Musetec (LKS) MH-DA005 DAC

@jjss49 
That was a major effort and excellent writing.  I appreciate it, especially as your own system is definitely at the very high end and you were not, yourself, looking for a new DAC here.  In many ways the Musetec has been a mystery DAC with lots of favorable comments by owners, but without a comparative listening review from the usual commercial sources.  Together with @dbb  you have taken the mystery out of the DAC and placed it accurately among DACs I think.

A minor comment.  The bulk of my own listening is to classical music.  I find the front to back depth to vary very considerably from recording to recording, and especially from label to label.  Sometimes it appears quite true to life.  I am, though, happy to accept your observation that there may be an even a greater distinction as one goes up the DAC ladder.

@lordmelton  Really not comparing $11k to $3k here. Briscati or any other streaming dac may have better price/performance ratio than perceived at first glance. For instance, I have around $6k in streaming exclusive components, brings my actual cost of 005 up to around $9k in apples to apples Briscati comparison. Add in analog volume control which may be superior to lesser preamp and/or preclude the need to purchase one, in which case the Briscati could be seen as a screaming deal.

@sns @charles1dad @melm

it has been fun trying this one out, the piece is a really lovely effort, and for the money, just wonderful performance, and it does let you run straight into a power amp, albeit with a very slight perceived grain at higher attenuation settings

to some of the points made

-- i agree that imaging (or the illusion of soundstage with depth etc) is very much a function of recording quality and mixing, no doubt some recordings have it in spades while others are lacking in this department

-- also agree streaming chain is super important which is why i waited and got a second opticalrendu so i could run 005 vs m1 via identical super clean usb feed, 100% apples to apples... i find that with better dacs like these, the sonic differences are subtle, how they are fed can affect how they sound

-- i can’t comment on image height per se... with my maggies and how they stand and full height ribbon tweeter, they do that very well, ’life-sized’ so to speak, if there is a difference in this specific aspect between the 005 and the m1, i could not hear it in my room

-- one can really only speculate on what drives certain sonic characteristic being heard differentially between units, obviously the produced sound is a result of everything all together, impossible to isolate specific elements (dual mono d/a or analog stages, power supply design, upsampling rates, chip vs r2r ladder and so on... certain dacs of course allow for some features like filtering, os/nos, etc to be toggled in/out, but some don’t)

-- m1 se does not have separate analog inputs, it is functionally like the 005 in it can adjust it own output level - but you cannot port a separate analog source into it/through it (as the msb can...)

@sns 

Good observation and point with regard to the dual function (DAC-streamer) Bricasti M1(Tri function if one considers volume control).

Charles

@sns

I still think the 005 is a fabulous bargain even considering that streaming and preamp are not built in. I had a decent preamp already in the chain as do many others so no extra expense there. Thanks to your comments and those of others, I learned of the benefits of streaming after I bought the 005. Still, spending less than $1000 for the streamer, cables, and optical "filter" probably has gotten me most of the way. I guess my system would fall short short of the best SOTA setups out there. But I would also guess I have gotten 80 to 90 percent there for a small fraction of the cost of the best.