Musetec (LKS) MH-DA005 DAC

I do like combo of silver and copper throughout system, about 50/50 at present. As system has progressed over the years increasing amount of  silver added. My 300B monoblocks use vast majority silver wire, including output transformers. I've found silver has both greater refinement and extension on top, copper added for fuller mids and bass, silver also helps with articulation in bass.  Silver plated copper also very nice in certain places.

I recall a time when I couldn't stand virtually any silver in previous systems, always added unwanted brightness in highs, thin mids and bass. How times change!

I’ve been doing some reading about the Musetec 005 and I am getting a very strong suspicion that the designer/builder may have actually listened to each part during the selection/rejection decision making stage.
1 Audionote Kaisei capacitors along with the Mundorf in the power supply.

2 Silicon carbide Schottky diodes.

3 Gold and silver foil capacitors in a discrete (No Op-amps) analog output stage.

4 As mentioned earlier, solid silver wire rather than cheaper thin copper traces to connect various boards.

5 Particular attention paid to clock implementation.

6 What seems to be an overbuilt power supply.

In my opinion these are not casual choices. Someone had to at some point do some comparative listening testing to choose these types of parts. This tells me that whom ever did the actual decision making seem to rely on listening to parts rather than solely a reliance on how they measured.

Perhaps  it is just me, but I find this very impressive. Who ever it is that did final part selection chose some really good quality pieces. It’s easier now for me to understand how this DAC fared so well up against the Bricasti M1 SE. Someone was serious about building a high quality DAC.

Charles

@charles1dad

This is almost exactly why I chose to buy the Musetec, sight unseen (and unheard) at the time. In the first place I believe that great parts make great sound, and the designer had proved his product to a cost with the 004. When I looked at the cost of the parts in the Musetec I simply said to myself that no one would increase the cost of the DAC so much unless each expenditure added to the SQ result. It was hard to find, but the 2 Mundorf gold and silver foil capacitors costs about $95 each. The gold plated O-ring transformer costs about $200. (See a similar one at Kitsune.) A typical torroid of a similar size is less than $25. I saw each of the new femtoclocks selling for $122. A Crystek is about $25. And so on.

So it seemed logical that each part was listened to before a commitment to its inclusion and cost. That was confirmed recently in correspondence with the designer as I wrote in an earlier post.

One of the things I have come to admire about this maker, and about many other Chinese manufacturers is their complete openness about exactly what’s inside their DAC. Compare that with the mystery that surrounds the interior of DACs from European and American makers. Long on promotional literature, but short on specifics.

@melm

So it seemed logical that each part was listened to before a commitment to its inclusion and cost. That was confirmed recently in correspondence with the designer as I wrote in an earlier post

Well, he has my full respect for doing so. I can just imagine the amount of time and patience it takes to place those parts in a component and painstakingly listen and evaluate each individually. He could have easily decided to insert parts with superb specifications and certainly less cost and let it go at that. Genuine props to this guy. He must really love and appreciate music.

Charles

The only thing that gave me pause was Musetec reaction to poor ASR measurements, recall them stating Amir's measuring equipment superior to what they used in designing 005.

While I'm on board with listening as being superior to limited measurements in voicing components, it would be nice to know Musetec had superior measurement equipment in their lab. The question is; could the 005 have been even better had better measuring equipment been available?

Realize playing devil's advocate here, 005 is wonderful, not sure I'd change a thing. 

It certainly would be nice to actually hear audio products as they go through voicing phase by manufacturers, This would give us much better idea of how measurements correlate with various sound qualities.