MSB Select DAC II. The way every DAC on the planet should be built.

[Ric Schultz]

Blah, Blah, Blah went the Blizzard Sheep. This is so unintelligent it is not even funny any longer. Forget sound quality. What we all need is modularity....thus spoke master Bliz. Let's all demand that the manufactures make their DACs modular so Blizzard can be right. I wonder what incredible thread you will start next. I cannot wait to read it. It will be filled with information that helps us all.....no doubt.

Do you really want to be of service? How are your posts actually helping anyone? Who are you serving? Your righteous mind? Or us? Everything and everyone is in service to everything else. That is the reality we live in. However, if you are not in harmony with being of service then you are lost in the ego separateness game. We are not separate.....we are all connected. Every word and thought can be of service to all. The Sun, the Earth, the water, the air, the angels and everyone is in service helping to wake you up from your sleep dream. Please wake up and start loving us. We need you love.....we don't need your righteous mind. Have you noticed that most do not go along with your ideas? Is that not telling you something? Again, who are you serving?

I love you, you are beautiful, thank you for sharing this incredible moment with me. I am blessed by your presence....your joy and your love. You are divine!

 

[Elberoth]

My Resonessence Mirus uses a very nice modular form factor. The Analog section with the DAC chips on it are removable boards. Once ESS comes out with the next gen DAC chip, it's just a matter of swapping out 2 credit sized boards that plug in to nice gold plated headers, reflash a new firmware onto the FPGA, and your up and running. There's no dedicated standalone USB chip such as Xmos or Cmedia. Instead they rolled their own interface right into the mainboard FPGA.so it can continuouslly be updated without new silicon. They also used an FPGA with enough power that years of upgrades can be done to it before it runs out of processing power. It's currently only using 40% of it's capability. There's an HDMI port on the back that can be remapped to send and receive I2S/DSD over LVDS. This way it can easily connect directly into an external Ethernet renderer device's with the same quality as having an internal renderer. So no matter where interface technology takes us, it can easily accept connection to it without compromise.

This is a $5000 DAC. Not a $90000 DAC. It doesn't take being at a $90000 price point to engineer something intelligently.

Let's talk in 3 years time, how many from those upgrade possibilities will come into frutition. I'm too long in this hobby not to remember Theta/Krell etc. has made about the 'future upgrades'. The only company I can think of that actually delivers the promissed upgrades is MSB.

 

[Blizzard]

Blah, Blah, Blah went the Blizzard Sheep. This is so unintelligent it is not even funny any longer. Forget sound quality. What we all need is modularity....thus spoke master Bliz. Let's all demand that the manufactures make their DACs modular so Blizzard can be right....for righteousness is his middle name. I wonder what righteous thread you will start next. I cannot wait to read it. It will be filled with information that helps us all.....no doubt.

No let's keep them all on 1 disposable board so Ric can hack them all up and make them look like a high school science project.

 

[Blizzard]

Let's talk in 3 years time, how many from those upgrade possibilities will come into frutition. I'm too long in this hobby not to remember Theta/Krell etc. has made about the 'future upgrades'. The only company I can think of that actually delivers the promissed upgrades is MSB.

Well the successor to the 9018 will be going in the Mirus/Invicta around the same time the market sees the chips. How many other DAC's that use the 9018 will be able to do this?

 

[Ric Schultz]

No let's keep them all on 1 disposable board so Ric can hack them all up and make them look like a high school science project.

The only good defense is a great offense.....at least that is what you think. You really don't need to defend your statements. You just need to make statements that are helpful and intelligent and actually serve someone. Again, who are you serving with all this Blah Blah?

I am out of this thread. It serves no one. I hope you can be of service. God Bless You!

 

[Blizzard]

The only good defense is a great offense.....at least that is what you think. You really don't need to defend your statements. You just need to make statements that are helpful and intelligent and actually serve someone. Again, who are you serving with all this Blah Blah?

I am out of this thread. It serves no one. I hope you can be of service. God Bless You!

