Musica Pristina Experience

Musica Pristina

I would like to share an experience I just had with Kevin of Musica Pristina.  I’m in the market for a streamer in the sub $5000 range and I called Kevin to discuss his machine.  I’m looking for something with superb SQ, but equally important to me is the after-purchase support.  Computer audio is a rapidly evolving technology and requires more “fiddling” than amps or speakers or DACs.  My goal is to avoid buying a piece of gear that becomes obsolete as new software or hardware developments come along.  And I certainly don’t want to buy a streamer built by a company that either can’t or won’t adequately support its products after the sale.  This forum is full of such stories.  If I have an issue with a piece of gear I refuse to be forced to deal with community forums, in effect being forced to fix the problem myself.  I want to pick up the phone and deal with a real person with real solutions.  

So Kevin and I discussed his A Cappella III streamer and it’s checking all the boxes.  It’s modular so it can be upgraded.  It has the I2S output I want and Kevin can build his streamer without outputs I neither need nor want to pay for.  But during the course of our conversation Kevin asked about my current gear and I described the problems I was having.  Without my asking, Kevin offered to use TeamViewer to access my NUC in an effort to resolve several problems I’ve had for the past month.  Keep in mind that I’ve never bought anything from Kevin, never spoken to him until a couple days ago and I have never committed to buying anything from him.  He simply offered to take a look at my NUC and Roon ROCK.  After spending a couple hours loading and re-loading software, loading missing codecs and re-configuring things he got me up and running again.  WOW!  Complete strangers seldom make that kind of effort for me, even ones who would like to make me a customer.  I’m happy to pay people for their time and skills and offered to pay Kevin for his efforts.  He politely declined. 

So that’s where we left things until later this week when we get back to the conversation about his streamer.  I don’t know if I’ll end up buying his A Capella Iii.  He offers a 30 day trial period so there is no downside.   But whatever happens beyond this point I’m convinced I’ll never be “orphaned” with an inoperative piece of gear from Musica Pristina.

So there you have it.  I have no dog in this fight.  YMMV.  IMHO.  Yada Yada.  I’m sharing my experience to let this community know that customer service is not dead.  It’s alive and well with Kevin of Musica Pristina.