz)to use as a DVD-A and odd format transport, feeding into the Playback Design's digital input and DAC.

First, I played every DVD-A that I own. Most are 24/96 but "iRobot" is 24/192. The PD had no trouble locking into any of the DVD's signals. For a while I kept the analog-out of the Pioneer hooked into my Rowland integrated via unbalanced RCA so that I could bypass the PD and truly compare the two. Well, all sounded better through the PD, even "iRobot". I wasn't sure what to expect because when the digital signal was captured the screen would change from "44.1" (expecting CD I guess) to "COAX 48kHhz", even with the 24/192 disc. I'm not sure what was going on and I guess I'll need to write Andreas unless someone on the forum knows. I suspect that the sampling rate may have been limited to 48 kHz by the Pioneer. I can't find anything clear in the Pioneer's manual and specs, regarding its digital output; however, it says under "Compressed Audio Compatibility", "Sampling rates: 32 kHz, 44.1 kHz and 48 kHz." So, I suspect that's the highest digital-out offered by the Pioneer, no matter the disc's capacity.

Let me talk briefly about Redbook, where I'm certain there's no down-conversion, just straight 44.1 into the PD's DAC. I used three cuts off Jennifer Warnes CD "FamousBlueRaincoat" listening to "Joan of Arc", "Ballad of the Runaway Horse" and "If it Be Your Will". Those tunes give quite a range of deep bass, great vocal, atmospheric out of phase images, depth and width. Earlier in the thread I talked about the Pioneer's Redbook vs. PD. It was no contest, with the Pioneer showing a much smaller image in width and height, much less richness in the mids and deep bass and all made worse with a glare over the top. Using the Pioneer as a transport and running through the PD's DAC really narrowed the gap dramatically. The main difference was in solidity of bass and the image size was now only slightly smaller when using the Pioneer transport vs. the PD's Esoteric transport. It was actually very good and would put the Pioneer in a top echelon. Said in other words, about 90% of the gain from the MPS-5 is in its DAC. Using a fairly mundane transport gave me much of the gain of the full MPS-5 treatment on Redbook. The PD's Redbook performance is truly astounding, lagging only slightly behind SACD (see my separate post on that matter elsewhere in this thread).

With DVDs the story is a little different. The sampling rate of the DVD didn't seem to matter. I found the "iRobot" final cut "Genesis" was astounding on my Pioneer. It's very thick and complex, with lots of out of phase signal creating a huge 180-degree wide image. When I ran that DVD through the PD's DAC, the image got taller and the bass got more solid, but it wasn't anywhere near as dramatic an improvement as with the CDs. The Pioneer is actually a pretty darn good DVD player. (Remember, Ric Schultz beefed up the input and output stages and put in a Superclock 4, among other things). Still, there was a major gain from going through the MPS-5's DAC.

Unfortunately I ran out of time before I could mess around with music via USB. I'll try to get to that in the next week. Hopefully when I plug my laptop into the MPS-5 it'll recognize it the laptop as a player. I've never sent a music signal out the USB, so any advice would be welcome. (It's a Windows PC running XP with Media Player installed. I can easily add another program if needed). I'm not sure how valid this'll be, because I assume that a computer music server will have a much higher grade sound card.

Dave

I did some comparison of CD to SACD and CD-layer vs. SACD-stereo-layer on some hybrid SACDs:

I've only got a handful of discs with both a pure CD release AND a hybrid SACD. In every case, the original CD and the CD layer on the hybrid sound very different, but mainly due to apparently different choices made by the respective mastering engineers rather than any difference in the basic technology.

Comparing the CD layer to the stereo SACD layer on the same disc, the CD layer tended to have more bloom in the bass and more harmonics throughout the frequency range. The SACD layer was more precise and better controlled. I think this may largely be due to the upconverting logarithms that my Playback Designs MPS-5 applies to the CDs and CD layers, upconverting 16/44 to DSD.

Through the MPS-5 the SACD vs. CD differences are very small. I didn't pull my old Pioneer Elite universal out to compare again, but the CDs through the Pioneer had glare and hardness that made them tiring over any kind of long listening session. The MPS-5 not only gets of that glare but closes the gap to SACD to the point where I could be comfortable without SACD.

Some questions came up over in another forum that I thought might be of interest here:

"how this player compares to other players. What I care about is how it renders acoustic instruments. Does it get the violin right with the correct balance of fundamental and overtone and without fatigue? Does it capture the full dynamics of a piano? Does it get the cello bloom right? Does a full orchestra sound coherent and dynamic? You really need to be familiar with acoustic instruments to make this kind of judgment."

String sounds –
Great question. BTW, I play trumpet in several regional orchestras. Yes, I know string sounds. One of my very favorite recordings is Starker's Bach Cello Suites and his Kodaly. Right now I'm listening to the excellent SACD "Boston Symphony Chamber Players -- Mozart -- Chamber Music for Winds and Strings" (a "must have" IMO). I play guitar and have an excellent Ramirez classical as well as several exceptional archtops. My favorite big orchestral piece is MTT and San Francisco doing Mahler's 6th. It's an incredible recording with wonderful massed strings, with lots of work for the cellos and basses The sound of a symphony orchestra in a hall, playing a big piece, is as accurate as I've heard.

