@fuzzbutt17 Many Thanks!…sounds good and that’s exactly the information I was pursuing. Exciting times at Mojo Audio.
Six DAC Comparison
I am in the middle of comparing the sound of six different DACs in my system. I own them all (I know weird) but one of them is still within a trial/return timeframe.
Not to share specific comparisons today, but a couple of observations so far are that first, they all definitely sound different from each other. On one hand, they all sound pretty good and play what is fed to them without significant flaws but on the other hand there are definite sonic differences that make it easy to understand how a person might like the sound of some of them while not liking others.
Second, raises the observation that most of them must be doing something to shape the sound in the manner the designer intended since one of the DACs, a Benchmark DAC3 HGA, was described by John Atkinson of Stereophile as providing "state-of-the-art measured performance." In the review, JA closed the measurements section by writing, "All I can say is "Wow!" I have also owned the Tambaqui (not in my current comparison), which also measured well ("The Mola Mola Tambaqui offers state-of-the-digital-art measured performance." - JA). The Benchmark reminds me sonically of the Tambaqui, both of which are excellent sounding DACs.
My point is that if the Benchmark is providing "state-of-the-art measured performance," then one could reasonably presume that the other five DACs, which sound different from the Benchmark, do not share similar ’state-of-the-art" measurements and are doing something to subtly or not so subtly alter the sound. Whether a person likes what they hear is a different issue.
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I was able to hear the Mystique in the Volti Audio room this past year in April while spending a few days at AXPONA and even after listening to several other dac's at the show (that cost many multiples of what the Mystique does) I still came away favorably impressed by the naturalness and richness of the Mystique :) I am still very much pleased with my X-24AM dac, being driven by my Jay's Audio dedicated cd transport. Benjamin knows what he is doing with these dac's! I'm looking forward to being able to meet him at this coming year's show! Best wishes, Don |
Do we know for sure if the Mystique Z will have basically the same enclosure to the Mystique X series? I love the sound I get out of mine, though I'm not a big fan of the looks. My prior DACs were dCS, Aqua, and Weiss, all of them looked much nicer than the Mojo even though it beats them all in sound quality. I'll stick with it because of that but wish its looks better matched its beautiful presentation. |
@ benstelz LOL! I have to agree with you that our DACs are an ugly black box. Of course we could do what most companies do and have fancy looking chassis that cost more than the parts inside of them. We considered a fancy machined billet aluminum chassis. The only problem was that we would have to charge almost DOUBLE for our DACs and they wouldn't sound as good. Those ugly black chassis of ours are actually high-tech. The narrow/deep orientation puts the noisy power supply in the front and the sensitive signal path in the rear. That baked on polymerized powder coated finish is more anti-resonant than anodizing. And we use an Alodine undercoating that not only makes it even more durable the Alodine is resistant to EMI...anodized aluminum can't have an Alodine undercoat. All the hardware in our chassis is non-magnetic stainless steel. The inside of the chassis are dampened for mechanical resonance with a combination of Sorbothane sheeting and a material that was developed by the US Navy to soundproof submarines. Even the white lettering on the rear panel is considerably more durable because it is laser etched into the black polymer instead of being screen printed on the surface like most companies do. So we could double the price of our DACs and give them fancy looking chassis and fancy looking packaging. But they won't sound as good and won't be as durable. As for our Mystique Z it looks like a lower profile Mystqiue X (only 3" vs 4" high). We did switch to a thicker darker black glossy polymerized finish that is even more durable and even more anti-resonant. But here's the best news... Today we're shipping the first of our Mystique Zs! After we ship out all of our backorders Tim Mitchell (mitch2 who started this thread) is getting one of the first demo units. So in about a week Tim might be posting his first impressions of our Mystique Z. Currently our lead time is about 2 weeks from payment to shipment. |
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