By the way, I notice you got blue LEDs. I got yellow, I guess to go with the gold parts. After we both have our systems dialed in, we will need to compare blue v yellow. Just kidding.
MSB Select II arrival
- Thread starter Mike Lavigne
- Start date
By the way, I notice you got blue LEDs. I got yellow, I guess to go with the gold parts. After we both have our systems dialed in, we will need to compare blue v yellow. Just kidding.
as far as I can tell with the tungsten lighting in my room, my LED display is white lighting, which is also the color it looks like with the lights dimmed.
my darTZeel preamp and amps have yellow lighting, and compared to that it appears to be white. I do have mine dimmed to level 4 so it does not glare at me when the lights are dimmed. I do appreciate the 'old white guy' display for easy reading from across the room even when dimmed. other manufacturers could learn from MSB (darTZeel is pretty good too).
here is blue.....mine is not that color. photos are notorious for wrong color temperatures......so who knows. I do have a calibrated monitor for my own photos for when it matters.
I've had blue lighting before, with the Trinity dac, and it was annoying as hell in the dim light. think Police blue strobe. not condusive to musical zen state. white or yellow much better for not being too distracting. OTOH blue is pretty in pictures.
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bibo01,
here is how I recall Vince of MSB describing it, I paraphrase from memory.
now you know what I know as far as what it does. it's accessed from the main menu and takes a couple of clicks to engage either at the dac, or with the remote.
whatever it does, the dsd I've listened to through the Select II at every resolution including 60 Quad dsd files I have; distinctly betters any other dsd I have heard.
sorry for my lack of the technical details.
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Steve Williams
Site Founder, Site Owner, Administrator
sitting here listening it's hard to imagine the performance improvements that might happen with the second power supply; but agree that there has to be some.
will it be seminal?
it could be.
Thanks Mike.
Yes, I am looking for a technical explanation
From the way I see it (which could be wrong), MSB maps DSD signal to its D/A modules and possibly its Optimize function applies some higher order modulator.
PS: BTW, my name is Gianluca
Mike,
I heard it with the dual power supply at Axpona and it rocked. Hard to know how much was gained since I didn't hear the single power supply.
Ken
Thanks Mike.
Yes, I am looking for a technical explanation
From the way I see it (which could be wrong), MSB maps DSD signal to its D/A modules and possibly its Optimize function applies some higher order modulator.
PS: BTW, my name is Gianluca
it's a pleasure to meet you, Gianluca.
if I run across more details on the 'dsd Optimize' implementation I will let you know. sorry I cannot engage you on the technical speculation.....it's not my way and I would just hurt myself.
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Ken,
likewise my encounter at the L.A. Show was with the dual power supplies and it was very fine sounding......so sure footed and honestly musical and communicative it stood out as something apart at the show, albeit not quite where it's at here, in obviously a completely different setting.
Mike
My exact experience at Axpona too. IMHO, the Select II DAC was head and shoulders above every other source I heard at Axpona, including top notch turntables, R2R and other top of the line DACs. It replicates live music in a way I've never heard before, transparent, flowing and with unprecedented ease. I've not heard another DAC that approaches its sonic performance and musicality.
Best,
Ken
I don't think you can make any absolute comparisons based on sound at shows.
The sound there is always suboptimal, and even the best sounds could be topped with the same equipment in a carefully tuned home set-up with more favorable acoustics. Based on my limited sampling of AXPONA this year, a $ 1,600 NOS DAC in the BorderPatrol/Volti room would have beaten all top turntables, because that was the best sound that I heard at the show (no, I didn't hear the MSB DAC). Of course that would not be the right conclusion.
It may very well be that the MSB DAC is one of the best sources out there, but I wouldn't want to come to that conclusion based on comparisons of sounds at a show. It might just have been fortunate, and showed particular skills in set-up, that the team demoing the MSB DAC got their room to sound as good as you describe, compared to other rooms.
Al,
I totally agree that shows are not the place for definitive conclusions.......normally. however; in my case I'd only heard the Select II at shows prior to my purchase. and I'd never spent any extended time with any MSB products before, even at shows.
prior to the L.A. show I had heard the Select II twice......and both times there was this other worldly solidity, continuousness, and lack of any sense of a reproduction chain that did set it apart from any other digital, and even a certain percentage of the analog. that reference had stayed with me. and then the first day at L.A. I made a bee line for that room and sat there.......and there it was again exactly as I recalled. unmistakable. I'd spent 2 years chasing that perception in various ways.......not finding it.
my point being that maybe the connection I made (or Ken made at Axpona) is not one everyone made (although many have told me that they too have heard it at shows from the Select II), but some things break through the clutter and noise of a show and grab you.
and now living with the Select II those attributes are right here.......and then some on the big rig. and what it does transcends our normal idea of digital sound reproduction (not that everyone has a viewpoint that there is that distinction......but I know that I 'did'). I'm not anointing the Select II as anything right now, but it does stand apart in my personal experience. but my experience does not include some other excellent digital products.
