[Silky]

I just got my MD10 yesterday and after about 8 hours of burn in using warble tones, and I must say I am quite impressed. The unit is fairly small, but has substanital weight to it. Nice connectors on the back. I used the built-in headphone amp driving my K-501's and even at 120-ohms, they drove them quite well. (Althought for serious listening, I would recommend a dedicated HP amp for HighZ phones) the first thing I noticed listening was the midrange. Very smooth and natural, but not overly warm sounding. The S/N is incredible. I was listening to an Alison Krauss CD from 2000, and I have never heard such detail. Even with my Presonus CS or Pro Tools HD converters. The sheer absence of noise allowed me to hear reverb tails, and song fadeouts like I've never heard them before. Like most good D/A's, it doesn't hit you over the head right away, but over a short time you notice layers of "film" that are gone. The soundstage was wide, but not as deep like with Mytek's or Apogee's converters. But for $270, IMHO it's a steal.

I'll let you know how it sounds after several days of burn in time.

 

[Alucard]

I'm glad you like it. =)


Btw I found this at Vic Trola's blog (he works at pacific valve) http://victrolax.blogspot.com/2007/0...-of-chips.html
He found the imaging and midrage of the MD10 to be good, but it's a bit lean in the bass he says. (fixed with bigger caps?)

EDIT: Crap I posted the link in the wrong md10 thread, not that it matters so much though.

 

[chengzhe]

 

[happybob]

i've following this thread for a while and recently also purchased the musiland md-10 from ifiaudio. i'm not really a head-fi person, so most of my listening is through my totem mite speakers + nad stereo receiver setup connected to my computer.

i agree with most of you that the build quality of musiland md-10 dac seems quite decent. the only exception is the optical cable that came in the box. it is extremely cheaply made. when i first plugged it into the toslink (torx) jack on the back of musiland dac, the connector pin of the optical cable came off and was stuck inside the jack!!! i had to use a plyer to gently pull the pin connector out and plug it back into the cable. nothing was damaged, but i also wasn't expecting the connector pin of the optical cable to come off on the first use. oh well, i've packed that optical cable back in the box and used my own "better" optical cable instead.

regarding the sound, it's definitely an improvement over the low-fi built-in sound chip on my motherboard. you hear a much fuller sound with much weightier bass. for those of you connecting this dac to a computer, which connection are you using, usb or optical? i'm currently using the usb connection, but spent a little time last night comparing the sound quality through both the usb and the optical out from the sound chip. i find the sound through usb much fuller with better bass, but i find the sound though optical out to have slightly better resolution? maybe it's because the bass wasn't as weighty as through usb, the leaner sound gave the impression of higher resolution. which one do you guys prefer? usb or optical?

one question though. i'm listening to mostly high quality aac/mp4 files, obviously not as good as lossless files, but still better than mp3. i use itune as my player. i noticed that on the dac display, when i'm using optical connection, all pcm streams are at 48 khz. on the other hand, when i'm using usb connection, the display is showing only 44.1 khz. maybe this is why i thought the optical out had slightly higher resolution than the usb? i experimented with this a little bit. i tried using microsoft media player to play back the files instead, and noticed that some files are playing back at 48 khz through usb, while others are playing back at 44.1 khz. upon further investigation, i think the play back sampling rate through usb is based upon how the files were encoded. ones encoded at 48 khz will play back at 48 khz through usb, while ones encoded at 44.1 khz will only play back at 44.1 khz through usb. however, when playing through optical out, everything is played back at 48 khz regardless of how the file was encoded. also when using itunes, everything is played back at 44.1 khz through usb, and 48 khz through optical. anyone more experienced at this want to explain how all this work? how can i get everything to play back at 48 khz through usb?

thanks.

 

[cclragnarok]

Quote:

Originally Posted by happybob /img/forum/go_quote.gif how can i get everything to play back at 48 khz through usb? thanks.

In general, you'd rather have the files NOT upsampled to 48khz.

 

[hugz]

your sound card (which holds the optical) probably upsamples everything to 48khz

I wouldn't be concerned about getting the usb to run always at 48khz; rather I would be concerned with trying to get the optical to run at 44.1 when the song is at 44.1.

