New MSB Cascade DAC

But this simply isn't true, because you have not heard "the sound of MSB Cascade DAC."

In my personal opinion your posts were intellectually dishonest, trolling and unfair.
none of this makes sense asno one has heard the Cascade or the Taiko or any of the new products. This is all meaningless until these products are released and people can see and listen to them. How does anyone know what they do or if they work or if they ever will come to market.
I really dont get it . I understand the enthusiasm for new tech and new improvements but before we crown them perhaps it would make sense to let them actually come to market.
AS I said this is the best food I ever ate even though I have never tried it!!!
 
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Are you doing anything for dCS owners as well?

Dual AES/EBU

A lot of DAC use a JCat USB card. Do you have an option for that? Maybe those DAC are lower cost than what a Taiko owner would purchase. Either way, if you parented the output and input cards, you could impact the industry as a manufacturer for other companies to use the technology.

We have an USB output card, the idea of the new interface is to get rid of USB entirely though :)


Great news! If I am using the new direct MSB PRO ISL fiber interface ... should I get the XDMI interface option on the Olympus?

That would allow you to get rid of the MSB USB to Pro ISL adapter, and your USB cable.
 
We have an USB output card, the idea of the new interface is to get rid of USB entirely though :)
What I was trying to say is can you make the new architecture for your XMOS fit on a card like USB so that any server, be it home made could benefit.
 
What I was trying to say is can you make the new architecture for your XMOS fit on a card like USB so that any server, be it home made could benefit.

I’m happy to elaborate on future options but if you don’t mind we should move this discussion to a different thread as it’s unrelated to the MSB Cascade DAC, like this for example:

 
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Hello! This is Daniel Gullman here, finally decided to make an account and jump in to share some thoughts. It pains me to see speculation for things that I have the answers behind all this… so here I am, to hopefully clear a few things up. Specifically around trade in, modular design, and the pricing for the new Cascade DAC.

The 95,000 USD price of the Cascade DAC is a disruption to MSB and to industry trends. Here, we have a DAC outperforming the Select DAC and we made the radical decision to sell it for less. Why?

I will happily provide some full transparency on the reasoning behind the decisions made. This is a real example of how “greedy corporations” can and often work, not us. We could have arbitrarily decided to sell the Cascade DAC for 165,000. That reality would see our customers unknowingly purchase both the Cascade DAC and the value of the Reference DAC all over again. Easy for us to offer 100% trade value as long as we could still find a way to sleep at night. A cloak and daggers method to deceive people. This is genuinely what industry folks asked us to do when we first revealed the pricing… it’s a thing. I hate it.

Let’s chat about the previous trade in program, and how it was different. For the Reference to Select upgrade: we gut and re-use almost all the parts of the Reference DAC. Because this is the same platform, we can do that and make the trade in actually work. Also, the price gap between the Reference and Select (73,500) is much bigger than between the Reference and Cascade (16,000). But now, moving to the Cascade, we have fundamentally changed to next gen architecture and we cannot migrate materials over. If we limited the Cascade to the Select platform it would have killed our most innovative product evolution yet. The Cascade DAC will have 90% trade in because similarly, we can migrate the actual DAC materials over to the new Sentinel DAC.

Now, let’s address modular design… the DACs are still modular and will still benefit from this. When/if new updates or input modules come out, they will be made available to existing DACs that are already 10 years old… and that will continue moving forward. The Digital Director for the Reference and Select is an upgrade we were able to implement because of this. This is the upgrade path to the new platform! Y’all made it! This is how products are supported. We will continue to do this! We are nerds and we want everyone to get their hands on cool stuff. We can service and fix our DACs longer than anyone in our industry because of this design feature.

