I purchased an MSB Platinum DAC early in the first decade of this century when I had the income to do it. Because I prefer single ended triode amplifiers using AM radio station transmitter tubes so I don't have to use highly sensitive speakers I bought their first upgrade, two R2R ladders with more precise resistors in them rather than all four for balanced output. I had them put in an up-sampler to 384 kHz but I find the new downloads at 24/96 onto a computer storage USB plugged into the back of a Bluesound Vault 2i makes a more noticeable image focus without the up-sampling. I had a buffer that reloads the bits and puts them out with almost all jitter eliminated. I have not heard other high priced DACs and mine was expensive after all the upgrades. The years passed and I did not know how good it can sound till I had some 24/96 recordings I play in their native rate.
All of you are correct about the prices of what they sell skyrocketing to something only a television evangelist could afford. As income declined for most people and prices went up I could never afford anything like that again. Eventually I could not even afford parts to build my own tube amps and preamps, the last thing I did was to upgrade the series wired electrolytic filter capacitors in the 1000 Volt power supply with polypropylene capacitors good for 2200 Volts because electrolytic capacitors have a limited life expectancy and more DC resistance than polypropylene and this is where the MSB difference became more conspicuous. Recently the frequency display counter went out on my MSB Platinum and to the credit of MSB, they repair such a model which has not been made in so many years.
