With the noise floor lowered (and most of the “digital” sound of digital sources eliminated), with focus made so lifelike and immediate, with timbre made so neutral and natural, with ultra-fine dynamic gradations (like Connick’s light fingersnaps and Marsalis’ blowing into the mouth of his sax as he holds a note at the end of “Nightingale”) made so clear and unmistakably present, it really is as if things that were not timed quite correctly (like a voice track on which the actor’s voice lurches a bit ahead of or lags a bit behind the movement of his lips) have suddenly been made perfectly coincident. The lower the jitter, MSB contends, the lower the harshness we hear and the better the micro-details, micro-dynamics, overall definition, and soundstaging. As I just said, it wasn’t as if Connick and Marsalis had developed the body and bloom of an LP on voice and  sax. The core digital engine is format-independent and completely upgradeable. I’ll let MSB explain its preamp module (and if you hear an echo of MBL’s LASA 2.0 White Paper it’s because, well, great minds think alike): “It has been MSB’s dream for many years to allow its ladder DACs to drive interconnects and amplifiers directly. All I can say is that if it is a compression scheme, it’s the best one of all time. Equipment Reviews – MSB Technology Discrete DAC. USB hard drives and thumb drives are also supported. The preamp section with passive volume control is just one of many modules this highly configurable DAC can be fitted out with. Moreover, this resolution applied equally to the silences among notes and within concert halls and recording studios, which, for once, didn’t sound like dead air but had the slight texture that even the quietest quiet has. Since all formats, including DSD, are based on one of these two frequencies (and their multiples), no cross-conversion is needed. Let me say this as well—though it has nothing to do with the MSB Reference DAC and Transport—the notion that streaming is the trouble-free future of digital audio is almost laughable. The upgrade price is basically the difference between new prices of the units (thanks for that MSB). To be frank, when it comes to digital sources, I ain’t no Robert Harley. I’m not at all sure I can adequately explain why this magic trick happened with the MSB Reference gear—and happened repeatedly. It is not one of those purely analytical DACs that sounds the way clothing feels fresh from the dry cleaner. Moreover, with the best source material (which I will come to in a moment) the speakers also disappear more completely. Moreover, this is only an entry-level product of MSB-Discrete DAC, which makes people can’t help feeling. In other words, the whole enchilada. MSB Premier/Powerbase Modular DAC. With twice as many output modules, the impedance is halved down to 150Ω with the added benefit of lowering the noise floor. Any info appreciated, thanks! I’ve finally found digital components I can live with! You are using an out of date browser. I got up, walked over, and opened the door, expecting to see my wife outside—only to find that there was no one there. If you’ve got the dough, you’d be silly not to give these exceptional components a long, long listen. (I’m not sure I’ve heard better analog reproduction than what I get using the MSB’s passive analog attenuator, Lloyd Walker’s extraordinary phonostage, the Constellation Hercules II Stereo amplifier, Magico M3 loudspeakers with or without a pair of QSubs, and Lloyd’s Proscenium V turntable with Clearaudio Goldfinger Statement cartridge.). The MSB Technology Premier DAC will arrive in the summer of 2018. Well, that’s my tale, folks. There is a thread here about the Select electrostatic amp, but it’s hard to find any info or reviews on the Reference amp for dynamic headphones. Costing £9950, it's an attractive product at the price, offering more than a flavour of the costlier £19,500 Premier DAC [ HFN Aug '19], albeit without its Premier Clock and RCA outputs and one less user-replaceable slot on board. Site Founder | Site Owner | Administrator, Digital Audio Forum: DAC, Transports, Digital Processing Forum, MSB REFERENCE or SELECT II - SEEKING AMP SUGGESTION. Everything else about the MSB Reference DAC has been designed to preserve the virtues of resolution, timing, and lowest possible noise. All of its features come together to give you a digital experience that defies expectations. A fully balanced, ultra-high precision, discrete ladder DAC architecture ensures each note tells a story. Not that every MQA track is a winner. The processing card is built by MSB—an enormous project in miniaturization, incorporating thousands of lines of software code. Unless its drive belt snaps or the stylus of the cartridge that is mounted on its tonearm falls off, a turntable never stops making music. The only feature or design I do not like is the clock which requires separate input of 44.1kHz and 48kHz. So, if you were thinking that my switch from zeroes to ones is the result of a breakthrough—of the MSB gear bringing something completely new and different to the table that digital has never supplied before—well, that isn’t exactly the case. The Transport remote has all the standard buttons for playing back physical media. Just like any other medium, there are