Very brief report after ~1000 hours - apologies for the sketchiness and the random order.
1. It needs to break in. Oh, does it need to be broken in. On the other hand, it seems to play fine from cold once broken in. Go figure.
2. A huge improvement in pretty much all respects over my old LFD DAC-3. Particularly in terms of imaging: there is more space around each instrument/voice, and ambience is captured extremely well. The sense of micro- and macro-dynamics is exceptional.
3. I agree with the previous poster who said it’s slightly warm - but I would say it’s more in terms of letting you relax with the music if you so wish, rather than any obvious tonality colour. Perhaps ’smooth’ is a better adjective. If you want to be mercilessly clinical, it will allow you to be - it just doesn’t ask you to be at all times.
4. No "graininess" whatsoever, even though the frequency response is quite extended (I can still hear 16 kHz quite clearly, but perhaps someone with better HF ear response may have a different opinion). That was one of the things that bothered me with the Chord Hugo and Dave I tested prior to purchasing the Musetec: the sound of the Chords was ’gritty’ and almost ’dirty’ on some records. The Musetec (and my old LFD) are much more fluid and ’musical’.
5. I can’t hear any difference between the 5 filter modes. Maybe it’s the music, maybe it’s the rest of the system, maybe it’s nearly 60-year old ears. Or maybe it’s Maybelline.
6. Similarly, I can’t hear any obvious degradation in sound quality with the volume control (which is a welcome gadget for me, considering the room layout and the fact that there is no remote on the pre volume), but then again I tend to vary attenuation from 0 to -18 dB once per CD to get the average SPL I want, and leave it there, rather than using it as a full-blown volume control. A mute function would have been nice, as adjustment is quite slow if you need to decrease volume a lot (e.g. someone wants to talk to you, while you are listening to Mahler).
7. The thing is built like a spaceship; a tank is a fragile tin-foil toy in comparison. If you like industrial design, it’s probably a lot prettier than a tank, but it’s not a sophisticated design aesthetically speaking. Finish is excellent; I quite like the internal blue light - but don’t understand its purpose!
8. Cannot comment on DSD and USB/I2S as my dinosaurian system is CD-only 44.1/16 x 2 via S/PDIF
9. No idea where the prices have gone in this tariffed world of today. For the £/€/$ 3000-4000 I paid, it is a relative bargain. Not cheap, but worth every penny.