Millennia Media imersiv D1

Based on the post I made above I wanted to try the F5 filter.This filter seemed like a nice sounding filter a bit rounder in sound compared to the default F0 filter I have always used. I tried this for 2 days and over 20 hours (I work a lot). I was getting some ear fatigue on the first day. Maybe I was tired. Today, after a nice sleep back at it. First with my Yamaha NS5000 speakers. A little fatiguing, maybe I am listening to too much music. I moved to my office and on the Magnepan Mini same thing with the F5 filter. Now I am worried my ears a getting way too much music.

I remembered that I had changed the filter, so I switched it back to F0 using the remote. Boom, an immediate lessening of the pressure on my ears. Now back to music nirvana. Never too much music.

@yyzsantabarbara a friend told me about this DAC. Interesting engineering technique to use two DACS and combine. For sure can achieve very low noise and high dynamic range. The filter options remind me of HQ Player. Have you picked one overall setting or do you prefer a range?

@dpac996 I do not think it is 2 DACs it is 2 signal paths that are combined. The analogy the company uses is digital photography were dark and bright sections of say a night photo is sometimes done by taking multiple shots optimized for both dark and bright areas. These photos are then combined to produce a clear image where the bright are not too bright and the dark is cleanly visible. 

They plan on using this technique for various other studio instruments such as microphones and other things I have no clue about. The technique is called HDR-A and the D-1 uses something they call multi-path.

Last night I ended up working till 4AM and I was listening to my RAAL SR1a and the Schiit Mjolnir v3 amp until 2:30AM. This was after I had complained about the fatigue in my ear in the post above and then changed the top-level filter to F0 (default). No issues even so late at night and I was laughing at how good this was. I would have been more productive if I had turned the music off.

Yesterday, I also sold my $7000 MRSP RAAL VM-1a tube headphone amp. It was the very best way to listen to the RAAL SR1a earphones. My friend Danny sold me this amp 2x in the past and he was involved in the design. However, my used $800 Schiit Mjolnir v3 amp and the D-1 via XLR was as good and I dare I say maybe better than the VM-1a. Just crazy how good this DAC is and how much stuff I have sold because of it. 

I have sold $14.1k worth of gear in the last 3 weeks and have huge improvements in sound in 3 systems. I have another $5k of gear to be sold. I look at this $12k cost of the D-1 as free money.

With regards to filters I will be staying with the F0 filter that is similar to many DACs that have these 5 filters. However, on every other DAC I could not hear these filters. On the D-1 I physically felt 2 of the filters. I only tested 2.

The other filter is the 2nd Order Harmonic Distortion filter. This filter is different from the F0-F5 ones. The HD filters are easy to hear. On my Yamaha NS5000 system I do not use a filter. On the Magnepan Mini I was using setting B at level 2, but I will eventually remove it as the hours increase on the DAC. On my RAAL SR1a, a bright phone, I use level 4.

I need to talk to the designer about these filters to understand the sonic signature of each. There are 50 permutations, and I have no time to experiment with all of them. I will meet the designer in person in 2-weeks at the Denver headphone meetup.

Does it come across in my posts how much I LOVE LOVE this DAC. it is easily the best piece of audio gear I have ever had in my system. Not the most expensive but the best by several orders of magnitude.

@yyzsantabarbara congrats on the moves! It’s nice when a consolidation yields some cash 💰 and there is a performance benefit! 

@yyzsantabarbara It sounds like this is the best DAC you have had.  Can you tell me what other DAC's you have had before?  Are you listening with only headphones and have you connected it to speakers?  What are you using to stream with?