Ferbose
Headphoneus Supremus
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Disclaimer: The designer of Marvalve Model 2 DAC, Dalun Yuan, is a friend of mine. As a frequent poster on head-fi, I am writing this review from the perspective of an ordinary home user. I borrowed Marvalve DAC for comparison against my Benchmark DAC2 HCG. The Marvalve is obviously much better, and I paid the normal price to keep it in my system.
Currently, Marvalve DAC2 comes in two colors--silver and black. The asking price is around $4500 in Taiwan.
Meet the Benchmark
As far as I know, Benchmark Audio started as a small company serving broadcast professionals. Then they launched DAC1 (~$1000) in 2002, which became an instant hit in both the professional and audiophile markets. Discussing its success 10 years later, an article from Tape-Op stated: “the original Benchmark DAC1 has been used to master many Grammy-winning and chart-topping records.” Indeed, DAC1 was originally targeting professional studios, delivering arguably the best measured specifications on the market. But it also unexpectedly garnered many positive responses from internet audiophiles and audiophile magazines, earning an “Editor’s Choice” from Stereophile and a “Reviewer’s Choice” from Soundstage. Fast-forward to 2012, Benchmark DAC2 HCG ($2000) inherited DAC1’s small-box form factor, but had upgrades in the DAC chip, analog output section, pre-amp gain control, and headphone driver circuit. Again, DAC2 HCG offered some of the best measured specifications on the market, and gained popularity in both professional studios and audiophile systems. Stereophile magazine gave DAC2 an A+ rating, and The Absolute Sound made it an Editor’s Choice. DAC1 and DAC2 were so successful that they literally set new price/performance benchmarks (no pun intended) to which many new DACs are being compared.
I have long been a satisfied owner of DAC1 and later acquired DAC2 HCG. The law of diminishing return is quite steep here—I got only subtle improvements despite the expensive upgrade. So I was really not looking for another DAC upgrade, expecting little room left for improvement. However, auditioning the Marvalve Model Two DAC ($4000) proved me wrong. Its improvement over Benchmark DAC2 is by no means subtle. If upgrading from Benchmark’s DAC1 to DAC2 is a 5-point improvement on the scale of 100 points, upgrading from DAC2 to Marvalve Model 2 is more like a 15-point improvement. Although Marvalve Model 2 is by no means inexpensive, the law of diminishing return does not apply her—what I actually sense is a big jump. But how can this happen when we think digital audio playback has already reached its maturity with the latest 32-bit DAC chips and efficient jitter reduction circuits? The answer lies in drastically innovative analog circuit design.
Meet the Designer
The founder of Marvalve Audio, Dalun Yuan, is quite famous in Taiwan’s hi-fi circles. As an undergrad student majoring in electrical engineering at Taiwan’s #1 university, he was already well known for designing tube audio circuits and writing hi-fi reviews. Later he received a master degree from The University of Texas at Austin in electrical engineering, and worked for a semiconductor company in Silicon Valley for six years, designing digital chips. Then he decided to re-embrace hi-fi and joined NuForce as the chief technology officer. At NuForce he created award-winning products such as Reference 9 and Reference 18 amplifiers, proving his engineering prowess with both digital and analog circuits, combined with ingenuity and great ears. Finally, he started his own boutique audio brand called Marvalve in Taiwan, to gain complete freedom and to design everything from scratch. Dalun has already delivered two uniquely creative products. Marvalve Model One is a world-class headphone amplifier with several unconventional features, such as low-voltage EL84 operation and two ten-turn volume pots. The Model Two is even more radical: a DAC without any transistor or feedback in the signal path, with Nixie tube displays to show off its analog soul.
Under the hood
As an audio designer, Dalun is always guided by his ears. After listening to a wide selection of DAC chips on the market, he chose the Analog Device AD1955 simply for its sound quality. Cost and popularity was of no concern to him, and none of the popular ESS converter chips met his sonic standards. He then auditioned a wide selection of hi-end opamps, only to be disappointed by all of them. By the way, he listens mostly to vinyls for personal enjoyment, and he simply could not find a DAC/opamp combination that sounded analog enough for him. So what’s next? He decided to bypass all transistors and build an I/V conversion circuit from scratch, using tubes and transformers. However, no commercially available transformer met his circuit requirements either, so he decided to design an audio transformer from scratch. Again, he started by listening to different types of core materials. Instead of the usual silicon steel, he found some amorphous iron cores from the former USSR to produce the most satisfying sound. A small batch of transformers was hand-built in Taiwan to meet his unique specs. Custom transformer design guided by the ear is always a painful process, and it took many iterations to produce a transformer that he liked. The pain of R&D is, however, irrelevant for the listener, and the sonic refinement speaks for itself.
