Musetec (LKS) MH-DA005 DAC

@sns @melm 

LKS-004 mods are::

1) Replaced the metal oxide trimpots for the IBV section with metal foil Vishay VFR 1240W pots
2) Swapped crystals to Crystek 957X on both the Singxer SU-2 and LKS-004
3) Had I/V resistors custom made by Texas Components 2 Watt Vishay TX2575 0.1% .
4) Analog section power filter cap replaced with Mundorf 10,000uF 63V MLGO Mlytic AG
5) Swapped to low leakage Schottky barrier diodes Vishay MBRF10H100 100V 10A
6) Vcom bypass capacitors replaced with Wet Film capacitors
7) Replacement of 0.1uF WIMA polyester caps with 0.15 uF WIMA MKP Polypropylene caps
8) Metallized mylar/polyester caps on the analog final/post filter replaced with polyproplyene caps

I am using a Sonore Ultra Digital with LPS after the MAC M1 Mini. I believe I can only do DSD512 via I2s with it, DoP is limited to DSD256 via USB I thought? The difference between DSD256/512 is simply night and day, amazing. The LKS really shines with DSD512 which is why I was curious if any of the 005 users were using it.

I don't believe they offer an LPS mod for the KItsune SU-2?

https://www.kitsunehifi.com/product/ktesu2/

The Mac M1 Mini is dedicated for HQ Player and Roon only. It's been working flawlessly thus far

The company I work for assembles printed circuit boards. I would have to agree, what I see inside the -005 looks very impressive, just wondering if I should put my dollars elsewhere

With your list of mods! Only reinforces my sense stock mac mini is your weak link, server quality does make a difference. If you were to keep mini, Uptone mods, for off the self, Roon Nucleus, any NUC or can go way upscale. I'm planning on diy solution, $2.5K in parts alone, yes, my experience is server is one of the most important components in streaming chain. With your total setup, I'd think upgrade in server would be easily heard.

My take on even 004 modded to your level, can't replicate 005 ultimate sound quality. I mentioned power supply in previous post as I presume this is fundamental to 005 performance. One of the highlights of 005 performance is it's simply magical micro dynamics, this single aspect gives 005 breath of life, the very essence of this dac for me, unique power supply of 005 delivers this.

@sns

Thanks for your input

I see an LPS and Teradak are available for the latest M1 mini, could you point me in the direction of what does Uptone offer for this?Why do you feel the M1 is inferior to a Nucleus or NUC? I tried both , neither could process DSD512 without dropouts.

http://www.teradak.com/products/72.html

@fmzip  Uptone doesn't offer upgrades for M1 mini's.  That Teradak should be worthwhile upgrade for your M1, I use Teradak LPS on some of my equipment, very reliable over many years.

Only the Nucleus plus would be able to process DSD512 without dropouts. The regular Nucleus or whatever NUC you tried didn't have enough processor capability, generally you're going to need Intel I7 to process higher rate DSD. The M1 has plenty of processing power.

I didn't know or perhaps didn't see you were running high rate DSD. For people running these high rate DSD via Roon, HQplayer, etc. low level Nucleus, NUC's and even some of the higher priced off the shelf solutions won't do the job.

fmzip, Do the Teradak along with some optimization, therefore, shutting down unneeded apps, should give you server that would require substantial expenditure to beat. If you go with Teradak, please report back your impressions.

@sns

I’m going to confirm the Teradak will work.

Just an FYI, I built a NUC8i7BEH with ROCK installed. It stuttered like mad  upscaling practically everything to DSD512. That was the reason I tried the Mac M1 mini, pleased with the results to say the least