In my opinion it is bad to upsample from 44.1 to 48khz because 48k is not a multiple of 44.1 and thus something needs to get fudged in the translation

What program are you using to play your music? Most likely it can upsample everything to 48khz if you really want, but I personally would not do this. Keep the sample rate at it's natural rate in my opinion!

To stop the optical from upsampling you'd have to try look in the sound card configuration, but I wouldn't be surprised if it's impossible

 

[Sean H]

Glad to see other people enjoying their MD10! Just to follow up with what hugz is saying, your soundcard obviously is outputting at 48khz which isn't ideal for the reasons hugz states. One thing with USB and why it isn't outputting at 48khz is it can't: USB only supports 16/44khz. I'd use the USB if I were you. Typically optical does sound like it has a bit more of a tilt to the highs and perceptably higher in detail up top but I always found it lacks something in naturalness and fullness though the spectrum which it sounds like you are hearing as well. I'd stick to USB.

 

[happybob]

wow, those are some quick replies. thanks guys for your help. i'll be sticking to my usb connection i guess. going to let it continue to burn in. do you guys just leave your dac on all the time? the manual advises against turning the dac on and off all the time, but i'm always worried that the lcd screen on the dac will burn out more quickly if i leave it on all the time.

any of you using the cheap optical cable that came in the box? how do you find it? cheap?

 

[myelin]

My MD10 arrived this morning safely.
It is surprisingly small and heavy, this is my first impression.
I connected it by USB, it displays 44KHz PCM,
Is it possible to change it to 48KHz? Is 48KHz better than 44KHz?
I am using a laptop, is it possible to get optical outup through laptop?
Is optical better than USB?
thanks

 

[chris_ah1]

Quote:

Originally Posted by myelin /img/forum/go_quote.gif My MD10 arrived this morning safely. It is surprisingly small and heavy, this is my first impression. I connected it by USB, it displays 44KHz PCM, Is it possible to change it to 48KHz? Is 48KHz better than 44KHz? I am using a laptop, is it possible to get optical outup through laptop? Is optical better than USB? thanks

Apparently people find USB slightly better although a touch quieter so perhaps it depends how you are amping the headphone out (or not) and what headphones you will use. My old Dell laptops had spdif, but I think very few laptops have optical out. You can get a USB to optical like the m-audio transit, but in all honesty USB is far simpler.

TBH digital should be digitial whatever input

As for 48Khz - no, 44.1Khz is perfect since you probably don't have any 48Khz music - I know I don't as cds are 44.1. You don't want to be upsampling or is it oversamping or whatever it's called lol - it's all about this 'bit perfect ness' I think

 

[xenithon]

I'd be surprised if USB sounds better as it does not support true ASIO out.

 

[chris_ah1]

Quote:

Originally Posted by xenithon /img/forum/go_quote.gif I'd be surprised if USB sounds better as it does not support true ASIO out.

what about using kernel streaming in foobar instead of asio?

 

[ShadowVlican]

Quote:

Originally Posted by xenithon /img/forum/go_quote.gif I'd be surprised if USB sounds better as it does not support true ASIO out.

in that case i'm sure KS would work since people HAVE been reporting 44.1KHz through USB

KS would provide identical albeit with slightly higher latency (not a problem for music LISTENERS)

 

[Alucard]

Quote:

Originally Posted by ShadowVlican /img/forum/go_quote.gif in that case i'm sure KS would work since people HAVE been reporting 44.1KHz through USB KS would provide identical albeit with slightly higher latency (not a problem for music LISTENERS)

I think I've read that KS doesn't work with usb soundcards. (usb-dacs?)
But as it already seems to output 44.1kHz using the usb, is there any point going with asio or ks then, as 44.1kHz is what you're trying to achieve by using them?

 

[hugz]

Quote:

Originally Posted by xenithon /img/forum/go_quote.gif I'd be surprised if USB sounds better as it does not support true ASIO out.

Can someone please explain to me the difference between true ASIO and not true asio (eg asio4all)

I posted in another thread (i think) something along the lines of "if fauxasio isn't bit perfect then what's the point of it?" and I ask that question once again. If these non-true ASIOs aren't bit perfect then why were they developed? If they are bit perfect then surely they'd be comparable with proper ASIO