[bifcake]

Has anyone sampled the new MF A324 DAC and compared it to the better offerings by Krell and Levinson? I'd be curious to hear if anyone has done a side by side comparison and what their impressions are. Stereophile reviewed the MF dac and stated that it's competitive with more expensive DACs and I'm very curious to see if that's true.

 

[jodokast]

MSB Link III models and the A.R.T. DI/O?

Or am I getting upsampling and multi-sampling confused again?

 

[bifcake]

Quote:

Originally posted by jodokast MSB Link III models and the A.R.T. DI/O? Or am I getting upsampling and multi-sampling confused again?

I have no idea what you just said.

 

[DanG]

The Link III and ART DI/O don't seem to be anywhere in the same league in terms of digital technology (the actual conversion and also internal re-clocking) or standard analogue sections including power supply and output. I believe that the A3^24 uses a choke-regulated power supply as in the Nuvista CD player (Sam Tellig of Stereophile counts this as a benefit over the A3.2 CD player) and I've heard from members of Audio Asylum that the new MF DAC works very well even with poorer transports -- one said that using his Sony jukebox changer as transport the sound was nearly as good as using his expensive Vecteur D2 as transport (the Vecteur, he claims, works better as transport than the Levinson 37). The DI/O is notorious for poor construction, a lack of jitter reduction, and a hot output. It seems that to become a truly competitive component, most users need to modify it and add an outboard power supply.

So the question remains... does the A3^24 outperform higher-priced DACs?

 

[bifcake]

I wonder how it would stack up against Krell or Levinson DACs. I heard various MF offerings and I think they sound REALLY good. However, I've never heard them side by side with the more expensive Class A equipment. I wonder if anyone's done those comparisons and what the results are.