Six DAC Comparison

@mitch2 - I’m also looking forward to your personal experiences with your listed DACS. I just upgraded my Merason DAC1 to the mkii version and am absolutely delighted with how it sounds in my system. That said, would love to hear your perspective on how it sounds in comparison to the others, especially the new LTA DAC. 
 

I have the LTA preamp and love it. 

Having just read this thread, it seems as if many comments are responding to the wrong thread.  

@mitch2  Thanks for spending the time and effort to provide your listening impressions.  I have a DAC3 that you are listening to and am interested to your impressions.  It is my oldest component and might be the next upgrade.  

If you have time will you post the tracks you are listening to as test tracks.  Hardware is great, however I am always looking for different songs.  

@mitch2 Out of curiosity what DAC's have you had in the past before the six DAC's you are comparing.  I know you have said you love the Mojo Audio and SMc DAC's. What other DAC's have they bested.  

Hi everyone.

This is Benjamin from Mojo Audio, the designer of the Mystique line of DACs.

I just wanted to give you a bit of a perspective on our DACs and I wanted to offer Mitch one of our new entry-level Mystique Y Fe DACs ($3,999) to add to the comparison. Our new Mystique Y is almost identical in circuit, power supply, component parts, and chassis to our award-winning Mystique X, but sells for about half the price. Certainly more in line with the cost of other DACs in his comparison.

First thing I wanted to say is that we don't use any "voicing" to make our DACs sound a certain way. Our main design criteria is harmonic coherency: if the harmonic structure of the notes align from the lowest lows to the highest highs then it simply has to be correct. This is what gives the music proper time, tune, texture, timbre, musical flow, emotional content, and all of those other adjectives music lovers are looking for.

The unique thing about all of our DACs is that we use LC choke input power supplies which are the largest, heaviest, least efficient, and most expensive power supply typology. The LC choke input power supply was developed by Western Electric and Bell Labs about 100 years ago, and unless the laws of physics have changed in the past 100 years, it is still the only power supply typology to provide instantaneous effortless power.

The capacitive power supplies used in most DACs don't store current the way a choke/capacitor power supply does resulting in the music being off time and tune and corrupting the harmonic structure. The more energy a note requires, such as a belting vocal or a booming bass note, the more off time and tune that note is from the rest of the music.

When people talk about how organic and natural our DACs sound what they are actually hearing is the coherent harmonic structure and harmonic alignment we get from our LC choke input power supplies.

Also don't be confused: those tiny high-frequency filter chokes that are about the size of a jellybean companies like LTA use to filter out HF noise from their switch-mode power supplies are nothing like the massive Lundahl chokes with exotic core materials we use in the linear power supplies in our DACs.

The shrimp and steak served off the steam tables in those all-you-can-eat restaurants are not the same shrimp and steak you get at a 5-star restaurant. 

Another thing I wanted to touch on are bench test specifications such as the ones done by Stereophile magazine. Those tests are not incorrect, but they are incomplete, and they are often inaudible. Stereophile has named our Mystique X SE a "B" class recommended component for the past two years. Our "B" rating was due to our bench test measurements not being up with many of their favorites like the Benchmark DACs.

Of course the "less than" specifications are all inaudible. For example, John Atkins criticized our Mystique X SE for only resolving 18-bits of resolution yet he has also stated that he's never measured any recording with more than 18-bits of resolution. And despite claiming 24-bits most good recordings actually have less than 10-bits of resolution. 

The important take away is that the Reviewer from Stereophile found that our DAC sounded better than anything he compared it to. How is that possible if the bench test measurements were audible?

My favorite analogy in regards to bench test measurements being incomplete is this: picture a sphere, a cylinder, and a cone. All could look identical when measured in two-dimensions but all look quite different when measured in three-dimensions.

In any event, I would like to invite all of you to take advantage of our 45-day no-risk audition and hear one of our DACs in your system. I can honestly say that I can count on one hand with fingers left over the number of DACs we get returned for refund in any given year.

And I can honestly say that literally half the reviewers or editors from the magazines who reviewed our DACs ended up purchasing the demo unit as their digital reference. I think that says it all. 

Hello Benjamin. I hope things are well. My comparison includes two of your best DACs but as you point out, the Mystique Y Fe would be a much closer competitor to the LTA Aero since they are basically the same price. Of the six DACs currently in this comparison, only the Benchmark costs less. The SMc would be the next higher priced but attaching a number to it is hard since it is not a regular offering and I know they put a lot of extra effort into it. It would be at least 50% more than the Aero and your Y Fe. The Merason is $8,500 and your other two DACs probably originally listed/retailed for north of $10K with the (unobtainable) Z-chips and the NC chokes. You have shared before that you believe the Y Fe punches well above its weight and provides much of the benefits of your other DACs at a much lower price.