First impressions of new MH-DA006, Musetec flagship

@dbb Wonderful review, covers all the bases. As you know I've also been enamored of 005 for a few years now. Based on technical details released per 006 not surprised by your impressions, the attention paid to power supplies and layout is really quite impressive. Maintaining a neutral voicing is a smart thing, IMO, I prefer neutral sources, plenty of opportunities to fine tune elsewhere. 

In examining both the design and parts used in 006, this thing is really a freaking value. I trust your evaluation of sound qualities, so add excellent SQ to the equation and you have a must purchase for me. And so I have, expecting delivery in a couple weeks.

 Thanks for a very succinct  review, much appreciated.

@dbb Thank you for a very informative review of the DA-006.  I have been using the DA-005 for a few years now and some recent changes to my system brought out some of the same qualities you attributed to the DA-006.  Most notably, a new preamp, the Raven from Spatial Audio Labs, yielded improvements in soundstage width and depth, better image focus, naturalness of tone, and transparency.  Further improvements in clarity and especially dynamics occurred when I replaced my interconnects with Paul Speltz best XLRs, the level 5.3 anti-cables.  These changes allowed me to hear more of what the DA-005 (and Raven preamp) was capable of and to think the DA-006 improves on these attributes is quite an accomplishment.

@sns  Thanks for the kind words.

I should add that on two occasions I had brief playing disruptions when listening through my streamer, an Ultrarendu.  They were cured by rebooting and reloading the 006 driver and checking and re- entering the streamer settings. I corresponded with Mustec and they were quite responsive. Still the cause is unknown, except it seems certain that it is a settings and software issue. This type of issue is common in my experience. If it repeats, I suspect a driver update will do the trick. Also, I use JRIVER to play files through the streamer. Adjustments there may be in order.

@jc4659  Your experience doesn't surprise me. I would think the first place to go to increase dynamics would be the preamp and amp. Who knew so much could be accomplished through the dac.

I've used 005 sans pre, and with Pass XP-22 and modded Coincident Statement pre's, somewhat threadbare with no pre. 005 easily exposed differences between the Pass and Coincident, and easily exposes differences with virtually every change I make in system. Newer Sabre chips have typical high resolving/transparency of Sabre chip dacs with more natural presentation, need to research differences between the 9038pro in 005 vs. 9039pro in 006.

I'd also expect continued change, albeit more subtle post 400 hours, Dueland caps, silver wire improve with more time.