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Musical Fidelity A3 24 What R My Ears Telling Me?

I think that I have finally lost my mind from tweaking! I was very excited about this product when I bought it. I thought that it made a tremendous differnce with the players I was using (an Adcom & Pioneer). The Soundstage was enhanced, the music jumped from the speakers. This was indeed the Holy Grail of Upsampling DACS. The problem started when I bought a new player...the new Sony DVP-NS999ES. Now I can have SACD and pristine Redbook SACD like quality CD's through the MF DAC! The first problem is that when the Sony is turned on with the DAC on. a pop comes through the speakers which causes the DAC to downsample to nearly Real Audio quality! This is remidied by turning the DAC off, then on. The "downsampling" happens every so often when the draw is opend and closed. I thought it might be the interconnet, so I swapped out a Audio Quest for a Tara Lab and it continued to happen. OK, so I could probably live with this since the vendors from both retailers I bought these items from have never heard of this happening. I went to the MF website but there is no email address for support or questions. OK, I can live with this. Now here is the tricky part. I decided to play some CD's through the player bypassing the DAC and for Gods sake...they sound better without upsampling! The bass extension is better, the music has more "oomph" and clarity (how can that be??) and the sound is warmer. Can the DAC's be better in the Sony than the MF? Did I trick myself into believing that the MF worked to begin with? Have I completly tweaked myself out of my mind and ears? I have done countless A-B comparisons during the past 2-3 weeks and I must be honest, the CD's sound much better without the MF DAC. Any comments and opinions would be apprecitated.

-Joseph Benzola-
jbenzola

Showing 2 responses by socrates

socrates
247 posts
 
Joseph,

I have 2 guesses. 1, also that the unit may be defective, which was common with the first batch of these as mentioned, but no problems on newer units, at least according to my dealer. Second guess is that the Sony makes for a poor transport. I've paired my MF A3 24 dac with a handful of transports, and, for example, it sounded plain awful with my DVD player, mundane with a Pioneer elite cd player or Jolida JD100 as tranpsorts. When attached to a Theta dedicated transport its pure magic. There is no way the Sony 999 can touch it in redbook, even in sacd with the Sony I would probably still favor the MF on redbook for a more fleshed out presentation while still having exceptional openness, clarity, smoothness, presence, detail retrieveal and extension into the heavens, this on the hundreds of cd's I own, not just the 5 SACD would ever buy with what is out there currently. It really can be that good. Again, this dac is extremely transport dependent, what may have worked with other dacs won't for sure work with this one, at least in my experience with it. If garbage goes into the dac on more trash comes out, it is highly revealing and unforgiving.
socrates
247 posts
 
Just because it is an expensive box that plays multiple formats doesn't in any ways mean it makes for a good transport to drive an external dac, acutally the opposite is most likely, as the vast majority of DVD players make awful transports, what comes out of their digital output can be pretty ugly. Look inside a good dedicated transport and you'll be amazed at how different it is compared to your Sony, or most every sub $3k CD player on the market for that matter. If you're happy with the sound from the Sony, by all means, use it, but I wouldn't discard the MF dac so quickly, not before mating it with a quality dedicated transport. Another problem with good equiptment is its revealing nature. If other pieces in the chain have flaws, good sounding gear can be forgiving and it can go hidden, but great sounding gear can sound like crap in the wrong system, and the fault can be wrongly placed on the newly inserted piece of gear, whereas it is simply exposing a problem or shortcoming elsewhere. Just some food for thought, I've been down a similar path recently and am sure it is a common occurance with other systems as well....

And, again, "Downsampling" should never happen with this player, unless your unit is ill and needs servicing.
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