Alright, sorry for the long message, last thing to discuss. Why 50%? I hear you, and you are right. Do not trade in a one month old DAC! That would be wild. This trade in policy is a price protection policy. It means in 5 years, your Reference will not drop below 50% because it CAN be traded in for the Cascade. Maybe even in 8 or 10 years!? If anyone wants to sell their new Reference DAC, the buyer can know that DAC has an established value. It is worth a hell of a lot more than 50% its original value. Let’s not get carried away praising the new DAC at the cost the Reference and Select DACs. They are still. So. Damn. Good. Every owner thought it was worth the money when they bought them, and they still are.

So, in the end, why choose 95k vs 165k? This is where the buyer wins, not the “greedy corporation”. I am terribly concerned over industry behavior towards charging whatever will be paid. Systems based on retail dollar values instead of the product craftsmanship. They say the audio market is slowing down, but I feel we are simply pricing out the people we do it for. We are engineers who have created a leading class manufacturing facility with advanced robotics, lean manufacturing, and clever designs to be able to offer our best sound ever at this price point. I am not disillusioned on the price, this is still expensive, but we are going to make sure quality from start to finish is second to none.

This is as honest as I can be. I am just a guy trying to make cool audio systems because I really like building them. I am not trying to screw anyone over. We made a decision that was best for the most people possible… and I totally get how much that sucks for some of you. For that, I am sorry. We decided not to gauge you… if you tally it up, it’s a better future for you too.

Cheers all! Glad to be here.
 
This is probably a dumb question but is the cascade dual mono? That is, completely separate parallel architecture once sent to the DAC portion and on to the analog?
Correct. Inside has parallel and isolated channels. Our DAC modules are separate for each channel, so it is not shared like a "chip DAC" solution. We have a deep dive video coming out in the next week that will show what's inside each chassis. I think by industry speak, dual mono might mean separate chassis entirely for each chassis... but its phrasing that can be easily manipulated depending on what you want to say haha. alas.
 
Thank you Looking forward to th me video.
Correct. Inside has parallel and isolated channels. Our DAC modules are separate for each channel, so it is not shared like a "chip DAC" solution. We have a deep dive video coming out in the next week that will show what's inside each chassis. I think by industry speak, dual mono might mean separate chassis entirely for each chassis... but its phrasing that can be easily manipulated depending on what you want to say haha. alas.
.
 
As someone who was considering getting a high end server, these “interface wars” have put an end to my purchase decision. I’m going to wait to see if XDMI actually becomes more than a one manufacturer interface. I’m also wary of investing in a novel interface that might take a while to get its bugs sorted out. I recall my early days of owning dCS gear with the FireWire interface between the Elgar Plus, the Purcell, the Verdi transport and the clock. Every manufacturer touts their interface. It’s too confusing as a consumer. I’m going to stick with the established interfaces for now (USB, SPDIF) and see how this fast changing market evolves.
 
I mentioned (#31 post) "I heard MSB DACs in audio shows. Above video sounds exactly what I heard. "

My room (#272) is next to ALMA audio at THE SHOW 2024, OC. Costa Mesa. I'll hear MSB this year again. I welcome everyone to compare sounds of MSB and my system.

ALMA audio represents MSB and will play it (like previous audio shows and debuted Cascade at Munich audio show 2024) at THE SHOW 2024, OC. Costa Mesa audio show on June 7-9, 2024.
I welcome constructive criticism, but I don’t believe your comments are constructive, are actual criticism or even have any place in this discussion at all, here is my reasoning as to why.

I will be using cars in an analogy because many (most?) people have experience with them.

Your posts have the equivalent message of “I’m a Chevy dealer that once rode shotgun in a Ford around a crowded parking lot, and it handled like crap!” Now it may be that some, or even all Fords handle like crap, but the above statement has a huge problem with bias (you would probably like to put your competitor out of business, or at least steal some of it) a huge problem with specifics (exactly what Ford did you drive? When? Did you even do any of the driving? And is it even the same model of Ford car in discussion?), and evaluation circumstances (is a crowded parking lot really the appropriate place to do a handling evaluation of a car?).

Your factual evidence is also of the weakest possible kind, compressed videos from the internet :-( Are you really going to defend internet videos as reliable evidence of audio quality? I would doubt you had any expertise in audio on this fact alone….
 
