Musical Fidelity's USB Ready V DAC

Glad to hear that Musical Fidelity products have't lost their ability to polarize the audience!

Does anyone know who their head of marketing was during the most glowing reviews in Stereophile?

Dtc,

Being a MF Trivista owner I am aware of that review by Michael Fremer, but I don’t see his opinion necessarily contradict with my own. Mike have every right to rave that the Trivista is richer, warmer and have greater resolution than the Nuvista, and you would expect so given its $6,500 price tag. Yet these fine qualities do not preclude a component from having tonality and PRaT issue at the same time. Simply they are different qualities, and since we all appreciate different things with music we also have different take on the same component. As a side note, Mike decidedly preferred the $4,000 Krell SACD Standard to the $6,500 MF Trivista in another Stereophile issue:

“Compared to the rich, warm-sounding Musical Fidelity Tri-Vista, the Krell delivered a taut, Naim-like immediacy and rhythmic drive that was startling, exciting, and extremely involving. Bass control, focus, and solidity were noticeably more coherent….had a far more distinct and dimensional physical outline than through the Tri-Vista…..The Tri-Vista's rendering was somewhat warmer, and passed along more context-defining midbass, as well as what seemed to be a wider-ranging harmonic palette, but it couldn't compare, overall, to the Standard's self-assurance, rhythmic swagger, and holographic soundstage presentation….one area where I'm not exaggerating is bass control and focus. The Standard beat the Tri-Vista by a wide margin in this area, and with that upper hand came superior rhythm and pacing and thus greater musical excitement.”

Mike went on to conclude his preference for the Krell as follows:

“The Musical Fidelity is a wonderfully conceived and executed product, and I bought it with enthusiasm. Some might prefer its grace and warmth, but, given my musical predilections, if I had to choose one SACD player, regardless of price, I'd go for the Krell.”

If opinions on MF tend to be polarized, apparently I am not alone with my reservations. Being a conservative person, my predilection is that it will do more service by highlighting potential issues. The MF components that crossed my path did seem to have the tonality and PRaT issues, but I have not heard every MF components there is and certainly not your MF A3.24. Some MF components I heard did have much less of the issues, namely the Nuvista CDP, and certainly the classic A1 amp and CDP. I am not surprised that your MF A3.24 belongs to this elite group.

My V-DAC may arrive any moment now, gathering from the reviews MF may well done it right this time and I have high hopes.

If everyone preferred the same sound, there would be a lot fewer vendors.

The reviewer acknowledged his bias based on his particular taste, which is all anyone can do. No product is for everyone (thank God).

I think one problem is that Musical Fidelity has the reputation of having some great products and also having some that do not hit the mark very well. They seem to experiment more than many and sometimes they miss. Makes it hard to generalize about their sound. And sometimes their sound is just not for everyone. I am very interested in greeni's report on the V-DAC. If he likes it it is probably really worth a look. As much as I think USB is not the right direction for passing audio, it seems like it will be with us for a while. I am also interested in HDMI output from PCs, as they seem to be coming more common. Apogee has a HMDI to S/PDIF converter box which may be an option. Have not seem much about that approach but it is worth watching. I may get one of the Apogee boxes just to try it.

So any user experience with the V-DAC yet?