I've had, since the early 1990s, a great recording of the "Haydn 'London' Trios" with Rampal, Stern and Rostropovich. It's simply miked, with no spotlight mics close up to the strings, so you get a full bodied presentation. Still, when Rostropovich digs in then lets the body ring you hear the full, deep resonance, ringing for a count or two, as it should. You never hear just strings or just wood, you hear them together and separately at the same time. Stern sometimes really digs in and you get some of that raw-edged string sound, but it's realistic with no electronic edge added.

Frankly I'd retired my Starker Bach Suite CD and gone to vinyl prior to the arrival of the MPS-5. I brought it back out and it's now wonderful. You hear fingers on strings, cello body, bow on strings. I'm sure that a player could tell me how much rosin is on the bow. The fatigue is gone and the glare that drove me away from the CD is gone.

I listened for six hours straight this afternoon, mostly to CDs and about 1/3d strings or orchestra, the rest was female vocals, trumpet and a little pop. I'm amazed how the CDs have closed the gap with LPs and SACDs. You really don't miss the other formats. I don't have any CD-SACD duplicates, so I can't say anything in comparison until I go buy a CD that I already have on SACD. The CD vs. vinyl shortfall has TOTALLY disappeared. (Vinyl huggers please don't bash, I'm keeping my vinyl, just not adding to it quite as fast now that CDs are a full option, with no penalty).

More about string sounds. I've got several of the SACD reissues of Heifetz with Boston and Chicago. Although simply miked, his violin really commands the stage. On the melodic passages his tone is big, woody, singing and rich. When he digs in you can imagine the rosin flying. BTW, the orchestral strings are wonderful, not steely and reedy as mics of the day tended to present (these reissues are wonderful). Back to Heifetz, his highs are crystalline, not tiring. The harmonics POP off the strings. When he digs in you get that raw sound of the string really being ripped into with gusto. On the double-stops and triple-stops you hear each note clearly.

I played trumpet on "Carmen Fantasy" for violin and orchestra a few weeks back. There are lots of soaring highs for the soloist in that piece. On CDs, in the past, those sounded steely, now they sound sweet and glorious, like the real thing.

I should have mentioned this in my main review, silences are totally dark and I hear dimuendos down to the last bit of breath or the very ends of the bows, thanks to the lack of background. Dynamics are huge. Massed bass sections are full and rich, cellos (my favorite string) are simply glorious.

I don't know what else to say. I think this player is any music lover's dream. For a string lover, that tiring extra glare added to already high pitched strings is gone.

Piano –
I’ve heard great piano up close and personal. One of my friends is a world-class concert pianist who's performed in Russia, Europe and a number of second and third-tier US symphonies. When she was still working on her Master at North Texas I heard her play beautiful 9-foot Steinway in a "piano parlor" that opened on two sides to two large rooms, in a home. I sat about ten-feet from the foot-end of the piano with the lid open. Wow!!

Anyway, today I got out my SACD reissue of Rubinstein playing Beethoven's "big four" Sonotas, "Moonlight", "Les Adieux", "Pathetique" and "Appassionata". The lyrical parts of "Moonlight", for instance, are just scrumptious with every subtle various in this amazing player's touch being apparent. I can see him in my mind's eye, leaning over the keys very precisely caressing the notes out of the keyboard. He holds a chord and then starts a bass note to complete the chord at exactly the right moment. The resonance of that bass note is so satisfying and perfectly played in relation to the rest of the chord, it's a marvel. The body and resonance of the piano are glorious. Forget about the tape hiss, this is an incredible performance. At the end he lets the chord ring for several seconds before damping it, it almost fades to nothingness, yet you hear the damper move as if you were sitting ten-feet from the piano.

The third movement of the "Moonlight" the piano is in for a beating. Good Lord, the man doesn't look that big in the pictures, but he positively pounds the piano. It's a beautiful pounding, of course. The dynamics are huge and the overtones come spraying out of that lucky piano. Wow, again!! My friend I mentioned earlier was doing a Chopin recital, but I was hearing the same kind of sounds that I heard at that pre-recital.

I'm really proud of my speakers and amp. I didn't have my SPL meter with me, but the peaks were surely beating 100dB with some regularity. I set the level at the opening of "Moonlight" based on what I remembered the piano sounding like in that music parlor and then I let it ride. The sound got huge, but not clangy or distorted on the top. I got chills several times.

Dave

TRL does great work.

I hope you enjoy Rava as much as I do.

Dave

Dave, thanks for the very well written and thorough review ... great contribution. Won't be replacing my TRL modded Sony anytime soon. The MPS-5 is a bit too rich for my blood; but really appreciate Rava's "The Third Man" recommendation. Just ordered it. An erstwhile trumpeter myself, I'm always on the lookout for previously unknown stuff. Happy listening!