Member Reviews: Musical Fidelity V-DAC II Upsampling Digital-to-Analog Converter with Asynchronous USB Input

1. Introduction Let me get straight to the point of why I'm writing my first and possibly only review of an item in the world of amps and dacs. This does not dissapoint in any way at all. That's unique.   In all the 20 amps or/and dacs there always is a bug somewhere. It's either a physical fault like it overheats, looses connection, comes with badly built ports, dodgy over-sensitive volume pot, humming noises, made using cheap exterior materials and so on. Or it sounds and performs on a level of anything between abysmal to (thank god!) quite good.    Not the musical fidelity vdacII. And it's this lack of problem areas that makes this review easy and short. ...

I recently took delivery of the V-DAC II and put it through the paces.  I have a good feeling for its sound and wanted to share them here.   First, a word about how I review gear.  I don't spend weeks going back and forth doing A/B comparisons.  Rather, I use a certain set of gear for quite some time and really get to know how it works.  I know how my favorite songs sound inside and out.  Then, I put a new component into the chain and listen to my favorite songs.  I'll immediately form an opinion of the changes.  I'll listen for a while to the new configuration and further develop that opinion.  Finally, I do some brief A/B comparisons...