I welcome constructive criticism, but I don’t believe your comments are constructive, are actual criticism or even have any place in this discussion at all, here is my reasoning as to why.

I will be using cars in an analogy because many (most?) people have experience with them.

Your posts have the equivalent message of “I’m a Chevy dealer that once rode shotgun in a Ford around a crowded parking lot, and it handled like crap!” Now it may be that some, or even all Fords handle like crap, but the above statement has a huge problem with bias (you would probably like to put your competitor out of business, or at least steal some of it) a huge problem with specifics (exactly what Ford did you drive? When? Did you even do any of the driving? And is it even the same model of Ford car in discussion?), and evaluation circumstances (is a crowded parking lot really the appropriate place to do a handling evaluation of a car?).

Your factual evidence is also of the weakest possible kind, compressed videos from the internet :-( Are you really going to defend internet videos as reliable evidence of audio quality? I would doubt you had any expertise in audio on this fact alone….

I believe that Alex has invited attendees to a “live” comparison during the upcoming show.
 
I believe that Alex has invited attendees to a “live” comparison during the upcoming show.

Show conditions are still hit and miss. I'll be there and do the comparison for myself. If one or both rooms sound bad, I'll draw no conclusions. If one room sounds good, that says something good about that room.

Only an inexperienced person will draw conclusions from bad sound at a show -- where so many things can go wrong.
 
Show conditions are still hit and miss. I'll be there and do the comparison for myself. If one or both rooms sound bad, I'll draw no conclusions. If one room sounds good, that says something good about that room.

Only an inexperienced person will draw conclusions from bad sound at a show -- where so many things can go wrong.

I get it. You don’t draw any conclusions from videos and you don’t draw any conclusions from shows, but I believe that you draw conclusions from home or dedicated listening room environments other than your own. I wonder how you are able to correlate some listening conditions but are unable to correlate other listening conditions. Perhaps you can elaborate on your methodology.
 
+1
Can not moderators delete OT posts?

No problem with that. Then they also should delete all posts by Wavetouch who started this mess.
 
For those that are curious as to the origin of the Cascade DACs design here is an overview its origins.

Eleven years ago, when I was designing the Select DACs electronics (the seventh DAC of my design that made it to production after the MSB Platinum DAC, Link DAC 3, credit card DAC (a promotional free giveaway at CES one year),Platinum DAC 4, Power DAC, and Analog DAC) I thought that I knew everything that was necessary for a DAC platform that would last for the longest time possible and have the best possible performance.

I had worked out the role of clocking (extensive experimentation into different clock architectures and measurements on the role of sound quality), processing (digital filters and data stream formatting), noise (the importance of digital isolation and conversion noise removal), conversion hardware (a software configurable analog system that could playback any format on the fly from single/multi-bit delta-sigma to PCM) and upgradability (input formats had changed rapidly and are, still changing today).

For Daniel it was going to be his second solo chassis design after the Analog DAC, and he was getting pretty good at that as well. What I did not anticipate at that time was just how electrically noisy things would become. I remember trying to diagnose a cluster of repairs for one of our transports, going back and forth with a couple customers to figure out why they were failing, and realizing that the problem actually stemmed from the video projector they were attached to.

With tens of volts of RF flowing over the HDMI cable, failure was inevitable. Many watts of continuous RF power were being dissipated by the protection circuitry which would eventually burn out the parts (this was obviously not good for sound quality either). That is when I decided to develop the Pro ISL optical interconnect, in my opinion the first high quality optical digital audio interface (toslink is not great and “ATT/ST glass” is also very problematic compared with even lowly s-pdif). Since then noise has only gotten worse. Ambient conditions and system interconnection noise have become “THE” nearly uncontrollable problem. Why is it that everyone is talking about isolators, routers, servers, cables, transformers and even battery power as being so important?