I'm having a hard time understanding what contributions you have made to this forum at all. It's seems that all you have been doing is following me around and trying to make me look stupid. But since nothing you say holds water, it's only had the opposite effect.

 

[bibo01]

The point of this thread was not to discuss the sound of the DAC. It was to discuss the modular form factor!

In part I am with Blizzard regarding modularity.
It can be useful and there are various DACs that have it implemented in different ways. However, in percentage terms the importance in a user's final choice of a product is not very high.
By choosing MSB top DAC as an example, it looked like a blind endorsement for this product.

IMHO, MSB SELECT II is outrageously expensive and I do not believe in its future upgradeability. In my view, it is just a way to spill more money, to offer "upgrades" at exorbitant prices. One would be better off by choosing a DAC with not too high nonlinear distortion and make a FIR filter for its linear distortion to suit one's personal preferences and system. Something similar is done with DRC filters.

 

[Blizzard]

In part I am with Blizzard regarding modularity.
It can be useful and there are various DACs that have it implemented in different ways. However, in percentage terms the importance in a user's final choice of a product is not very high.
By choosing MSB top DAC as an example, it looked like a blind endorsement for this product.

IMHO, MSB SELECT II is outrageously expensive and I do not believe in its future upgradeability. In my view, it is just a way to spill more money, to offer "upgrades" at exorbitant prices. One would be better off by choosing a DAC with not too high nonlinear distortion and make a FIR filter for its linear distortion to suit one's personal preferences and system. Something similar is done with DRC filters.

I do like MSB's products. I used this product as an example because I like how it's built. But would I buy them? No. Why not? Because I'm building my own system. DAC's were the last part of the audio chain that I wasn't building myself, but those days are over. My Mirus is up for sale and I'm going with chipless DSD only all the way.

 

[bibo01]

I do like MSB's products. I used this product as an example because I like how it's built. But would I buy them? No. Why not? Because I'm building my own system. DAC's were the last part of the audio chain that I wasn't building myself, but those days are over. My Mirus is up for sale and I'm going with chipless DSD only all the way.

That will be easy to upgrade!

Various friends of mine have implemented it already. I am waiting for Jussi's DSC2.

 

[Keith_W]

I'll put my take on it here. Most DAC manufacturers seem to believe that no further improvements to DAC's are possible - 16 or maybe 24 bits is enough resolution. The AES is full of people who think that the RBCD spec from the 1980's is enough for perfect sound forever, DSD is a waste of time, and so on. This is why engineering efforts to improve DAC's focus on making them smaller, cheaper to manufacture, increasing manufacturing efficiency, and cramming more features into DAC's that we (as 2 channel afficionados) do not need.

If you are a third party DAC manufacturer and have to buy these chips, your options for improvement are limited to: attempts at reducing jitter (reclocking), upsampling, and engineering a superb analog output stage. This is why Astell & Kern (makers of very good portable digital audio players) are able to offer the same "high end" DAC as found in an Oppo, or maybe a Marantz, or some other "audiophile" brands.

People who only have exposure to such DAC's think that the differences between DAC's are minimal. And they are absolutely correct - most of them sound very similar. After all, it's the same DAC but with different ancillaries.

There are SOME manufacturers who do NOT follow the AES paradigm that there can be no more improvements made to digital. These manufacturers design and build DAC's using proprietary technology from the ground up. MSB is one of them, so are Meitner, Playback, and DCS. The development cost is not cheap, especially when amortized over small production runs. Furthermore, development is continuous and they continue to update their products as they make new discoveries.

THIS is why MSB DAC's cost so much money. If they didn't care about their customers, they could simply build it all into a box and tell you buy a new DAC every time they make an upgrade. A bit like you having to buy a new Apple computer when your hardware becomes obsolete. MSB have taken the "PC" approach, and built it using modular components. Like a PC, when some of your hardware goes obsolete, you can stay current by replacing individual components.

