Dominique Poupart has spent a quarter of a century at Simaudio, the parent company of hi-fi brand Moon Audio. He is now the product director, the person responsible for dictating the products the brand makes – including the newly launched Moon 371 streaming amplifier and the high-end Moon 681 streamer of its flagship North Collection.
In a recent visit to Moon's HQ in Canada, I had the chance to sit down with him to dig deeper into his background and to understand more clearly what drives the Moon brand forward.
WHF: How did you start in hi-fi?
DP: Typically, if you give a kid a sheet of paper and a pen, they'll start to draw a house or their mum or dad, right? I would draw a loudspeaker. From just a few years old, I was absolutely fascinated by speakers and the way they emit music. I thought it was the most wonderful thing in the world.
My interest continued as I grew up. When I went to university, I studied electrical engineering, though I was also offered a place on the industrial design course.
During my studies, I got a summer job working at Classé, and also wrote equipment reviews for hi-fi magazines, which allowed me to gain experience with a lot of audio products.
The contacts I made while working at the magazines ultimately led to me doing my final year project with Sim Audio. I’ve been here ever since, first as an R&D engineer, then as the time leader and now, the product director.
What does a product director do?
At Moon, it's a combination of marketing and engineering at the same time. In other companies, this job can be more focused on one of those aspects or the other. My job is to guide what the engineering team works on and develops. So I define the product line, each and every product in it, and what characteristics it will have, from price to the type of performance.
What differentiates a Moon product from its competitors?
That’s a large question. I believe we are passionate in our product development, and although we strive to make components that will sell and attract people, we are still audiophiles in our heart and in our mind, which is why performance is so important.
We are also a 'real' manufacturer, where most parts are made in our factory. We do everything in-house, from machining the aluminium casework to populating the circuit boards, not just the final assembly.
There are plenty of brands out there that use external companies to make their products. They are mainly a design house, and they receive the box from the external supplier, and this is what they ship. There's nothing wrong with that – it's just not our way of doing things.
What do you aim for when doing the final tuning of a product?
Transparency. That's the number one thing. When you sit down and close your eyes, the system needs to disappear and let the music be. And, if you want to look for specific characteristics, they all relate to transparency, in the sense that if the unit is totally transparent, you will still have the ideal dynamic range, space with depth and detail, musicality as well.
I want to have clarity, but not at the expense of losing the natural sound.
Given the push towards greater efficiency and lower power consumption in home electronics generally, do you see Moon products using Class D amplification any time soon?
Yes, it's possible. But for sure, not right now. We have the MDCA (Moon Distortion Cancelling Amplifier) technology with which fully satisfies our goal of sonic reproduction and also the MHP (Moon Hybrid Power) power supply that combines elements of both traditional linear and switching designs, and is way more modern than traditional linear designs.
But if we get to the point where we master Class D to sound better than what we have now, then I could change my mind.
Unlike most of your rivals, you don’t offer users a choice of digital filter options with your streamers and DACs. Why is that?
We don’t do that, because people will always fiddle with it, wondering what's the best filter for their taste, instead of listening to music. We prefer to make the selection ourselves because we have to make thousands of decisions when we develop a product, and this should be one of them. If we make that selection, we can optimise everything around it.
What was the biggest challenge in designing the new 371 streaming amplifier?
In this case, it was the MHP power supply. This is the first product in the Moon amplifier to have such a power supply. While we have used a version of MHP for sources and preamp products in the past, the challenge here is different because it has to cope with widely different power demands and needs to remain stable.
The idea of MHP is to get the best of linear and switch-mode power supply designs. It's actually a combination of the two. The early stages are switch mode, so the benefits are that it is not sensitive to the AC mains or to noise in the line. Those are big, big advantages.
And then the second part that makes it a hybrid is the linear voltage regulation that follows. Doing things this way might be a little less efficient [than a pure Class D design], but it gives better results because the DC output [to the audio circuitry] is clean with no switching artefacts.
What are some of your favourite test tracks?
One of the tracks I have used the most in the past few years would be Rise from Dominique Fils-Aimé. I've met her, she did the pre-launch of her album here. It's a very nice recording and has been played so many times.
What kind of products do you think Moon will be making in the 2050s?
30 years? That's a big leap forward. I don't know if we can really imagine what will happen in 30 years, given the rate of technology is evolving right now, with AI and all kinds of things, it's really hard to imagine.
I hope Moon will still be making audio products that will amaze people with sound quality. And, I guess by then, products will be made way smaller, way more discreet. So my desire would be that we still make products that people develop some attachment to, rather than just a tiny thing that you put there in the corner and ignore.
MORE:
Read our first impressions of the new Moon 371 streaming amplifier
Check out our guide to the best hi-fi systems and best music streamers
11 of the best music documentaries and live concerts to stream now
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