Well they are all nibbling at the edges of the same gigantic problem. Noise is leaking from our everyday audio and non-audio appliances into the delicate analog audio signals. Proliferation of solar inverters, LED lights, dimmers, communication equipment, displays/TVs, audio servers, computers and chargers are all contributing to this problem. Even the digital audio interfaces themselves generate and conduct objectionable noise despite faithfully transmitting the data they contain. This noise can be highly circumstantial meaning some customers don’t have much of a problem, but others are constantly struggling to get good sound.

Some even become disillusioned with digital audio altogether and go back to their LPs/tapes exclusively. This noise can propagate through the air, over the power lines and over any conductive cabling. I had designed a very good (two stages of isolation, one at each of the input modules, one stage at the DAC modules themselves) isolation system into the Select, but, I have found that “very good” is no longer sufficient today. The Cascade DAC shares much of the same design methodology of the Reference/Select but it takes noise isolation to the extreme.

Only the bare minimum of circuitry necessary to convert the raw data-stream to analog is present in the converter box and that box is heavily shielded physically, magnetically and electrically from its environment. No processing occurs in the Analog Converter box at all. Even the power to its internal relays (latching) is disabled when they are not switching to eliminate the problem of noise leakage from the power supplies driving their coils (a problem I discovered when prototyping the electrostatic headphone amplifier because of its extreme 141db of dynamic range). The outboard power supplies job is to heavily shield the converter box from the noise on the power mains (via onboard power filtering, magnetically and electrically shielded transformers, ultrafast rectifiers, inductor/capacitor filtering and ultra low noise, discrete regulators).

The Cascade Link is an advanced descendant of the optical Pro ISL interface which completely shields the conversion box from any upstream noise while simultaneously producing a vanishingly low amount itself. It also has a vastly increased data capacity to feed enough uncompressed data directly to the (8) DAC modules. The first time I heard the prototype Cascade in our electrically noisy facility I was shocked at how much of a difference this “no holds barred” approach to isolation was. Milling machine working hours, office computer use, solar inverter activity, music server software updates no longer had an appreciable impact on the music quality.

From there it has been a pleasure listening to and refining every last detail of the Cascade. We didn’t rush any of the details so each component had a significant maturation process, for example just the size and exact shape of all the stainless accents had prototypes machined and evaluated daily for weeks until we were completely happy with their exact shape and form. I spent hundreds of hours programming, evaluating and refining each of the playback formats supported this far (there are 17 individual data formats at launch, each with a different playback algorithm and unique DAC configuration).

I spent hours listening to the sound of the raw bit-stream of the Cascade Link (not music, the raw data bits themselves) to match the analog gaussian noise of analog electronics as closely as my hearing could discern (“real” not “artificial” noise) so as not to pollute the optical receiver with digital noise artifacts. A high resolution FLIR thermal camera was used to evaluate and refine the exact case contact to stabilize the temperature profile of the DAC modules.

We stacked and evaluated every configuration of the separate chassis to determine the optimal placement of the magnetic shielding for every one so that our customers could place the boxes anywhere they liked in their system without worry. Daniel even designed and machined custom fasteners to optimally hold the power transformers in place. All the while we would constantly debate and recenter each design feature to keep them focused and not unnecessarily complex or expensive. Cost no object performance, but without waste, is the philosophy we aspired to follow for the Cascade. Everything that was required for world leading performance and intuitive operation but nothing more.
 
For those that are curious as to the origin of the Cascade DACs design here is an overview its origins.

