New Audiolab DAC

[9VARZ]

Quote:

OK thanks for letting me know. I am officially out of ideas.....BTW, your setup invoked much drool from my salivary glands
 

I like how you've said that! Thanks for the compliment! I'll let the boys know too (since it's their system but they've allowed me to play around with it! XD)...

 

[Joe-Siow]

Listening to some Miles Davis now with the amp of M-DAC. It simply sounds sublime. Very good deep bass to complement the Sony EX-1000 while retaining the clarity and musicality of Flamenco Sketches that I am listening now. Very fine stuff indeed.

 

[slackman]

Hi 9VARZ,
 
Thank you for sharing your experiences with the M-DAC.
However, your review is quite extreme and I'm trying to make sense of it. (and I'm guessing I'm not the only one)
Hope you can clear up a few things.
 
 
Quote:

Spent nearly half a day with the MDAC (and a fortnight before that running it in).... So here are some of my pointers.
 
(Don't take this personally, owners! My review is not going to be pretty, if I'd say so myself!)
 
Fresh out of the box, I'd found that the MDAC actually sounded pleasant enough to live with (esp. when you plug your cans in to its onboard headphone amp). Quite smooth, mellow sounding, almost valve-like in nature with a reasonable amount of detail.
 
However, as time wore on and the unit continued to run in, I was taken aback at how it was starting to sound VERY much like it's 8200CDQ cousin, except only worse.
 
Everything was too loud, I got hard clipped on most of my tunes (both CD quality and high-rez stuff), the soundstage narrowed to silly levels and the bass was too overpowering to the point of clipping wildly (almost Big Bad Wolf levels of bad, if you know what I mean). Timbrally, a lot of notes and textures seemed to have lost a lot of detail and accuracy in the insane levels of distortion (I mean, really? boxy sounds on HEADPHONES??). Mind you, this was consistent regardless if I had used USB or SPDIF or even a reference quality CD player as a transport for my source files/material. In fact, it got a hell lot worse along the line; in THAT order.
 
And that was just the start. The troubles really came when you output those onto speakers. It was plain horrible! Again, everything was too loud, there's a definite harshness to the whole thing, timbres and soundstage were off and distortions all around. What in the world was What Hi-Fi thinking when they've written the bloody review for this thing?
 
It's just plain bad sounding, really. To the point of making a Fiio E7+E9 setup (for cans) look like a freaking bargain.
 
Oh btw, Audiolab being part of IAG is presumably Chinese by design and make (someone please correct me if I'm wrong). If it's possible at all, someone should properly ABX this against two of its other Chinese brethren just to see how it truly fares. Namely, the Matrix Mini-i and Audio GD NFB-10. I'll bet you any money that party is going to be a real treat!

I'm guessing this review is based on listening to the M-DAC in your house, not at the retailer.
The headphone used a Sennheiser HD-600, and unspecified speakers / amp / room?
 
The description you give of the distorted, too loud, U-shape frequency curve, bad sound seems to be spot on for a large part of todays hotly mastered music.
This is how much commercial music actually sounds like when reproduced correctly!
Can you confirm my above hunch about basing your review on mostly modern commercial music?
 
Also you mention the CDQ, and that the M-DAC sounds very similar but worse.
What is your experience with the CDQ and how did you come to the conclusion that it has a similarly bad sounding DAC?
It has been well reviewed elsewhere.
 
Btw, my praise for chosing the Optimal Spectrum filter. It is the only (theoretically) correct upsampling filter.
The other filters modify the sound and in doing so distort phase and frequency response (which hides flaws in recordings and may give a color some people prefer espcially in less than great setups)
 
 
 
 
Quote:

Quote:
 
 

Alright, boys! Sorry I took so long to get back to you guys. I work in a busy restaurant, and with Christmas around the corner................(you get the idea)
 
Anyway, on to the basis of my review:
 
I wasn't able to find any specific manufacturer supplied info except that I gather from my retailer that it's from the first shipment from IAG. I *could* supply a serial number, but I believe that might actually compromise its ability to sell here. Checked with the retailer, it's definitely a working unit as far as we know.
 
In a nutshell...
 
Filter: Optimal Spectrum
(settled on this after trying out all the rest, never really liked them - I kept feeling that a little something was missing from the sound, can't point out what, though. Probably the mids or punch.)
 
