Maybe it IS all in the DAC chips

I owned a lot of DACs in the past 10 years. Everything from DCS to my tech to blue Sound. It’s been a long expensive road. I had one made for me by SpaceX audio and it was awesome. I had that for four years and loved it. But it was time for a change I was intrigued by this new matrix audio rebranding of all their stuff. I picked up a ND – one and a TT one streamer. I first hooked it up the USB and then my buddy suggested to try the I2s Hook up. I was like how much difference can it make so I grabbed an old HDMI cable and we hooked it up it was like night and day. I still have the old HDMI cable in there while I shop for something a little better. It’s incredible the difference it makes.

@mahler123 

I haven’t read any reviews by satisfied Reavon owners.  Magnetar players get good reviews for SQ-they don’t “down convert” from DSD-but they get poor marks for reliability, as they tend to freeze up

As far as I know, Reavon is no more. 

Magnetar produces almost identical beasts to the Reavon UBR-X200 - the UDP800 and UDP900.  These all use the Mediatek System on a Chip (SOC) architecture and all have a 3mm steel plate on the bottom.  The Magnetars have the same dac complement as the Reavon - one multi-channel for unbalanced output, and one dual-channel for balanced output.  The UDP800 uses Burr Brown dacs while the more expensive UDP900 uses ESS dacs .

The Reavon has impeccable published reviews for sound quality, which makes me query whether the reviewers ever really listened to SACD playback.  The sound quality difference was so dramatic, I went to the dac specification sheets to try to discover why.  That’s when I discovered the Burr Brown specification sheets made no mention of DSD.  So I wrote to Reavon who confirmed what I suspected - DSD audio is down-converted to CD quality audio for analogue playback.  The advertising blurb says the machines play SACD which is true - they just do it without the analogue quality that I was used to.

Likewise, don’t expect Magnetar to tell you how they get analogue from DSD.  I’d be suspicious at least where they use Burr Brown dacs.  And don’t expect reviewers to pick up either - they are too busy raving about the video quality.

In my opinion, any of these machines will perform brilliantly as a transport using an external DAC fed via HDMI.  But so will a Sony UBP-X700 at about a tenth of the price.  The Sony does not have the build quality nor as good a remote.  There is no 3mm steel plate to give it heft 

I actually haven’t heard Magnetar or Reavon.  I read reviews in HiFi mags that didn’t tell me anything useful.  I am going by user reviews.  I came close once to buying a Magnetar so I had done a lot of reading.

  My understanding is that Magnetar was formed by the engineers that had designed the Oppo players.  The Magnetar GI looks identical to the Oppo UI.

  In my case the DSD is output over HDMI into my Bryston DAC3 (which uses an AKM DAC chip).  So the internal DAC is of secondary interest.

It is not in the chip, it is in subsequent analog filters that are necessary and are specific to each chip type. DAC output requires brickwall filter, Nyquist is only true for time unlimited signal.

@buellrider97 

no I haven’t considered it, very happy with my setup