Playback Designs MPD-3

I own the MPD-3 and installed it in my system this summer. For a short time, it was side by side with a Berkeley Alpha DAC. The Berkeley is now gone although to be fair, the Berkeley was fed via a Wireworld glass toslink cable and the MPD-3 via a Locus Polestar USB cable. With that disclaimer. It is the best DAC I have ever heard in my system, having owned most recently in ordera a Wadia 581i, a McIntosh MDA1000, a Berkeley Alpha, an Audio Research DAC8, a Naim and a Berkeley Alpha again.

Sound wise out of the box it was very good and to my ears matched up nicely with the Berkeley but then a break in took hold the Playback Designs began pulling away by a small margin, which began to be a large margin. Characteristics you should expect. Very analog, deep and wide sound stage, frequency extremes continue to stretch beyond my expectations and the bass delivery is excellent and deep. Dynamics seem to be much better but that may be a result that I am occasionally playing back natively DSD files recorded from vinyl, so that may be part of the perception.

I can't recommend highly enough...it is a plug and play setup.....mac mini via USB is my source and I use the single ended rca outputs. I am not a pro reviewer so please ask specific questions and I will do my best to answer them. If you are shopping in this price range you owe it to yourself to demo one....the ARC, Berkeley, Wadia and Naim are all superb DACs but the Playback Designs is in a different weight class altogether.

It seems like there's not much info on it, all i find is info about the MPS-5.

Ghasley,

Thanks for the response! You said more in a few paragraphs than I was able to find on the entire internet.

There was one for sale just a few days ago that piqued my interest, but it appears to have disappeared just as quickly.

Considering this DAC appears to have all the bases covered regarding possible future resolution advances, I thought there'd be more articles/comments about it. Playback's website is sorely lacking any real info on it.

Again, I appreciate your comments. Sounds like a real player in game.

Ghasley....one more thing: How does it sound vs something like the Berkeley on redbook and 24/96?

Thanks

It kills the Berkeley on rebook but again, it's apples to oranges. The playback designs upsamples everything to 6.1 MHz DSD so it sounds amazing, spacious, ALOT of air around the performers.