Eleven years ago, when I was designing the Select DACs electronics (the seventh DAC of my design that made it to production after the MSB Platinum DAC, Link DAC 3, credit card DAC (a promotional free giveaway at CES one year),Platinum DAC 4, Power DAC, and Analog DAC) I thought that I knew everything that was necessary for a DAC platform that would last for the longest time possible and have the best possible performance. I had worked out the role of clocking (extensive experimentation into different clock architectures and measurements on the role of sound quality), processing (digital filters and data stream formatting), noise (the importance of digital isolation and conversion noise removal), conversion hardware (a software configurable analog system that could playback any format on the fly from single/multi-bit delta-sigma to PCM) and upgradability (input formats had changed rapidly and are, still changing today). For Daniel it was going to be his second solo chassis design after the Analog DAC, and he was getting pretty good at that as well. What I did not anticipate at that time was just how electrically noisy things would become. I remember trying to diagnose a cluster of repairs for one of our transports, going back and forth with a couple customers to figure out why they were failing, and realizing that the problem actually stemmed from the video projector they were attached to. With tens of volts of RF flowing over the HDMI cable, failure was inevitable. Many watts of continuous RF power were being dissipated by the protection circuitry which would eventually burn out the parts (this was obviously not good for sound quality either). That is when I decided to develop the Pro ISL optical interconnect, in my opinion the first high quality optical digital audio interface (toslink is not great and “ATT/ST glass” is also very problematic compared with even lowly s-pdif). Since then noise has only gotten worse. Ambient conditions and system interconnection noise have become “THE” nearly uncontrollable problem. Why is it that everyone is talking about isolators, routers, servers, cables, transformers and even battery power as being so important? Well they are all nibbling at the edges of the same gigantic problem. Noise is leaking from our everyday audio and non-audio appliances into the delicate analog audio signals. Proliferation of solar inverters, LED lights, dimmers, communication equipment, displays/TVs, audio servers, computers and chargers are all contributing to this problem. Even the digital audio interfaces themselves generate and conduct objectionable noise despite faithfully transmitting the data they contain. This noise can be highly circumstantial meaning some customers don’t have much of a problem, but others are constantly struggling to get good sound. Some even become disillusioned with digital audio altogether and go back to their LPs/tapes exclusively. This noise can propagate through the air, over the power lines and over any conductive cabling. I had designed a very good (two stages of isolation, one at each of the input modules, one stage at the DAC modules themselves) isolation system into the Select, but, I have found that “very good” is no longer sufficient today. The Cascade DAC shares much of the same design methodology of the Reference/Select but it takes noise isolation to the extreme. Only the bare minimum of circuitry necessary to convert the raw data-stream to analog is present in the converter box and that box is heavily shielded physically, magnetically and electrically from its environment. No processing occurs in the Analog Converter box at all. Even the power to its internal relays (latching) is disabled when they are not switching to eliminate the problem of noise leakage from the power supplies driving their coils (a problem I discovered when prototyping the electrostatic headphone amplifier because of its extreme 141db of dynamic range). The outboard power supplies job is to heavily shield the converter box from the noise on the power mains (via onboard power filtering, magnetically and electrically shielded transformers, ultrafast rectifiers, inductor/capacitor filtering and ultra low noise, discrete regulators). The Cascade Link is an advanced descendant of the optical Pro ISL interface which completely shields the conversion box from any upstream noise while simultaneously producing a vanishingly low amount itself. It also has a vastly increased data capacity to feed enough uncompressed data directly to the (8) DAC modules. The first time I heard the prototype Cascade in our electrically noisy facility I was shocked at how much of a difference this “no holds barred” approach to isolation was. Milling machine working hours, office computer use, solar inverter activity, music server software updates no longer had an appreciable impact on the music quality. From there it has been a pleasure listening to and refining every last detail of the Cascade. We didn’t rush any of the details so each component had a significant maturation process, for example just the size and exact shape of all the stainless accents had prototypes machined and evaluated daily for weeks until we were completely happy with their exact shape and form. I spent hundreds of hours programming, evaluating and refining each of the playback formats supported this far (there are 17 individual data formats at launch, each with a different playback algorithm and unique DAC configuration). I spent hours listening to the sound of the raw bit-stream of the Cascade Link (not music, the raw data bits themselves) to match the analog gaussian noise of analog electronics as closely as my hearing could discern (“real” not “artificial” noise) so as not to pollute the optical receiver with digital noise artifacts. A high resolution FLIR thermal camera was used to evaluate and refine the exact case contact to stabilize the temperature profile of the DAC modules. We stacked and evaluated every configuration of the separate chassis to determine the optimal placement of the magnetic shielding for every one so that our customers could place the boxes anywhere they liked in their system without worry. Daniel even designed and machined custom fasteners to optimally hold the power transformers in place. All the while we would constantly debate and recenter each design feature to keep them focused and not unnecessarily complex or expensive. Cost no object performance, but without waste, is the philosophy we aspired to follow for the Cascade. Everything that was required for world leading performance and intuitive operation but nothing more.
While I love your contributions to this forum and your explanation, it would be easier to both read and comprehend if you would consider using paragraphs in the future. Thanks, and I love my MSB Reference w/ Reference DD!

