After five days with my M-DAC I thought that I would share my views. I didn't listen to it for the first two days but left it running to 'bed in' so to speak. It replaces a two year old DACMagic, and wow, what an amazing difference! The sound is more solid, dynamic and almost organic. It sounds a little like the Linn LP12 that I have just renovated. Jean Michel Jarre Equinoxe 5 and 6 bounce along with more power and detail then I've heard before. Classical music has bags of detail and strings sound very real. This is a game shifter as far as I am concerned. It's so good that I'm starting questioning some of my Hi Res files as Red Book CDs stored as Apple Looseless files and played via a Squeezebox Touch are amazing. Before this I never thought that normal CDs could sound this good. Well done Audiolab.
You need to give the person who inputs the tech specs a big kick.
It has headphone outputs 0
And yet in the picture I can see a huge jack socket with what looks like a headphone icon above it.
That's not the only issue i've found, come on, sort it out.
and (b) Your web page is glitchy as hell, some of the things search and order by do are just bizzare !
Many music sources (e.g. universal DVD/Blu-ray players) now only deliver full high-res digital audio streams (e.g. LPCM/DSD) over HDMI (down-sampling the protected audio to 16/44.1 KHz or 16/48 KHz for coax/optical). Sending down-sampled audio to an up-sampling DAC seems fairly pointless!
It amazes me that there are no music biased stereo AV amps out there, surely there must be enough single men who live in small apartments or men with a demanding partner to make them a viable product?
Got this DAC last Friday and within a couple of hours the Powe Switch had broken ! Did someone say that this Audiolab had a good quality build ?? Very, very disappointed !
Comments
After five days with my M-DAC I thought that I would share my views. I didn't listen to it for the first two days but left it running to 'bed in' so to speak. It replaces a two year old DACMagic, and wow, what an amazing difference! The sound is more solid, dynamic and almost organic. It sounds a little like the Linn LP12 that I have just renovated. Jean Michel Jarre Equinoxe 5 and 6 bounce along with more power and detail then I've heard before. Classical music has bags of detail and strings sound very real. This is a game shifter as far as I am concerned. It's so good that I'm starting questioning some of my Hi Res files as Red Book CDs stored as Apple Looseless files and played via a Squeezebox Touch are amazing. Before this I never thought that normal CDs could sound this good. Well done Audiolab.
Come on What-hifi
You need to give the person who inputs the tech specs a big kick.
It has headphone outputs 0
And yet in the picture I can see a huge jack socket with what looks like a headphone icon above it.
That's not the only issue i've found, come on, sort it out.
and (b) Your web page is glitchy as hell, some of the things search and order by do are just bizzare !
A glitch in the database, now fixed.
Looks nice, but....
Many music sources (e.g. universal DVD/Blu-ray players) now only deliver full high-res digital audio streams (e.g. LPCM/DSD) over HDMI (down-sampling the protected audio to 16/44.1 KHz or 16/48 KHz for coax/optical). Sending down-sampled audio to an up-sampling DAC seems fairly pointless!
It amazes me that there are no music biased stereo AV amps out there, surely there must be enough single men who live in small apartments or men with a demanding partner to make them a viable product?
Got this DAC last Friday and within a couple of hours the Powe Switch had broken ! Did someone say that this Audiolab had a good quality build ?? Very, very disappointed !
Is this a new What HiFi award winner category? Prototypes? By the way this prototype sounds VERY good!
Is this a new What HiFi award winner category? Prototypes? By the way this prototype sounds VERY good!
Not sure what you're trying to say, Marc. The M-Dac isn't a prototype - it's a full production model on sale now...
What this short review didn't point out was that the M-DAC has a great headphone amplifier on board, so it should suit your HD600 really well.
has it ??? yeah but my graham slee is VERY good ... cant see it beatign it tbh
does it sound better than rega Dac ?
domenn- you'll find that our when we name our favourite DACs in this year's Awards issue, out on Friday
would this be overkill for my senn hd600 / graham slee srg 11 ? pc use ... ive got 96/24 music