Playback Designs MPD3 Audition

iVe audtioned a bunch of stuff in the PBD mpd3 price range and to my ear room and system it was by far the sonic winner. It went up against the Weiss 202 , Esoteric k-03 , the new Audio Research Dac Pre, the Peachtress Grandpre and several lower price items. I did want to hear the Skylla from Ayon but was unable to do so. Also you say that you listened to the PBD in normal 44k mode and then tried it upsampled which makes me question the whole scenario as the MPD does not have a way to change the upsampled everything it is fed is auto upsampled to DSD. UNless you meant you fed it unsampled data and then upsampled they a software program first before it was fed to MPD3. In anyevent not sure If i have bought the greatest Dac in the world but I do think I have a very fine piece of audio jewelry that is better then most at its price point and will hold value and use well due to its future proof scorecard of 384 and dsd capable..

Hi Zugisland

Yes indeed the MPD 3 does internal up-sampling and when I said I was up-sampling it I meant the software player (in this case Audirvana) was doing the up-sampling. Why would it sound different than its internal up-sampling? - different up-sampling algorithms perhaps and I have also read jitter is improved if you feed a DAC at a higher sampling rate. Exactly why it sounds better I don't think anyone knows for sure but sound better it does - it has been verified by quite a few people that heard it.

Like I said when reading these comparisons you will find different results depending on preferences and system synergies - all such things mean is if a DAC that comes out on top it might be worthwhile seeking it out and listening to it. But of course auditioning has to stop somewhere and if you feel you have done enough then by all means stop your search and get the DAC you like best.

Thanks
Bill

I am trying to stay out of this discussion as much as possible as opinions are very personal.

However, the mistake is to let anything other than a good DAC do the upsampling. No computer software program can do as good a job as a good DAC.

Bill, you might want to try it again having our DAC handle every part of the conversion.

Jonathan Tinn
Playback Designs
info@playbackdesigns.com

Jon

I think that some software like JPlay can do an offline conversion that's supposed to be very good. It's not done in real time however and the resulting file is pretty large but some have reported better results with such software conversion.

This was covered in Absolute Sound magazine from a couple of issues back.

The Absolute Sound was wrong.