MSB Discrete vs Premier

@eugene81 I agree with you on the discrete. I moved from bartok to the discrete Dac and found the move to be for the better. As far as upgrade policies go MSB actually has a great upgrade policy. They give you back 100% of retail towards the new upgrade. 

@creditingkarma Wow, that is a great upgrade policy, so maybe it's worth going with the Powerbase for Discrete if you're planning to stay with MSB and upgrade.

+1, If you can afford the Premier, go for it.  It is very good.  

+1, You should try both of them at your home. Let your ears judge. My bet is you will prefer the MSB Premiere with the power base.  

As I posted above, I suggest you also investigate the MSB Director that is an update to the MSB Premiere DAC. The MSB Director costs $14,000 and adds a third box to your stack (DAC and power supply) plus additional cables.   Current input modules are removed from the DAC and installed into the Digital Director. Please see the MSB Web site for more info on the MSB Director. 

DISCLAIMER: I decided to move my Bricasti M21 DAC to my main audio system and compare it to my MSB Premier DAC. After some time, I decided my Bricasti DAC sounded better so I sold my MSB Premier DAC. I also like that the Bricasti DAC has a 24-bit delta sigma DAC, a 20-bit ladder DAC and true 1 bit DSD for DSD content. It includes an Ethernet connection so the M21 is recognized as a DNLA device and becomes a powerful media renderer (I am using this feature).

As an example of great product support, my Bricasti DAC was upgraded for $1,000. Their MDx Board replaced the existing board in the DAC. The next Bricasti upgrade was a free firmware chip program that needed to be inserted into the DAC to complete the upgrade. Both upgrades greatly improved the DAC for a very reasonable cost. This is an example of a company supporting it customers.

My MSB Premier DAC was excellent, but I was VERY concerned about their recent product upgrade strategy. MSB released their $14,000 Director product that moves all inputs to another box. They also added additional processing functions in the Director that, I was told, substantially improves the sound quality. I decided that I did not want to spend another $14,000 for another box, to my existing 2 boxes (DAC and power-base) and more cables.

Maybe you should audition the Bricasti M21 DAC.

My experience:  moved from The Discrete to the Premiere, and then added the Director.  Each move was significant, and not incremental.  Adding the Director was as much of an improvement as going from the Discrete to the Premiere.  Not cheap by any means, but well worth it in my opinion.