Transport: Various laptops (PC and mac) with either iTunes with PureMusic (for mac), JRMC 15/16 or XMplay (latest) - WASAPI for PC enabled; over all possible outputs including SPDIF optical, coax and USB (USB sounds best). Sugden Masterclass PDT-4F CDP over coax. Naim UnitiServe over coax (with BNC to coax converter)
 
Cables (where applicable): Chord Chorus 2 RCA (analog), Chord Chameleon+ XLR (analog), Chord Signature Digital (coax), Optichord (optical 3.5 to TOSLINK version), Chord Rumour (non-biwire, speaker)
 
Headphones: Sennheiser HD800 (stock), Denon D5000 (stock), Sennheiser HD600 (re-cabled with GAC-4/1, terminated with Cardas and FP-704 plugs)
 
Speakers: PMC Fact 8, ProAc Studio 115
 
Amp: Sugden Masterclass IA-4 over balanced and SE
 
Tunes: "The Last Resort" album by Trentemøller, "True Stereo" album by Naim Audio, McIntosh Audiophile Test Reference, "Days Dark Exit" album by Felix Laband (+ various others for fooling around with)
 
Room size: 5m (W) x 7m (D) x 5m (H); speakers placed 2.4m apart; listening point is an approximate equilateral triangle relative to speakers (sitting by the DAC for headphones), arbitrary toe-in (by eye), carpeted wooden floor
 
(not including sundries at this point, irrelevant at time of review)
 
 
 

 
Very interesting, cos that's what pretty much I initially found also, listening to the unit when it was fresh. I think you'll find that it has quite a lot of detail too (compared to most other products).
 
But try again after a week, please! Cos that seems to be the tipping point for me, where it started sounding closer and closer to it's cousin (the 8200CDQ). Ideally, an ABX should be in order.

 
If I'm guessing correctly, this list of equipment is from the retailers listening room.
Am I right in assuming that you took your M-DAC to the retailer after about a week and after you thought it sounds bad and may be broken?
I'm assuming the retailer had a listen too and could tell it was not broken, and you listened to the music you listed above.
On the equipment and room you mention of your retailers, with the music you mention, I simply can't imagine the M-DAC (if it is functioning correctly), with the filter you mention, to have the distorted / clipping sound you describe.
Even if you only look at the specs it is simply technologically not possible to be so, the THD of the M-DAC is very low, and the jitter seems to be fairly low as well, the FIO setup you also mention has far far more distortion (when both devices are functioning properly).
 
So could it somehow be that your M-DAC is indeed broken, even though you and the retailer didn't pick this up when listening to it at the retailers?
Or is it due to less than ideal home listening and music choise and not ready for the harsh reality of modern hotly mastered commercial music?
The only other option would be that somehow Audiolab / John Westlake are lying about te specs and the many reviewers of the M-DAC up till now have cloth ears, and this simply doesn't seem very likely to me.
I'm not saying that the M-DAC is the worlds greatest DAC or anything like that, but it should be at least a good DAC for the price it seems to me.
 

 

[slackman]

Btw, the selectable filters are for the upsampler. Not the Sabre DAC in the M-DAC.
I've seen the 2 being confused a lot.
I'm guessing it's an asynchronous upsampler to 192Khz, but I can't find information about it anywhere.
Does anybody know more?

 

[9VARZ]

@slackman, interesting piece you have there. Hope this post would help you clear up some doubts as to the basis I have for my (unflattering) review of the M-DAC.
 
1. All of my listening has been done at the retailer's (which means both posts are 2 parts of the same session feedback). As I'm close friends with the proprietors, I can basically walk in and out of the shop at any (sensible) time without any fear or favour (really grateful for that!). I personally would have *loved* to arrange a home trial to get a little more acquainted with the M-DAC (as I would with most stuff before I actually decide to keep them). But I can't at the moment because taking the DAC home for a week would be absolutely detrimental to Christmas sales *and* pre-orders for the product in question. I'm counting on the next "silly season" when things are really quiet to try for one (though I'm really not sure at this point if I would really want to). So I'm restricted to listening at the shop's demo room for the time being.
 
2. As you may have already been aware, all of my reviews (when I write them) are completely subjective. I know that there are a whole gamut of objective measurements and tests available out there that I can use. But when I review a product, I would tend to gear my responses towards answering if this is a product I can really live with. So that's a bit of a caveat there for you. Going by my metric, I have yet to see how can I live with the M-DAC at the moment, and maybe it is indeed just me.
 
3. The tunes I've used to assess the M-DAC are (I believe) considered by today's metric to be "audiophile music" (hence the Trentemøller, Felix Laband and other "reference" albums. Contemporary/modern/pop stuff that I sometimes do listen for fun (but not for assessing gear) sometimes do get thrown into the mix when I'm just trying to "warm up" to the product in question, but that segment is almost always left out of the actual review (even though it *may* unwittingly shift my objectivity/bias on the product a little; based on first impressions).
 