The tube amplification circuit in Model Two uses no global feedback, incorporating a pair of 6DJ8/6922/ECC88. 6DJ8 is a very popular hi-fi tube, with an ample supply of vintage European, American, or Russian tubes to choose from. The stock tubes that come with Model Two are American JAN-Philips NOS 6922.
The Model Two DAC accepts three types of digital inputs: optical, coaxial, and USB. It supports 192/24 PCM as well as 1-bit DSD stream (over USB). One of the handy features to have when handling different digital formats is to show the sampling rate, and this is accomplished with three flashy Nixie tubes. Dalun even chose Nixies with a decimal point so that 44.1 kHz can be properly displayed.
The test system
Music server: Cocktail X12 ($800, digital output)
DAC:
(1) Marvalve Model Two ($4000, 2x Amperex Bugle Boy ECC88)
(2) Benchmark DAC2 HCG ($2000)
Amplifier: SAC Thailand Minute EL34 amplifier ($900), with 2x Russian 6N5P (rare gold grid military version) and 2x Bendix 6827. The amps is 6W single-ended, driving both speakers and headphones
Speakers: John Blue JB3F (single-driver full-range speaker, $700 per pair)
Subwoofer: Usher SW-210 ($600)
Headphone: AKG K1000 (single-driver full-range headphone, $1200)
The sound
As a current owner of four DAC devices, here is how I would rank them on a 100-point scale:
Presonus Central Station (2006, $500): 68
Benchmark DAC1 (2004, $1000): 75
Benchmark DAC2 HCG (2015, $2000): 80
Marvalve Model Two (2017, $4000): 95
Benchmark DAC2 has often been called a giant killer, matching the performance of digital gears several times its price. The amazing thing is not that Marvalve can outclass the less expensive DAC2, but that the improvement is so noticeable in so many ways. Going from the prosumer-level Central Station to the professional-level DAC1 is an obvious improvement, but going from DAC1 to DAC2 a bit less so. This is the law of diminishing return that we are familiar with. But wait, what’s going on with Marvalve Model Two? For pianos, there is smoother treble, greater clarity, and more palpable ambiance on the Marvalve than Benchmark DAC2. For orchestral music, the sound is fuller and more three-dimensional on the Marvalve. The extra budget invested into Marvalve does not just produce a diminishing return, but a major leap.
Personally, I love to test the tonal purity of audio gears using top-notch violin recordings. One of my academic side-projects is to chase after the secrets of Stradivari violins through scientific research, and our latest scientific paper about Stradivari’s acoustic properties has been reported by The Guardian and The Times. Hence, the ability to accurately reproduce violin timbre is something that I look for in my hi-fi system. In my opinion, one of the most interesting violin recordings ever made is “What about this, Mr. Paganini” (Tacet 036). In this album, the same Bach solo passage was played by Saschko Gawriloff on 7 exceptional violins, ordered according to my preference:
Tier 1 (best): Antonio Stradivari (1683)
Tier 2: Pietro Guarneri of Venice (17??)
Tier 3: J. B. Vuillaume (1870), Guadagnini (1771), Nicolo Amati (1640)
Tier 4: Hovarth (1992), Andrea Guarneri (1671)
Critical listening to this album is conducted with AKG K1000, arguably the best headphone in the world for accurate tonal reproduction with acoustic recordings. With Marvalve, I can hear incredibly complex overtones on the Stradivari violin, a trait that other violins simply cannot match. Moving to Benchmark DAC2, however, Stradivari’s tonal complexity and the silvery edges are partially lost. Listening to a Strad on DAC2 is similar to listening to a Vuilluame or a Guadagnini on the Marvalve. Marvalve’s transparent top end and silvery smoothness are simply marvelous, faithfully conveying the brilliance and woodiness of the beloved Strad. Guadagnini was the finest copyist of Stradivari in the second half of the 18th century and Vuilluame was the finest copyist of Stradivari in the 19th century, but neither could reach the stratospheric height of Stradivari. If Marvalve represents the real thing, then Benchmark DAC2 is a very fine copy--but only a copy, nevertheless.