I've spent the last few days on just redbook.....as I've described. there were comments above related to maybe hirez was overrated.
so last night was high rez night. I first isolated 176/24 and 192/24 with Roon and started listening. I'd certainly sampled these files already, but after 2-3 days redbook 'only' this was clearly a step up. really mostly clearly more space, and more subtly a finer grain to the texture as well as more gradations to the articulation and leading edge energy. and a more delicate and nuanced presentation.....and more see-thru and see around presentation. all subtle but musically significant and evident in my system. I would hate to not be able to enjoy these, if I was disc only. I did these resolutions for 3 hours.
then I isolated my dxd; 352 and 384.
woah.....double woah. for whatever reason there were a few files here I'd missed before (Roon is now working better at this). and now we are talking space.......and I mean to say lots of friggen space. get up, walk around, jump up and down space. like reach out and grab a star space.
did I say space? and this is not any blow up the balloon kind of space where parts get expanded and oversized, but space where more parts of the universe are defined and become part of the listening environment.
and then there is the relaxation of the normal reproduction process constraints on the degree of reality expressed with every parameter.
is this analog? not sure......but it's 'something'. I call it 'Select II meets big rig; 'Unleashed'.
this morning it's time for Quad dsd, and later i'll comment on that.
so last night was high rez night. I first isolated 176/24 and 192/24 with Roon and started listening. I'd certainly sampled these files already, but after 2-3 days redbook 'only' this was clearly a step up. really mostly clearly more space, and more subtly a finer grain to the texture as well as more gradations to the articulation and leading edge energy. and a more delicate and nuanced presentation.....and more see-thru and see around presentation. all subtle but musically significant and evident in my system. I would hate to not be able to enjoy these, if I was disc only. I did these resolutions for 3 hours.
then I isolated my dxd; 352 and 384.
woah.....double woah. for whatever reason there were a few files here I'd missed before (Roon is now working better at this). and now we are talking space.......and I mean to say lots of friggen space. get up, walk around, jump up and down space. like reach out and grab a star space.
did I say space? and this is not any blow up the balloon kind of space where parts get expanded and oversized, but space where more parts of the universe are defined and become part of the listening environment.
and then there is the relaxation of the normal reproduction process constraints on the degree of reality expressed with every parameter.
is this analog? not sure......but it's 'something'. I call it 'Select II meets big rig; 'Unleashed'.
this morning it's time for Quad dsd, and later i'll comment on that.
Steve Williams
Site Founder, Site Owner, Administrator
Hi Mike
Like you I also feel the MSB Select ll is the best DAC I have ever heard. I have heard it 3 times each with double power supplies and I understand your excitement and hyperbole
My question is how you would compare the sound of Redbook on the Select ll DAC vs the Trinity DAC which you also owned and seemed equally exuberant about. What sets the Select ll apart in your mind
Like you I also feel the MSB Select ll is the best DAC I have ever heard. I have heard it 3 times each with double power supplies and I understand your excitement and hyperbole
My question is how you would compare the sound of Redbook on the Select ll DAC vs the Trinity DAC which you also owned and seemed equally exuberant about. What sets the Select ll apart in your mind
I must admit to not personally relating to a 'pot party', knowing that could diminish me in some eyes. I'm fine with that.
I had not noticed any reduction in tonal density last night, so I just isolated the dxd again and am listening now to a 352.8khz, 24 bit file of Mozart Violin Concerto in D major KV 218, 'Trondheim Soloists', maybe not as roughly rendered and congealed as a redbook version where density is an artifact (only when held up to the more finely rendered dxd (or Lp or tape)), in this everything is more finely expressed and there is more harmonic complexity and real projection than the redbook. the energy projects more life.
like a 4k video, where more pixels project more light and color gradations.....and finer articulation which gets closer to real and adds to the depth of the perceptions..
in this recording you hear more of the bow across the string and the richness of the sound projection. maybe not as 'heavy' but more delicate and real. more......analog?
redbook does get exposed as less finely rendered as you go up the scale of resolution, but when listening to redbook on the Select II there is no notice of this. would every system equally expose these differences? I cannot say. even the switch to the RCA outputs and adding the Tara Labs GME interconnects likely made these differences more profound.
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my opinion is that the redbook on the Select II is in a different higher realm than the Trinity dac, but there is a year and different servers and such, so it's just an opinion based on memory. I also thought that the Aqua Formula + SGM got into the neighborhood of redbook on the Trinity dac + CAPSv4, if not quite to that street. whereas the Select II is another town over.
Steve Williams
Site Founder, Site Owner, Administrator
I've never heard the Trinity Mike but have heard the Select ll and your exuberance is understandable as the sound it produces is so much better than anything else digital out there. I'm not so sure you are ready to proclaim it on a level with vinyl or tape BUT what it does, it does so perfectly...Congrats on the acquisition and sharing your experiences with the members. I need to plan another trip to Seattle Mike as I bet your system now is truly exceptional
How can it be truly exceptional now, if it was truly exceptional to begin with?
Steve Williams
Site Founder, Site Owner, Administrator
How can it be truly exceptional now, if it was truly exceptional to begin with?
for sure
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