I can tell you right now that I can not afford an MSB DAC, and even if I had the cash floating around, I would not buy one. But this does not stop me from admiring their engineering approach and their respect for their customers. So, good on them.

 

[audioblazer]

shifty biz practise

 

[edorr]

I can tell you right now that I can not afford an MSB DAC, and even if I had the cash floating around, I would not buy one. But this does not stop me from admiring their engineering approach and their respect for their customers. So, good on them.

With all due respect, the objectives of the modular approach is primarily to lock the customer into the MSB platform, and extract a more predictable amount of cash from them for an extended period of time. Nothing wrong with this, but MSB is not a customer-centric outfit.

 

[dallasjustice]

With all due respect, the objectives of the modular approach is primarily to lock the customer into the MSB platform, and extract a more predictable amount of cash from them for an extended period of time. Nothing wrong with this, but MSB is not a customer-centric outfit.

This is a good point. Maybe MSB wants to see less of its gear on Audiogon. If MSB can get customers to pre-pay for expected upgrades, then the customer will be less likely to sell. Of course, MSB does not guarantee there will be any upgrades in the future. How could they? So the customer is paying for insurance. It's a DAC upgrade insurance policy. The only problem is that the insurance policy will not pay when the customer finds something better from another manufacturer.

 

[microstrip]

I'll put my take on it here. Most DAC manufacturers seem to believe that no further improvements to DAC's are possible - 16 or maybe 24 bits is enough resolution. The AES is full of people who think that the RBCD spec from the 1980's is enough for perfect sound forever, DSD is a waste of time, and so on. This is why engineering efforts to improve DAC's focus on making them smaller, cheaper to manufacture, increasing manufacturing efficiency, and cramming more features into DAC's that we (as 2 channel afficionados) do not need.
(...)
There are SOME manufacturers who do NOT follow the AES paradigm that there can be no more improvements made to digital. These manufacturers design and build DAC's using proprietary technology from the ground up. MSB is one of them, so are Meitner, Playback, and DCS. The development cost is not cheap, especially when amortized over small production runs. Furthermore, development is continuous and they continue to update their products as they make new discoveries.
(...)

AES have a Technical Committee on High Resolution Audio http://www.aes.org/technical/hra/. We can read there two interesting Technical Reports "Trends in High Resolution Audio".

Unfortunately it seems to have very little activity compared to other sections, and almost nothing leaks to the audiophile community concerning perceptual aspects.

 

[edorr]

This is a good point. Maybe MSB wants to see less of its gear on Audiogon. If MSB can get customers to pre-pay for expected upgrades, then the customer will be less likely to sell. Of course, MSB does not guarantee there will be any upgrades in the future. How could they? So the customer is paying for insurance. It's a DAC upgrade insurance policy. The only problem is that the insurance policy will not pay when the customer finds something better from another manufacturer.

The huge flaw in the model is that the nature of DAC technology and it's current state is we have sqeezed 98% of achievable performance out of existing technology. To lock yourself into an extremely expensive platform so you can obsess over getting the remaining 2% from MSB (and pay very substantial component upgrade fees in the process), makes little sense. Especially when some inovator may come along and deliver the goods (i.e the elusive 100%) at a much lower pricepoint. The model would make more sense for a technology in early stages of its lifecycle, when very material performance improvement down the road can be anticipated.

 

[Andre Marc]

Blah, Blah, Blah went the Blizzard Sheep. This is so unintelligent it is not even funny any longer. Forget sound quality. What we all need is modularity....thus spoke master Bliz. Let's all demand that the manufactures make their DACs modular so Blizzard can be right. I wonder what incredible thread you will start next. I cannot wait to read it. It will be filled with information that helps us all.....no doubt.

Do you really want to be of service? How are your posts actually helping anyone? Who are you serving? Your righteous mind? Or us? Everything and everyone is in service to everything else. That is the reality we live in. However, if you are not in harmony with being of service then you are lost in the ego separateness game. We are not separate.....we are all connected. Every word and thought can be of service to all. The Sun, the Earth, the water, the air, the angels and everyone is in service helping to wake you up from your sleep dream. Please wake up and start loving us. We need you love.....we don't need your righteous mind. Have you noticed that most do not go along with your ideas? Is that not telling you something? Again, who are you serving?

