How good is MSB Discrete Dac?

Lot better things to do in Seoul than audition equipment.
Things you can't do in Seattle for sure.

I was born in Seoul and had lived there for 35 years( more than half of my life).


Seoul is such a big city that I had not visited part of it.

But I had been to most of the big sightseeing attractions in Seoul.

While in Seoul,the most joyful thing is to listen to high end components that I am interested in.

Seoul is five times better than Seattle regarding accessibility to high end.

Thomas

thyname try the Bricasti M21 I think it will change your mind.

I have not heard the MSB discrete DAC. But wait, i do have a point.... :-)
I have a 15 year old MSB Gold Full Nelson. I also got the pinouts for the power supply, and built my own, external, franken - supplies (totally independent analog and digital back to the wall plug (well, fuse), and both passive filtered and discrete custom regulated to a silly degree.
With upsampling enabled, driven by   Macbook Pro from FLAC/ALAC and bitperfect (bitperfect is very, very good, alas itunes is very, very bad), the gold full nelso link DAC (Base price like $500 in the day) is astonishing for an old, relatively cheap device. very un-digital (non fatiguing, warm, easy to listen to), and yet dynamic, detailed and extended frequencies like digital should be. And this is through a very revealing system.
If Mark could do THAT with zero resources, 15 years ago, what can he do with $10k today? A lot i would assume.
So i’d bet its a great product.
G

I auditioned MSB Discrete, Premier and Lampiziator Pacific on 23rd May in Seoul, Korea.

The source was simple Ron Nucleus with Octave Tube pre and Viola Monoblocks.

I also added just one more power supply to MSB Discrete, Premier as suggested by other member.


I started with Discrete first.

It sounds balanced with good details which belies its price tag of 11,500$ with one more power supply.

I played two vocals(one classical and one Jazz) one classical concertos and one New Age.

After switching to Premier, the sound changed drastic with more refined sound and tone color.

The difference of sound between Discrete and Premier is not minor.

After listening to Premier, I can not go back to Discrete.


MSB discrete sounds just slightly better than my 10 years old EMMLab Dac2 (New price 9K$) .

No consideration for upgrade at all.


After switching to Pacific, the sound had more body, timber and bass slam.

Pacific cost 25K$ in USA so It may be fair to compare it with Premier with improved clock.

Unfortunately they did not have upgraded clock.

But the difference of sound between Pacific and Premier is not so drastic as those between Premier and Discrete.

I say Premier is better than Discrete by 40% but Pacific is better than Premier by 15%.

With power bass block or upgraded clock, Premier may match the sound of Pacific.


I try to limit my budget to 20K$.

Thus I had hoped that the difference between Premier and Discrete shall be minor.so that I can be happy with Discrete.

But I will not consider Discrete at all after this audition.


On 26th, I will audition Trinity Dac and Aqua Formula XHd with SGM Extreme server.

Let us see what happens.

Thomas