First impressions of new MH-DA006, Musetec flagship
I have received the 006 almost a week ago and have been breaking it in. The price at Shenzhenaudio is $3,900.00 USD, $600 more than the 005. The ad copy states:
"DA006 is a new generation of flagship DAC developed by Musetec over three years and launched in 2024. During this period, it has undergone more than ten revisions and adjustments.
Compared to the previous DA005, the listening experience of DA006 has been improved in all aspects. DA006 has clearer and richer details, a stronger sense of texture, a more stable sound base, better detail control, a wider soundstage, fuller and more powerful, smoother and more natural. . ."
Some brief listening during break in has been very very positive. I will report back when it has run at least 300 hours.
In its early days as a premier producer of great LPs, Reference Recordings used to record that ambience and fill the space between the tracks with it. So you hear no dead silence there. |
My Subaru is made in Japan and can be repaired in the US. Subaru America is the importer and I bought from a Subaru deler. That is how most foreign products work when purchased in the US. Hegel is like that, but But Musetec products are not. The difference between Musetec and Hegel is that Hegel has an American company that does its distribution here. It is Hegel America Inc, in Fairfield Iowa. It’s a wholesaler. It imports the goods. It sells to dozens of dealers all over the country. Its American distributer/wholesaler and its dealers each tack on a profit to the price of the component. So like my Subaru, one can expect repairs to be made domestically. That’s what you’re paying for. But when you buy a Musetec you are the importer of the goods directly from China either from the factory or from an "order-taker" like Schenzhen (which takes a relatively small mark-up). There is no profit increase as taken by American distributers and American dealers. Normally people, like those participating here, are willing to do that when they sense that they are getting a great deal more value for their money than by going the usual distributer-dealer profits mark-up route. As ever, your money your choice. I don’t know enough about Jay’s transport and how they do business and there is too little info on the ’net right now to figure it out. |
I also happen to own a Suburu so your example is very apt. I bought my Jay’s transport direct from Alvin Chee in Singapore. Repair work is provided by TEK Audio Specialties in Buda Texas. In fact, my remote needed repair and Todd at TEK fixed for me. I was grateful I didn’t have to ship it to Singapore but no doubt there are those for whom this is not a concern. Each to his/her own.
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I'm unaware of any repair needed to a Musetec dac, at least to 005, may have seen issues with 004, but then that was major platform for diy mods and some bricked them.
@dbb I recall your comparison to Holo. One thing that's critical to evaluating R2R dacs that many don't account for is clocking. R2R resistor arrays extremely sensitive to timing errors. USB generally not going to be optimal input, I2S the way to go as clock runs on separate leg. And then in order to reach max potential clock clocking should generally be done in streamer or renderer. The Harmony is the hot dac of the moment (reason I chose it) and I've seen reviews from both complete novices and seasoned reviewers, I've yet to see what I'd consider to be optimal setup in these reviews. I'll eventually purchase either Musician Phoenix or Denafrips Gaia DDC, run this with Audioquest Diamond HDMI (level playing field with my usb cable of choice) and set Harmony to lock to clock in these high end converters. Harmony has been both dismissed and claimed to be state of art or near state of art by various reviewers. Based on these reviews can't say if this all hype or ignorance, I'll try to place it in context by optimizing the entire setup. Going in I don't expect a $2700 R2R dac to be state of art or even near state of art. the amount of technology in this dac is nice value, not state of art.
Going into comparison, I admit bias for Sabre chip dacs, I fully expect even 005 to exceed Harmony in resolving/transparency, 006 even higher expectation. My take on R2R going in is nice sense of musicality, but boring in long run, perhaps even short run. R2R dacs nice forgiving sources that hide warts, Sabre dacs expose warts elsewhere in system, high resolving sources require system fine tuning. This why some claim Sabre chip dacs not musical.
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