I love you, you are beautiful, thank you for sharing this incredible moment with me. I am blessed by your presence....your joy and your love. You are divine!

"Blah, Blah, Blah went the Blizzard Sheep. This is so unintelligent it is not even funny any longer. Forget sound quality. What we all need is modularity..."

LOL!

 

[audioblazer]

Let's talk in 3 years time, how many from those upgrade possibilities will come into frutition. I'm too long in this hobby not to remember Theta/Krell etc. has made about the 'future upgrades'. The only company I can think of that actually delivers the promissed upgrades is MSB.

MSB definitely did not honor their upgrade program . I know because I bought into their sucker upgrade program which they did not fully honor . I confronted Larry in Munich 2015 & he admitted as much ..... I didn't know digital will advance so much within a year bullshit . I m talking from facts not mere opinions
Any upgrade imaginable BS yet charge for 20k for new psu . 10k for supposedly better clock & USD4k for an additional input eg Quad USB input, audio renderer

 

[Blizzard]

I'm liking the idea of the K.I.S.S principal for DAC's anyways. Build it chipless out of 100% discrete ultra high end components. DSD only, but compatible up to DSD 1028. Use ultra low phase noise clocks. And have the interface on a easily upgradable plug in module. All SDM/SRC/Filtering software based running on a server. This system will easily be current for 10-15 years, and sound better than anything.

 

[DaveyF]

MSB definitely did not honor their upgrade program . I know because I bought into their sucker upgrade program which they did not fully honor . I confronted Larry in Munich 2015 & he admitted as much ..... I didn't know digital will advance so much within a year bullshit . I m talking from facts not mere opinions
Any upgrade imaginable BS yet change for new psu & USD4k for an additional input eg improved USB input

Interesting comment, perhaps you could elaborate on how MSB did not honor their upgrade program. At the meeting that I attended, the MSB rep was very explicit that the company was proud of the fact that their older gear was upgradeable by the factory.
Why would the company be pushing this aspect IF they had no intent or ability to follow through with it??


The other interesting thing that was brought to our attention, was the fact that regular 16/44 CD's can and do sound superb on the DAC. We played a JVC XRCD that I brought to the meet-- and sure enough it sounded superb. No up sampling was evident on the DAC.
The rep ( Vince) was kind enough to let us play our pieces as well as the demo pieces that he had brought along. If I remember correctly, he did state that there wasn't too much value in the higher bit rate formats over the standard redbook on this particular DAC.

 

[edorr]

Interesting comment, perhaps you could elaborate on how MSB did not honor their upgrade program. At the meeting that I attended, the MSB rep was very explicit that the company was proud of the fact that their older gear was upgradeable by the factory.
Why would the company be pushing this aspect IF they had no intent or ability to follow through with it??


The other interesting thing that was brought to our attention, was the fact that regular 16/44 CD's can and do sound superb on the DAC. We played a JVC XRCD that I brought to the meet-- and sure enough it sounded superb. No up sampling was evident on the DAC.
The rep ( Vince) was kind enough to let us play our pieces as well as the demo pieces that he had brought along. If I remember correctly, he did state that there wasn't too much value in the higher bit rate formats over the standard redbook on this particular DAC.

Let me weigh in here. I owned a signature and stuck in the $5K femto clock and was told by MSB I now owned a signature+. I sold the signature+ advertising it as such (i.e. signature+). The buyer checked with MSB and learned to get to 100% signature+ status I needed new board for 10K ( he paid me $13K for the DAC). He was livid and thought I screwed him. I told him I acted in good faith had been misinformed by MSB myself and offered a full refund. He said full refuns is not acceptable and threatened to take me to court and force me to spend $10K on the board upgrade. He calmed down in the end and I ended up giving him $3,000 back. So much for upgradeability.