The Purist Approach
Benchmark DAC2 is already a world-class DAC and represents cutting digital technology, but Marvalve simply belongs to a higher echelon of audio products, reserved for the purists. The difference is anything but subtle—as obvious as the difference between a fine Stradivari and a fine copy by Vuilluame. Having the Marvalve in my system means that the audio signal does not pass through any transistor after it leaves the decoding chip, only vintage tubes and custom-made transformers. There is no crossover distortion such as class A/B amplification or speaker crossovers, since my JB3F speaker and AKG K1000 headphone are both single-driver designs. Accurate audio production these days is all about splitting the signal into multiple components and recombining them: class A/B amplification, op-amps, and three-way speakers. Even some headphones now come with multiple drivers, and the use of switching amplifiers and switching power supplies are also gaining popularity. Perhaps resolution and analytical accuracy can be achieved by this divide-and-conquer approach, but how about the holistic, natural feeling of music itself? Old-school single-ended tubes and single-driver playback have their apparent technical limitations, but I have come to love their organic and holistic tone.
When I asked Dalun Yuan why his new DAC can produce such lush and airy sound, he said it is probably because he did no use high-gain amplification circuits which need to be suppressed again via negative feedback. Marvalve Model Two has no global feedback and rather high output voltage, even higher than Benchmark DAC2 at the highest volume setting. It would be very easy to pair a passive preamp with the Marvalve. However, Dalun also commented that many audio designers brag about no-feedback circuits, but to pursue the ultimate transparency and liveliness is much more complicated than that. In the end, it all comes down to the ear. The audio designer has to fine tune every parameter in circuit design according to his own ears.
The Verdict
If my trusted workhorse, Benchmark DAC2, represents cutting-edge digital music playback, then Marvalve Model Two simply represents the audio truth behind those bits. The truth is that our 44/16 CD recordings have a lot more air, more ambiance, more three-dimensionality, more smoothness, more silvery detail than I previously thought. The high-frequency range on the Marvalve is always crystal clear and incredibly smooth. The hidden information in digital recordings, even those poorly recorded ones from the 1980s, is brought back to life by vintage tubes and custom transformers. I don’t know what kind of black magic this is, but I certainly don’t mind digging deeper into those bits. In my conversation with Dalun, he said that there is no test equipment that can really track the dynamic voltage and current changes in a real audio system. The test equipment replies on a lot of feedback to analyze simulated steady-state signals, but the dynamic intermodulation distortions are impossible to keep track of. As impressive as DAC2’s measurements look, I now know there is still something missing. For me, the Marvalve DAC represents the audio truth. Digital music is in fact warmer, smoother, fuller, lusher, more airy, and more spacious than we previously assumed. The beauty lays hidden under those bits, and Marvalve Model Two brings back the sleeping beauty. This knight in shiny armor even comes in a very small footprint and flashy Nixie tubes.
Epilogue: The Cure
For many years, audiophiles have complained about the coldness, analytical-ness, and the harshness/shrill of digital audio, calling it “digititis.” A lot of audiophiles still prefer vinyls, including Dalun himself. For a seasoned designer like Dalun, when he hears distortion, he immediately recognizes it. Nothing is perfect—he hears distortions in both digital music and vinyls, but he prefers the latter. When he set out to design a DAC, he certainly wanted to cure “digititis.” I think that goals has been met, not just because it easily beats a world-class DAC by a wide margin, but also due to the complete lack of “digital feeling.” The sound is just so transparent, so airy, and so lush. There have been many terrible digital recordings of great violin virtuosos recorded in 1980s. Digital audio gears and mastering facilities in that era simply did not reach audiophile standards. Surprisingly, Marvalve Model Two can cure these old recordings of “digititis” and bring back the fullness and the ambiance. I don’t know what black magic this is, but perhaps we were too quick to criticize digital audio. When Sony and Philips said that the 44.1/16 CD format stood for “perfect sound forever,” perhaps they were not so wrong after all. Marvalve Model Two can faithfully bring out what was truly recorded, restoring the glory to master performances from decades ago which had been contaminated by suboptimal digital technologies.
