Millennia Media imersiv D1

@willywonka have you considered the Accuphase DAC or an SACD player with USB input that can be used as a DAC with external streamer instead of D1?

Sounds like D1 is kind of a half baked product that was rushed to market. 

I was in conversation with someone on head-fi and he had both an MA3i and also the EMM top end DAC. He said the MA3i is about 80% of the EMM DAC.
 

@yyzsantabarbara 20% improvement is very substantial when comes to DACs especially when we’re talking these price categories. But…I’m always skeptical when someone starts assigning percentage to improvements in audio. If DV2i is really 20% better than the MA3i, considering it has a built in streamer and preamp, it’s a pretty good value if all you’ve running is digital. Actually the MA3i is an amazing value already. It replaced Aurender N200 in my system, without me ever looking back. 

@yyzsantabarbara According to my EMAIL's with John La Grou, he says he would like to see all of the D-1's eventually sent back. It appears they would cover shipping. Like I said I did contact Danny but no response. I even spoke with him at Axpona and he said a demo wouldn't be a problem. 

@audphile1 I'm not really interested in going that route. I already have a Holo Audio May DAC and am not looking for a minor lateral move in a DAC. I'm looking more for something that is significantly different and honestly that means I'm not looking for most DAC's. Also I don't play CD's so have no interest in a player. I was going to get a Accuphase preamp but honestly decided to wait and do a demo of the D-1 to see if I even needed one. I've  been down this route before with other previous systems years ago but honestly I'm open to try this since I have a 14 day home trial. Imersiv is only like an hour drive from where I live.

@audphile1 I was speaking with the designer of the D-1 in the January Colorado headphone meetup that I have mentioned a few times. He also went out to dinner with few of us. During the discussions I learned that the DAC was in development for a very long time. They had sent out a lot of units for beta testing to studio engineers and found some issues and implemented some new features from feedback, such as the 2nd Order Harmonic Distortion Filter (which I no longer use).

I would not call it half-baked given the development process I heard about. My unit is working fine, and I would not be surprised if my unit gets more hours per day than most other D-1’s.

If the lower cost Allnic ASRA DAC is like the top end model I will have to make a tough decision between it and the MA3i.

@willywonka Thanks for the feedback. I will be sending it back then. I will tell Danny that you were trying to contact him. I want to hear that Allnic DAC so I will drop by on Tuesday on my way to see the RUSH show.

If you go direct into your Accuphase then the D-1 will not be a minor DAC change. It will be a big change; the only question is whether you like the uber detailed sound.

Normally, I have been listening to the D-1 a bit of distance away on the office while the D-1 is in the Livingroom. However, this week I did the audiophile thing, and I am sitting right in front of my system listening for 8 hours a day. What I hear makes me 100% confident that this thing is special. The D-1 gets me every ounce of detail without fatigue. No other DAC I heard does that.

The Schiit Singular DAC has very good detail almost as much as the D-1 (but no DSD support). If that DAC had DSD support, I would not have sold it and be done with DACs. The Allnic D15000 Signature OTL/OCL also has almost the same amount of detail and it is tubes so you get more warmth. The MA3i is not as detailed and a bit smaller in soundstage, but I love the way that thing sounds.

I had discounted the Playback Designs MPD-8 after hearing it in Colorado. However, someone I have been conversing by with by email is demoing the Allnic ASRA, MA3i, D-1, and the MPD-8 and his feedback to me was 100% different about the MPD-8 than what I heard. So now I am curious on the MPD-8, not to buy but to hear again. It is $26k so above my budget.