4. About the M-DAC vs the CDQ/"similar but worse" part: The M-DAC's outputs, compared to the CDQ, tend to be particularly loud for some reason. I had compared these against the other equipment in that list and found that for the most part, I also had to turn the volume down quite a bit just to get them roughly level. And then there's the question about the CDQ against other spinners and converters and preamps. I've also tried other DACs and gears and spinners just to assess its capabilities (without going into all the superlatives again) and it just sounded "wrong" and on top of that, music from the Audiolab just doesn't want you to keep going on exploring the system's capabilities with your tunes. At low levels, the sound is only boring at best. Turn it up, and it loses the plot completely. Unlike in a really good system, where your brain just sort of stops "assessing" the sound (regardless what level you play your tunes at) and starts to actually go back to the soul of music, which is what I'm looking for here.
 
5. The question about the distortion I hear and its correlation to whether the unit is actually broken truly remains a mystery to date. Perhaps until someone from IAG or Audiolab themselves come down here to help assess the unit personally, I would find it very hard pressed to give anyone a true answer. That's because the unit in question is the only one available for sale *and* public demo at the moment until the supply block is lifted in early 2012. So, without a second unit to assess the first one by, I can't really give an answer, except to relay on any opinions about the thing. In which case, both the retailer and myself think that nothing is wrong with that particular unit at the moment. :X
 
6. It was only very recently (after the above lot was published) that it has come to my attention about the relationship Audiolab and John Westlake have. No offence to the man or to the various magazines/websites that have published gushing reviews of the M-DAC and the rest of Audiolab's line-up, but I tend to not follow such discussions (esp. when it comes to the design of such electronics or engineering products in general). Therefore, I personally do not let commercial reviews and any marketing hoo-ha (including "new media"/forum discussions) cloud my judgement in my own assessment of products (thereby hoping to stay as neutral as possible). However, I do take notice when reviews get really raving on any certain product so that I could jump on it just to see for myself what the hype is all about (blame it on that bloody "early adopter" disease that I have). This and your point about "good DAC for the price" brings me to point 7.
 
7. Given the functions and design of the M-DAC itself, I personally find that the pricing is actually way off. It is retailed at £600, which is way too high for what I feel is a product (esp. if one reads the very well and perhaps overly thorough manual) that is, IMHO, aimed squarely at beginners. To me, that is the kind of money seasoned audiophiles would be happy to spend on a second DAC (eg. for a cheap media streamer or bedroom HTPC setup), but not exactly suitable for the kind of demographic it seems to be aiming for (newbies using this as their first/main DAC). In fact, if it were to retail at half the current price it is offered at (keeping everything else equal), I would be one of the first to recommend the product to newcomers or people looking at getting their feet wet in high-fidelity listening! But at the current price point, it *is* a very big ask for anybody (given the current economic climate) to say the same.
 
Hope this really lengthy post has helped cleared up any doubts you might have. But as always, feel free to post any further doubts or queries and I would be happy to answer them!

 

[soberspine]

did you tried to reset the unit to default? maybe it is some software issue or some settings.

 

[9VARZ]

Quote:

did you tried to reset the unit to default? maybe it is some software issue or some settings.

Might be worth checking out! Although for the life of me, I don't know what's there to reset at the moment. I'll look into it at the next opportunity!

 

[soberspine]

restoring factory defaults from the manual: 1) switch the mdac off. 2) hold down the sel buttons press the power swtich.

 

[slackman]

Hi 9VARZ,
 
Thanks for your in depth reply!
 
With "too loud" I thought you meant subjectively too loud, not the actual output voltage, good you've cleared this up.
The CDQ has 2.05Vrms for RCA, 4.1Vrms for XLR outputs. The M-DAC has 2.2Vrms for RCA, 4.4Vrms for XLR, so you're right it's louder.
However these are quite normal values (and for instance the Lavry DA10 i've been using myself up till now has a much higher output) and I don't see how this would be a problem, a quality pre-amp should have no problem handling these voltages including the pre-amp in the Sugden amp you used with the speakers. (btw I don't know if it's possibly to bypass the pre-amp in the Sugden amp you used, but doing so and using the M-DAC as a digital pre-amp going direct to the power amp section should give you higher quality audio)
Even if there was somehow a problem with the Sugden amp you used, this would not have affected the headphone output with which you had similar sonic experiences so I'm going to assume the amp-speakers setups were performing properly.
 