ChrisG
 
For those that are curious as to the origin of the Cascade DACs design here is an overview its origins.

Eleven years ago, when I was designing the Select DACs electronics (the seventh DAC of my design that made it to production after the MSB Platinum DAC, Link DAC 3, credit card DAC (a promotional free giveaway at CES one year),Platinum DAC 4, Power DAC, and Analog DAC) I thought that I knew everything that was necessary for a DAC platform that would last for the longest time possible and have the best possible performance. I had worked out the role of clocking (extensive experimentation into different clock architectures and measurements on the role of sound quality), processing (digital filters and data stream formatting), noise (the importance of digital isolation and conversion noise removal), conversion hardware (a software configurable analog system that could playback any format on the fly from single/multi-bit delta-sigma to PCM) and upgradability (input formats had changed rapidly and are, still changing today). For Daniel it was going to be his second solo chassis design after the Analog DAC, and he was getting pretty good at that as well. What I did not anticipate at that time was just how electrically noisy things would become. I remember trying to diagnose a cluster of repairs for one of our transports, going back and forth with a couple customers to figure out why they were failing, and realizing that the problem actually stemmed from the video projector they were attached to. With tens of volts of RF flowing over the HDMI cable, failure was inevitable. Many watts of continuous RF power were being dissipated by the protection circuitry which would eventually burn out the parts (this was obviously not good for sound quality either). That is when I decided to develop the Pro ISL optical interconnect, in my opinion the first high quality optical digital audio interface (toslink is not great and “ATT/ST glass” is also very problematic compared with even lowly s-pdif). Since then noise has only gotten worse. Ambient conditions and system interconnection noise have become “THE” nearly uncontrollable problem. Why is it that everyone is talking about isolators, routers, servers, cables, transformers and even battery power as being so important? Well they are all nibbling at the edges of the same gigantic problem. Noise is leaking from our everyday audio and non-audio appliances into the delicate analog audio signals. Proliferation of solar inverters, LED lights, dimmers, communication equipment, displays/TVs, audio servers, computers and chargers are all contributing to this problem. Even the digital audio interfaces themselves generate and conduct objectionable noise despite faithfully transmitting the data they contain. This noise can be highly circumstantial meaning some customers don’t have much of a problem, but others are constantly struggling to get good sound. Some even become disillusioned with digital audio altogether and go back to their LPs/tapes exclusively. This noise can propagate through the air, over the power lines and over any conductive cabling. I had designed a very good (two stages of isolation, one at each of the input modules, one stage at the DAC modules themselves) isolation system into the Select, but, I have found that “very good” is no longer sufficient today. The Cascade DAC shares much of the same design methodology of the Reference/Select but it takes noise isolation to the extreme. Only the bare minimum of circuitry necessary to convert the raw data-stream to analog is present in the converter box and that box is heavily shielded physically, magnetically and electrically from its environment. No processing occurs in the Analog Converter box at all. Even the power to its internal relays (latching) is disabled when they are not switching to eliminate the problem of noise leakage from the power supplies driving their coils (a problem I discovered when prototyping the electrostatic headphone amplifier because of its extreme 141db of dynamic range). The outboard power supplies job is to heavily shield the converter box from the noise on the power mains (via onboard power filtering, magnetically and electrically shielded transformers, ultrafast rectifiers, inductor/capacitor filtering and ultra low noise, discrete regulators). The Cascade Link is an advanced descendant of the optical Pro ISL interface which completely shields the conversion box from any upstream noise while simultaneously producing a vanishingly low amount itself. It also has a vastly increased data capacity to feed enough uncompressed data directly to the (8) DAC modules. The first time I heard the prototype Cascade in our electrically noisy facility I was shocked at how much of a difference this “no holds barred” approach to isolation was. Milling machine working hours, office computer use, solar inverter activity, music server software updates no longer had an appreciable impact on the music quality. From there it has been a pleasure listening to and refining every last detail of the Cascade. We didn’t rush any of the details so each component had a significant maturation process, for example just the size and exact shape of all the stainless accents had prototypes machined and evaluated daily for weeks until we were completely happy with their exact shape and form. I spent hundreds of hours programming, evaluating and refining each of the playback formats supported this far (there are 17 individual data formats at launch, each with a different playback algorithm and unique DAC configuration). I spent hours listening to the sound of the raw bit-stream of the Cascade Link (not music, the raw data bits themselves) to match the analog gaussian noise of analog electronics as closely as my hearing could discern (“real” not “artificial” noise) so as not to pollute the optical receiver with digital noise artifacts. A high resolution FLIR thermal camera was used to evaluate and refine the exact case contact to stabilize the temperature profile of the DAC modules. We stacked and evaluated every configuration of the separate chassis to determine the optimal placement of the magnetic shielding for every one so that our customers could place the boxes anywhere they liked in their system without worry. Daniel even designed and machined custom fasteners to optimally hold the power transformers in place. All the while we would constantly debate and recenter each design feature to keep them focused and not unnecessarily complex or expensive. Cost no object performance, but without waste, is the philosophy we aspired to follow for the Cascade. Everything that was required for world leading performance and intuitive operation but nothing more.

