In the interest of comparison I purchased LAIV Harmony dac. Many positive reviews of this dac and I'm interested in hearing a R2R dac vs. Sabre chip 006.
First impressions of new MH-DA006, Musetec flagship
I have received the 006 almost a week ago and have been breaking it in. The price at Shenzhenaudio is $3,900.00 USD, $600 more than the 005. The ad copy states:
"DA006 is a new generation of flagship DAC developed by Musetec over three years and launched in 2024. During this period, it has undergone more than ten revisions and adjustments.
Compared to the previous DA005, the listening experience of DA006 has been improved in all aspects. DA006 has clearer and richer details, a stronger sense of texture, a more stable sound base, better detail control, a wider soundstage, fuller and more powerful, smoother and more natural. . ."
Some brief listening during break in has been very very positive. I will report back when it has run at least 300 hours.
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@sns You have ordered both I assume. Can't wait to read your conclusions. It would be interesting to throw the new Gustard x30 into the mix too. |
I haven’t heard it, but someone on another forum mentioned that the Gustard X30 ran very warm, maybe even hot. Sounded like Gustard had to run the new ES9039 Pro DACs pretty hard to get the desired performance in this particular application. A bit of a red flag for me that doused any further interest. |
Harmony already shipping, 006 still waiting. In the meantime Harmony vs. 005 will be interesting. Mostly I just want to compare timbre between an r2r and sabre dac, so many claims of how r2r is more 'natural' sounding than sabre chip dacs.
Another sabre chip dac not in my plans, T&A Dac200 would be next in line after 005,006, Harmony comparison. Burr Brown chips for PCM, 1bit for DSD, the 1 bit converter supposedly better. |
The ES9039pro (and the Gustard uses 4) is designed to run at lower power consumption than previous generations of ESS DAC chips. So overheating of the chip not likely. Something else on the Gistard boards must be running hot and may as a result have a shortened life. If it is indeed the DAC chips, that might mean an engineering problem at Gustard. One shouldn't have to run any ESS chip "hard." So one should not extrapolate from the Gustard to the Musetec. We have not heard from dbb that the 006 runs hot. The 005 certainly does not. Early run 004s ran hot, but that was in the discrete analog section and corrected very quickly. Interesting that the Gustards are moving well up in price approaching that of acknowledged really fine sounding DACs.
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