better and worse; everything depends on how the music was originally (or subsequently with analog sources) recorded and sampled. Copyright © 2021 The Absolute Sound. Replaceable foot guards are included to protect the chassis from dam ... Popular Reviews. There is a good reason why I cannot recommend MSB’s DAC and its Transport highly enough, and why I will now be using both as references. The guy who railed against digital is now listening happily to same. I assume that this has something to do with the MSB gear’s own noise floor, which is (or must be) lower than that of the recording environment, making instruments sound as if they’re playing in real space rather than outer space. As long as we’re talking about streaming and MQA, let me take a moment to voice an amateur opinion. The knock on the door, it turned out, was buried in the mix of the movie soundtrack, but the soundstaging of my theater system was so wide, tall, and deep, and its transient response so lifelike (I was using MBL Radialstrahlers at the time) that that knock was re-located well outside the viewing area—midway up the wooden door of my room. II, Magnepan 1.7 and 30.7 Subwoofers: JL Audio Gotham (pair), Magico QSub 15 (pair) Linestage preamps: Soulution 725, Constellation Altair II, Siltech SAGA System C1, Air Tight ATE-2001 Reference Phonostage preamps: Walker Audio Proscenium V, Soulution 755, Constellation Perseus, Audio Consulting Silver Rock Toroidal Power amplifiers: Soulution 711, Constellation Hercules II Stereo, Air Tight 3211, Air Tight ATM-2001, Zanden Audio Systems Model 9600, Siltech SAGA System V1/P1, Odyssey Audio Stratos, Voxativ Integrated 805 Analog sources: Acoustic Signature Invictus Jr./T-9000, Walker Audio Proscenium Black Diamond Mk V, TW Acustic Black Knight/TW Raven 10.5, AMG Viella 12 Tape deck: United Home Audio Ultimate 1 OPS Phono cartridges: Clearaudio Goldfinger Statement, Air Tight Opus 1, Ortofon MC Anna, Ortofon MC A90 Digital sources: MSB Reference DAC, Berkeley Alpha DAC 2 Cables and interconnects: Crystal Cable Absolute Dream, Synergistic Research Galileo UEF, Ansuz Acoustics Diamond Power cords: Crystal Cable Absolute Dream, Synergistic Research Galileo UEF, Ansuz Acoustics Diamond Power conditioners: AudioQuest Niagara 5000 (two), Synergistic Research Galileo UEF, Technical Brain Support systems: Critical Mass Systems MAXXUM and QXK equipment racks and amp stands Room treatments: Stein Music H2 Harmonizer system, Synergistic Research UEF Acoustic Panels/Atmosphere XL4/UEF Acoustic Dot system, Synergistic Research ART system, Shakti Hallographs (6), Zanden Acoustic panels, A/V Room Services Metu acoustic panels and traps, ASC Tube Traps Accessories: Symposium Isis and Ultra equipment platforms, Symposium Rollerblocks and Fat Padz, Walker Prologue Reference equipment and amp stands, Walker Valid Points and Resonance Control discs, Clearaudio Double Matrix Professional Sonic record cleaner, Synergistic Research RED Quantum fuses, HiFi-Tuning silver/gold fuses, Back in the early 2000s when the home theater multichannel […], Boulder Amplifiers’ products tend to be as hefty as their […], T+A’s electronic offerings should be well known to most audiophiles […], Yamaha NS-5000  $15,000 An effort of 19 engineers and 8 […]. “If you imagine the soldiers bunched up here and stretched out there, you start to get a picture of how jitter affects the analog result,” says MSB. It’s just that, in some of the most critical ways, the Reference DAC and Transport don’t. The MSB doesn’t seem like a timing oriented DAC but Joni Mitchell’s ‘All I Want’ reveals that it’s very sensitive to the tempo of the playing and the interplay of voice and guitars. Even before the final review, there is no doubt, that MSB Technology deserves a special highlighting. They may not be as fool-you realistic as that knock on the door I heard while watching a movie, but for a digital skeptic like me they are the knock on the door I’ve been waiting for. But perhaps that too is an artefact I personally crave. In fact, the MSB duo kinda makes you wonder how important those things actually are to the illusion of hearing real instruments and real musicians in a real space—or, to put this cart before the horse, what a reviewer, particularly this reviewer, means when he says something “sounds real.”. The Reference DAC’s level of clarity is kind of magical. For what it represent technically and musically, I'm wholeheartedly already giving out the Mono & … The thing that matters most: The MSB Reference DAC and Transport make digitized music sound like the real thing. On streamed MQA material (via Roon and Tidal), there isn’t one of the newly recorded backup vocalists potted into the late, incomparably great Aretha Franklin’s “Don’t Play That Song” (from A Brand New Me [Rhino/Atlantic]) who isn’t completely individuated and fully “there” in her own, cushioned-with-air space (which sounds a little different than the other spaces on the recording, as it should since it is a fresh addition). It is just a realistically neutral, astonishingly detailed, very dynamic source component that leaves less of an impression on soundstage and system that anything else digital I’ve tried out (or heard at any length at shows).
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