Thank you for the details on the genesis of the Cascade dac.

Back when I was integrating electronics in the Space Station and Space Shuttles, we would use EMI and RFI gaskets and connectors and would spend weeks in the EMI and RFI chambers at NASA making sure that we passed all applicable Mil-Specs.

I mentioned that because I have yet to see a high-end audio product with specialized EMI and RFI gaskets and connectors or claims that they pass any military specifications for ultra low radio frequencies emissions, transmission or susceptibility.

When I was working on the upgrades for the telemetry systems, using rad-hard backplane format single board computers we took special care with PCB trace and component borne EMI and RFI emissions, transmissions and susceptibility. I spent months in the EMI and RFI chambers scanning until the results were conformant to the applicable Mil-Specs.

I’m very interested and looking forward to reviewing the internal layout of the Cascade dac and seeing what tools and techniques are implemented for noise and interference mitigation.

For those interested in this subject, one of the major difference between space and military electronics and commercial audio electronics has to do with conduction versus convection cooling. The type of cooling impacts how much you are able to accomplish with regards to EMI and RFI mitigation, but never the less similar tools and techniques often apply.
 
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Well they are all nibbling at the edges of the same gigantic problem. Noise is leaking from our everyday audio and non-audio appliances into the delicate analog audio signals. Proliferation of solar inverters, LED lights, dimmers, communication equipment, displays/TVs, audio servers, computers and chargers are all contributing to this problem. Even the digital audio interfaces themselves generate and conduct objectionable noise despite faithfully transmitting the data they contain. This noise can be highly circumstantial meaning some customers don’t have much of a problem, but others are constantly struggling to get good sound.
The common misconception about noise is that it is inaudible (too low) or outside the audible frequency range. The DAC I use strives to deal with this as well, though the solutions are certainly different than MSB's. This article gives similar explanations on the mechanisms associated with "noise pollution":


In theory, as you point out, source "dependency" should also be greatly reduced, and I look forward to hearing what your customers have to say about that, though there is certainly some psychological bias to overcome when comparing sources in completely different price brackets!
 
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