Thedautch, I listened to the MSB Platinumn Link at my dealer, just yesterday. While it was very good, I found it a touch "dry". Sounstage was excellent but seemed to sit behind the speakers. Rest of the system was reference quality (Pass 600, Pass Preamp, MIT Oracle cabling, Classe Transport and wonderful sounding Gershman Gap speakers) but it wasn't tubes, so perhaps that's what I missed.
I couldn't decide whether it sounded better or worse than my current systems (other than the speakers, which were clearly better than my Kefs), but I wasn't "blown away" like a thought I would be considering the $$$ of the demo system. Don't get me wrong, it certainly sounded VERY good and perhaps was cleaner than what I have now -- it was just overly analytical, and lacked warmth. Perhaps, it was the combo that didn't work well together and I was left wondering how it would sound in my system, which is still a touch bright. I'll be listening to some more DAC over the next few weeks and will report back what I find.
I couldn't decide whether it sounded better or worse than my current systems (other than the speakers, which were clearly better than my Kefs), but I wasn't "blown away" like a thought I would be considering the $$$ of the demo system. Don't get me wrong, it certainly sounded VERY good and perhaps was cleaner than what I have now -- it was just overly analytical, and lacked warmth. Perhaps, it was the combo that didn't work well together and I was left wondering how it would sound in my system, which is still a touch bright. I'll be listening to some more DAC over the next few weeks and will report back what I find.