Musetec (LKS) MH-DA005 DAC

Is output to one pair of connections at a time, or is it capable of feeding both XLR and RCA out simultaneously?

I can report that it does work with both outputs connected at the same time to 2 preamps, which are connected to 2 amps.

@melm Yes thank you, I have enjoyed this DAC better than any other piece of equipment since I bought my Naim Nait 2 back in the ’80s. I remember back then that no HIFI magazines (no internet then..lol) would review Naim because they wouldn’t pay or bribe their way to good reviews, but as you know the rest is history.

I wouldn’t call the 005 a giant killer or anything else like that, what I would call it is a carefully designed, crafted and sourced DAC. I haven’t opened my 005 but just by looking at pics online you can see the build quality of the PCB. It’s on par with any of the traditional high end manufacturers. They not only built or highly modified their own Amanero board they also put an extra oscillator on it and additionally modified those oscillators to Musetec spec.

This sort of detail is completely unheard of.

Companies like DCS (which I’ve followed since Elgar), Weiss and others have had it far too easy for far too long.

As I’ve said here many times you can buy a 005 and a top flight streamer for the price of one of those over priced DACs.

The sad part about it is too many people just trust the price and not their ears. I’m not going to insult any particular users but there are many out there that just buy products for the name. They don’t want to hear the sound just look at the name.

When I listen to the 005 I hear nothing lacking or I wish was different, just wonderful sound and this is coming from someone who grew up with vinyl and knows all about analogue.

I’m getting the best sound ever now.

@mresseguie
As you know there are not all that many Musetecs out there, so the probability of comparisons especially to other DACs that also are not in very wide use is pretty remote. A review of this thread, @dbb’s comparison thread, and the Musetec thread on head-fi will probably produce all the comparisons there are in the English speaking world.

A quick look shows the Nuprime Evolution DAC looking like a nice DAC at about the same price as the Musetec. It uses one ES9038PRO DAC chip, compared to the Musetec’s two. It also seems to have rollable op amps in its analog circuit. The Musetec doesn’t.

The SW1X is far more expensive, uses tubes and an older Philips DAC chip so is in a whole different world.

It looks like any one of these might provide you with fine audio.

It is not easy to order a multi kilobuck DAC that’s not well known. Here, we’ve all been through that. But there has yet to be a report of disappointment--or a return where permitted.

Since someone on a prior post said that the setting they used was SLOW-L and DPLL BW07 I used that today on my speakers, though I did not notice much but I was not paying too much attention. However, tonight I decided to test with the SRa and with this setup there is one difference I noticed.

I am using my RAAL SR1a headphone | CODA 07x preamp | NAD M22 V2 amp | Musetec 005. The SR1a can sound bright with the wrong setup and when i was using BW07 I was feeling a little fatigue on treble intensive musical passages. I replayed those passages with the setting changed to BW01 and the fatigue I had before did not reappear.

I will be using the BW01 setting on headphones and BW07 (and test others) with my speakers.

I realize that, though I’m the OP here, apart from descriptions of its insides and very few well chosen words in the initial post, I haven’t offered a review of the Musetec DAC. I guess I should, but as so much has already been written about the Musetec here and here I’ll do it in a slightly different way:

Musical DAC vs. Detailed DAC - A Distinction Without Merit

We all know when a new DAC provides good detail. We say we hear things in familiar tracks that we didn’t hear before. Actually, I don’t think that’s generally true. But, you respond, with the new DAC at one minute and 23 seconds into the track I heard a note on an oboe that I had not heard on this track I have listened to many times before. Well, I maintain that with your old DAC, had I alerted you to that note when one minute 23 seconds came around, you would then have heard the note. What actually happened with your old DAC is that you actually heard, but did not take notice of, the note. Why was that?

When I go to a live orchestral concert I often hear things in familiar music that I had not taken notice of at home listening to recordings. That is because at the concert, all of the instruments are there exposing their full beautiful envelope of overtones, the full texture of the instruments in their spaces. They glisten. That makes it impossible not to take notice of them. To me that’s the clue.

We often hear the expression that such and such a DAC is very musical, or something close to that. Usually, I take that to mean just that the listener likes the DAC. However, when I call a component musical, I mean something more specific. I mean that the component makes it sound like the musician is using an especially fine instrument, which by the way is often done for recordings, and that the musician is skilled at tone production, an attribute of a fine musician. For the audio component that means it is revealing the full envelope of the instrument’s overtones. This forces me not only to hear the instrument, but to take notice of it--it is no longer a colorless addition to the volume of the sound--it is more specifically a whole complex of beautiful sounds in its space setting it apart from the rest, that simply commands my full attention. Glistening. Closer to a live concert.

I’m not here writing of the associated noises that are part of much instrumental playing, the initial chuff of a strong bow pull on a violin or the clicking of the keys on a clarinet. You will hear that too. But it is the richness of tone that comes from a fine instrument expertly played that I’m focusing on.

So, as I see it, in order to have a musical DAC, it must be a detailed DAC. It must transmit clearly and correctly what we used to call the low level information. Here I am spotlighting the instrumental overtones, but exactly the same reasoning accounts for all the spatial clues. It’s the low level information. Just as it was/is for analog, by the way.

So the bottom line: you can probably write it for me. I think the Musetec 005 provides that. I don’t doubt that some other DACs provide it as well. There is no trade-off here. Musicality and detail. It’s not either-or; it’s both.  A distinction without merit.