i am glad the mod cleaned up the garbage in this thread
@decooney
you mentioned using outboard power supplies with the mhdt dacs... i have three of them, they all have the standard IEC 3 prong plug for power input on the rear panels...
how do you use an outboard PS? |
@decooney
thanks for clarifying
yes in general, i agree, most dacs short of the gold plated top of line all-in ones can usually benefit from an outboard PS - if the input is suitable for typical good LPS like Pardo, Teradak, S Booster etc..., serving up clean strong 5/9/12/15v DC. These do tend to reduce the noise floor and make the DACs sound more relaxed, some more than others... |
@calvinandhobbes
i remember reading one of the people posting here who bought one said they do have a (shortish) money back return policy - think it was something like 10-15 days
you wonder about break in... but better than nothing |
i have the following outboard dacs in house
sonnet morpheus
metrum jade
metrum amethyst
van alstine fet hybrid
dena pontus
schiit gumby
neko d100-2
audio mirror troubadour se
ayre codex
chord mojo, qutest tt2 with m scaler
mhdt orchid, paradisea and stockholm2
jolida black ice tube
auris d1d
sold the border patrol se-i, schitt yggy and bifrost mb, dena ares2 and term, rme adi2, w4s dac2v2, topping d90, chord 2qute, psa ds, mytek liberty, benchmark dac2
r2r is important to SQ but DS chips can sound very fine if other aspects of the dac are well designed and tuned to sound good
i am not a dealer, not ’in the biz’, not affiliated with any of the above - just want to hear for myself what works well for me in my system my home, lucky to have the means to pursue this
commercial reviews and hearsay comments from keyboard jockeys may be a useful rough screening tool, but if you really wanna know, you gotta pony up and do the work |
@parker65310
just a point of clarification re your posted comments on the bs node 2 unfolding mqa... if feeding an outboard dac, the streamer function in the node will only do 1 of the 3 total ’unfolds’ for full mqa rendering, an mqa-capable dac would need to do the 2 remaining steps for full mqa rendering... this being said, many believe (and i concur based on my own listening) that you get a lion’s share of the sq benefit of mqa with the first unfold (to 96k), remaining two unfolds adds a touch more ’air,’ but rather minimal difference i can hear
@hilde45
haha well i am still kinda old school when it comes to note taking, so i have a spiral notebook and handwritten jottings on each - it has been fun... since the covid shut in in february i finally stopped procrastinating and dove head first into streaming... the SQ was so impressive and beyond my expectations that i decided to go whole hog and run through any and all of the leading suspects to build my ideal streaming front end, to go along with the cdp and turntable
@snatex
jolida tube dac is a good one... for the money it is a real steal... it does not have quite the ease of presentation of the better ones but it images big, wide and deep, has a sweet luscious midrange, but with a little more sizzle up top than you would expect in a tube output dac - i have tried to tube roll some but it is still more in the clear and punchy school compared to most the others - this may be due its being based on a DS dac chip, or may just be the output stage implementation
i am not a headphone guy so much so i cannot comment much on the sq of the headphone jack on it, but for the money it is pretty feature laden, with headphone out and volume control for outputs
finally on your wanting summary blurbs, my evaluations are still a work in process... one day i may try to collectively summarize ... the caveat of course is it is only my system, my tastes, my network - if you or others have specific questions i will share my thoughts if my experience is relevant - i do have firm reasons for selling off the ones i decided to move on from, those i can speak to more definitively |
what a shame another pretty good, well participated and informative thread ruined
i come here to learn, share ideas and have fun about the passion of hifi and music
if i want to see garbage and get upset i can turn on cnn or fox, or look out the window at the smoke
i’m out |
@co_jones
of course, synergy is the magic ingredient here
it comes in many forms
the process is trying and finding it for your wants and tastes |
@adam8179
excellent choice... enjoy!
juin and cohorts @ mhdt in taipei really know what the heck they are doing, and they have great ears... all their dacs have a luscious substantial yet lively sound -- plus if the tonal balance top to bottom doesn’t quite suit your system exactly they can be altered by rolling the tube - if you are buying it new from them be sure to let the tube and whole dac run in for a good month, it will keep improving in that time
less zippy less hifi, but more listenable over long stretches than the qutest |
don't know if you call it break in... but tubes definitely take a few hours to settle into a circuit
dacs do have distinctive sounds... they are the 'voice' of the digital front end, making the digital bitstream real analog music again
as much as the cartridge and phono stage is for an analog front end... |
@cygnus_859
don’t focus solely on the dac chip... the chip affects the sound, but no more than several other factors in what is in a certain dac
mhdt dacs are famous for this... they make 7-8 nos r2r dacs with different r2r chips but you swap output buffer tubes in any of them, you can make all of them sound different or alike from each other (not to mention parts upgrades) |
all that matters is sh^t we buy sounds good to us
the rest is BS
accuracy in hifi is an oxymoron... we are talking about reproduction of music via a recorded medium |
I have an MHDT Orchid Dac and had a Border Patrol Dac on loan which I didn’t feel was as good. The Orchid is a very nice Dac and LTA is offering a 600.00 Mod for it shortly. The MHDT Dacs - Border Patrol among others are Chip Based R2R Dacs as opposed to a fully formatted R2R Dac like the MSB - Aqua Dacs- Holo Audio etc... a new one from the brains behind the Metrum Dac’s called the Sonnet Morpheus Dac is Approx 3k and better than the 6K Metrum Psvane. The Chip based are less expensive. The new Audial while still chip based is more elaborate but only 2K and supposed to be very nice I would agree with the above. When I did my own huge DAC shootout, I kept the MHDT(s) and sold the Border Patrol. MHDT units have better nuance, warmth and dimensionality than the BP, and on top of that, you can roll tubes and subtly tailor the sound on the MHDT. (BP uses its tube in the power supply section only, and it uses a unique tube.) Metrums (even older ones like the Octave) are truly excellent. As is the Morpheus, which I currently have as well. The Morpheus sounds subtly different than the Pavane/Adagio... I would not say it is clearly better, just a subtly different presentation with a clear family resemblance. |
