First impressions of new MH-DA006, Musetec flagship

@yakbob 

I feel ASR's approach is not useful.

From the Musetec website on the 006:

The design of all functions of the DA006 only takes up one-fifth of the entire design period, or even less. A lot of time is spent on the selection of components and the design of the circuit form. The criterion for judging yes or no is based on the actual listening experience, and the test data of the instrument is only used as a reference. An easily verifiable fact is that when we use different capacitors or resistors with the same paper parameters in the circuit and perform comparison tests through an audio analyzer, we cannot see the difference in test results due to the change of these parts, but the change in the listening experience is huge. Therefore, we always believe that some of the data that can be analyzed by the existing audio analyzers can only quantify certain characteristics of the sound signal to a small extent, and the human listening experience is very complex. The limited data that the instrument pays attention to cannot determine the human listening experience. We must spend a lot of time carefully selecting parts. This is also the reason why it takes us a lot of time to make this DAC.

I must modify my conclusion on tonal balance. I changed streamers to the ifi Zen Streamer. The lower mid- range and upper bass are back to being warm and rich. The highs are still more forward than the 005. It seems, as stated by @sns that the dac will clearly reveal the sound of each component in your system. My conclusions must be seen subject the sound of my components (and yours if you buy it).

@dbb 

One can almost see Bernstein dancing his way through the second movement tango.  The 1964 Columbia recording is remarkable.  My go-to version, since its release, has been the one by Kirill Petrenko with his former orchestra.  

@yakbob 

You don't have to wait for the ASR review.  I'll give you the result right now.  The latest DAC reviewed by ASR is a $99 Topping.  It scores very high at ASR because it is designed to do exactly that.  And of course, as a consequence, it gets ASR's highest purchase recommendation.  You can be sure that ASR's Topping measurements will outscore both the 005 and the 006 DACs each of which will score about the same as the other and the 006 will not be recommended by ASR.  The ASR reviewer does not report ever listening to the Topping, nor the 005 for that matter.  And it would make no difference anyway as he does not hear very well.

As I wrote elewhere: The designer of the 005 and 006 has written that he designs by ear and not by measurement.  He says designing for measurement is relatively easy for a professional engineer.  At various stages he says he made changes to the 005 that could improve measurements but reversed them if the sound quality, as he heard it, was not as good.  If that makes people very uncomfortable, they should probably look elsewhere for a DAC.  Over the course of this audio hobby, and some of us have been into it for a long time, that approach to design used to be lauded.  The designer has given an example in the lack of any feedback in his analog stage.  A lack of feedback is often advertised, and is generally understood to yield better sound quality but poorer measurements.  Op amp chips with feedback are thought to yield a kind of clean but sterile sound, well recognized in all too many DACs on the market.   In other areas of audio, decisions are often made in favor of devices with better sound and poorer measurements than alternatives.  That would include tubes and analog sound generally.

I'm curious about how this dac would measure vs. 005, certain Musetec aware of ASR thread. Would they care about measurements with this dac knowing some make purchases solely on specs, others require both high measured performance and sound quality. Is it possible 005 would have even higher sound quality with better bench performance?

The way I read Musetec's take on 006 measurements is when their speaking to the reasons for choosing certain parts, specifically they mention the Duelund caps. So yes, the Duelund caps will measure essentially exact to any other cap, this would not affect bench performance. Point is I don't see how changing out parts that all measure the same would affect bench measurements. Circuit design has far more to do with measured performance than the parts used, the boutique parts used in 005 should not have impinged it's bench performance.

I think we can all assess sound quality as the most important criteria by which to judge equipment, good bench performance is generally consistent with proper design. I do hope the 006 measures better than 005, I'd expect it does with the information and visuals provided. I suspect some of the changes made from the 005 were made with measured performance in mind, but then they leave things somewhat in air by repeating they tune by ear, not by performance.

@sns

It was said many years ago about audio that if your measuremens don’t correlate with what you hear, you’re measureing the wrong things. As far as I understand ASR has never presented any studies that correlate their measurements with sound quality. Given their overall philosphy, that would probably be impossible as it would call for the addition of what they would no doubt call "subjectivity" to their arsenal.*

As for any proposed correlation between certain "industry standard" meaurements and sound quality, I can think of no better test of that proposition than what I will now propose as the "sns" test. In early 2021 and for some time thereafter you wrote of the audio quality of the 005. And IIUC you have it connected to an audio system of considerable sophistication. All of this was without benefit of the less than glowing ASR review. QED. There is no such correlation and/or the correlation is not particularly strong. In other words, if good sound is what we’re looking for, there is no particular reason to consult ASR.

Better, perhaps to consult sns. Or a well considered review of dbb. Or read of a good many other users who write of their systems, their experiences with other DACs and their musical tastes. Or look at the track record of the company which proposes a new DAC.

I interpret the advertising copy on the Musetec site that you quote to be almost the same as the communication to me at the time of the ASR 005 review. That is to say, the Musetec designer is a music lover and he designs by listening and that is that.

You can hope that the 006 will measure better than the 005, but if dbb is correct, what difference would that make? I, for one, hope that the designer continues to do exactly what he has been doing--turning out terrific components at prices well below that of competitive sounding units.

*Just for the record, in the day, HP denied that the reviews as then done in TAS were subjective.