You're in luck though to be able to audition equipment frequently in such a large room and with good honest speakers.
This makes your review more valuable to me than headphones only reviews.
I'm using K+H O300 speakers myself in a 70m2 room with 4 meter high ceiling, speakers and listening position properly set up free standing away from walls and acoustic treatment (room makes all the difference in listening to speakers, I'll never trust reviews made in small rooms no matter the speakers used).
A really well set up speaker system out performs any headphone system in several ways.
I've always been happy myself with my Lavry DA10 up till now, only recently got the O300 speakers (3 way system with great impulse behavior and linear phase all the way including deep bass due to no bass port, and especially good off axis reponse due to wave guides which avoids much off axis problems around the crossover frequencies that most other speakers have) and just now finally the big room.
Now in this new setup I can very clearly hear the deficiencies and errors of the DA10 so I'm looking for a new DAC.
I think I'm going to get the Anedio D1 when the new version comes out, but was wondering weather the M-DAC could get me close enough (it's almost the same design, just less perfectly executed) as I'm fairly broke now after the new speakers and room
With no way to audition the M-DAC myself right now, no Dutch shop has it, I have to look at the reviews before ordering one (don't want the hassle of then having to sell it again at a loss of money and time).
Your review made me wary enough to not order one right now Thanks for possibly saving me trouble!
I also got wary because of several other things. Too much popular nonsense hifi talk by the designer, caps and a transformer in the audio path, no good technical info in the manual, and too many reports of software and hardware errors and mini updates / upgrades / fixes of Audiolab equipment.
Also read that it's warmer / darker than a known well implemented Sabre DAC the Weiss DAC2.
So unless someone with a great speaker setup gives the M-DAC a great review and proper comparison with a known good Sabre DAC (Weiss DAC2, Anedio D1, Invicta), I'm going to pay the extra money and wait for the new D1.
 
Btw one last remark.
Boring sound at low volume is not necessarily a bad thing. At low volumes the ear is anything but linear frequency / volume wise and music can easily become somewhat small and unimpressive.
You need 80-90dB volume on average depending on the music and original loudness (pretty loud) before your hearing becomes linear. (this is called the Fletcher-Munson curve, or equal loudness curve)
When listening at the proper volume sound should be natural and realistic (if it is a natural recording of course, and if your goal is honest reproduction of what the 0's and 1's of digital music represent).
 
 
 
 
 

 

[khaos974]

Personally, I still think 9VARZ may have heard a defective unit.

 

[orkney]

^^^
 
Or he isn't a fan of the Audiolab sound signature. So be it. I'd rather scrape out my pinnae than live with a Benchmark. Folks is folks. Ears is ears. That's what meets and dealers are for.
 
o

 

[slackman]

Quote:

Personally, I still think 9VARZ may have heard a defective unit.

Mm this is starting to look less likely as the M-Dac sounded roughly the same as the CDQ to him (or her?)
And the retailer didn't think it was broken either.
Perhaps the review was a bit too strong with words in the description of distortion and clipping. (I am guilty of this at times myself too once I pinpoint certain subtle sonics, I could write a review that slaughters the DA10 in a similar way)
 

 

[khaos974]

Quote:

Quote:

Personally, I still think 9VARZ may have heard a defective unit.

Mm this is starting to look less likely as the M-Dac sounded roughly the same as the CDQ to him (or her?)
And the retailer didn't think it was broken either.
Perhaps the review was a bit too strong with words in the description of distortion and clipping. (I am guilty of this at times myself too once I pinpoint certain subtle sonics, I could write a review that slaughters the DA10 in a similar way)

The words are possibly too strong or ill chosen, I can't imagine John Westlake releasing a DAC that clips and distorts in normal working conditions.
 
 

 

[orkney]

Quote:

The words are possibly too strong or ill chosen, I can't imagine John Westlake releasing a DAC that clips and distorts in normal working conditions.
 
 

Or IAG releasing it. This is not some DIY effort, or even a boutique manufacturer with a dream, Westlake and company are working for one of the world's largest audio design and manufacturing groups. Can they sign off on a lousy or divisive product? Sure. Supervise the release of one that is defective in some basic and ridiculously easy-to-fix parameters, i.e., an output stage that produces audible clipping and distortion? Highly unlikely. Anyway, isn't it time to move on? Any other thoughts or queries?
 
o

 

[Blurpapa]

Quote:

I think I'm going to get the Anedio D1 when the new version comes out,

They are really taking quite a long time to get a revision out to the market aren't they? So frustrating.