What's Best Forum Newsletter July 2022

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Some words from MSB's Vince Galbo about this revolutionary product:

"It's here! MSB has been working towards the Digital Director for a few years now and we are wildly excited to share the results with you. Since this is a new MSB product category, I want to take a moment to provide further information about what this product is and how it works.

The creation of the Digital Director stems from a multi level approach to improving all digital sources and the digital conversion process itself, yielding extraordinary performance from MSB’s already renowned DAC models.

There is a proliferation of digital servers and computer audio sources from excellent companies. The design goal of the Digital Director is to greatly improve the sound quality of these various servers and Roon endpoints like MSB’s own Renderer input module. This required new and more powerful next-level semiconductors allowing digital filters and other proprietary processing that have not been previously possible. Having The Digital Director as an external product was key for isolation. It is physically and electrically isolated from things like the critical DAC Femto clocks, the analog signal grounds, and other important processes in the DAC."

Extraordinary things

"The Digital Director is a DAC Upgrade. This works with all existing Premier, Reference and Select DACs. Discrete DAC owners are encouraged to consider the Premier DAC upgrade using MSB’s wonderful upgrade program giving full credit for any current model DAC that is traded in. The Director is an additional product chassis that marries with the DAC to do extraordinary things. Current input modules are removed from the DAC and installed into the Digital Director. The Digital Director communicates with the DAC with a new high performance protocol over MSB’s dual path laser fiber optic system allowing the MSB Femto clock to control the Director. This proprietary system yields a new low level of jitter from any source.

With the Pro ISL and Optical control link providing two way communication, the DAC controls operate the Digital Director as a seamless experience. All formats and resolutions are played automatically with the results being shown correctly in the display. The Digital Director features ultra low noise internal power supplies so there is one chassis requiring one AC power cord."

A direct link to the studio master?

"Immediately upon pushing play the recorded venue was dropped into our listening room with no apparent boundaries. Voices and instruments were solidly placed with a humanness in the voices that often became emotional. I love how our long-favored recordings continue to surprise us with new little instrumental parts and other such details being revealed for the first time. A significant number of our 2nd tier recordings come to life with new relaxed detail, consistently challenging or equalling our best recordings.

In recent years I have told our engineers at MSB 'I am not sure we have heard this DAC yet'. This experience is also confirmed by dealers and customers alike. By this I mean, no matter what we improve, sources, power quality, cables, amps, and speakers, etc., each new change is revealed for its full and true contribution. The DAC never seems to be the 'choke point'. The need to adjust for tone or 'flavors' is completely absent. The addition of MSB’s new Digital Director raises this concept once again, to a very high level. The Digital Director is yet another example of MSB’s ongoing mission to bring the customer along on next level technologies protecting their investment for years to come. We hope you will get to hear an MSB DAC with the new Digital Director at your dealer very soon."