The need for the digital antidote goes beyond poor recordings. Even with Claudio Arrau’s Final Session volume 2 (Philips 434626), one of the finest piano recordings I have ever heard (both sonically and musically), Marvalve’s top-end clarity and smoothness can make the Benchmark DAC2 seem muddied and veiled, even though many mastering engineers consider the Benchmark to be highly resolving and trustworthy.
Conclusion
Although Marvalve is a very small boutique brand that no one has heard of, the radically innovative Model Two DAC is truly an audio marvel that borders on being a little bit of a miracle, in my humble opinion. If Benchmark DAC2 HCG is close to state-of-the-art in digital conversion, Marvalve Model Two DAC is the gateway to analog magic in a digital realm.
Currently, Marvalve DAC2 comes in two colors--silver and black. The asking price is around $4500 in Taiwan.
Meet the Benchmark
As far as I know, Benchmark Audio started as a small company serving broadcast professionals. Then they launched DAC1 (~$1000) in 2002, which became an instant hit in both the professional and audiophile markets. Discussing its success 10 years later, an article from Tape-Op stated: “the original Benchmark DAC1 has been used to master many Grammy-winning and chart-topping records.” Indeed, DAC1 was originally targeting professional studios, delivering arguably the best measured specifications on the market. But it also unexpectedly garnered many positive responses from internet audiophiles and audiophile magazines, earning an “Editor’s Choice” from Stereophile and a “Reviewer’s Choice” from Soundstage. Fast-forward to 2012, Benchmark DAC2 HCG ($2000) inherited DAC1’s small-box form factor, but had upgrades in the DAC chip, analog output section, pre-amp gain control, and headphone driver circuit. Again, DAC2 HCG offered some of the best measured specifications on the market, and gained popularity in both professional studios and audiophile systems. Stereophile magazine gave DAC2 an A+ rating, and The Absolute Sound made it an Editor’s Choice. DAC1 and DAC2 were so successful that they literally set new price/performance benchmarks (no pun intended) to which many new DACs are being compared.
I have long been a satisfied owner of DAC1 and later acquired DAC2 HCG. The law of diminishing return is quite steep here—I got only subtle improvements despite the expensive upgrade. So I was really not looking for another DAC upgrade, expecting little room left for improvement. However, auditioning the Marvalve Model Two DAC ($4000) proved me wrong. Its improvement over Benchmark DAC2 is by no means subtle. If upgrading from Benchmark’s DAC1 to DAC2 is a 5-point improvement on the scale of 100 points, upgrading from DAC2 to Marvalve Model 2 is more like a 15-point improvement. Although Marvalve Model 2 is by no means inexpensive, the law of diminishing return does not apply her—what I actually sense is a big jump. But how can this happen when we think digital audio playback has already reached its maturity with the latest 32-bit DAC chips and efficient jitter reduction circuits? The answer lies in drastically innovative analog circuit design.
Meet the Designer
The founder of Marvalve Audio, Dalun Yuan, is quite famous in Taiwan’s hi-fi circles. As an undergrad student majoring in electrical engineering at Taiwan’s #1 university, he was already well known for designing tube audio circuits and writing hi-fi reviews. Later he received a master degree from The University of Texas at Austin in electrical engineering, and worked for a semiconductor company in Silicon Valley for six years, designing digital chips. Then he decided to re-embrace hi-fi and joined NuForce as the chief technology officer. At NuForce he created award-winning products such as Reference 9 and Reference 18 amplifiers, proving his engineering prowess with both digital and analog circuits, combined with ingenuity and great ears. Finally, he started his own boutique audio brand called Marvalve in Taiwan, to gain complete freedom and to design everything from scratch. Dalun has already delivered two uniquely creative products. Marvalve Model One is a world-class headphone amplifier with several unconventional features, such as low-voltage EL84 operation and two ten-turn volume pots. The Model Two is even more radical: a DAC without any transistor or feedback in the signal path, with Nixie tube displays to show off its analog soul.
Under the hood
As an audio designer, Dalun is always guided by his ears. After listening to a wide selection of DAC chips on the market, he chose the Analog Device AD1955 simply for its sound quality. Cost and popularity was of no concern to him, and none of the popular ESS converter chips met his sonic standards. He then auditioned a wide selection of hi-end opamps, only to be disappointed by all of them. By the way, he listens mostly to vinyls for personal enjoyment, and he simply could not find a DAC/opamp combination that sounded analog enough for him. So what’s next? He decided to bypass all transistors and build an I/V conversion circuit from scratch, using tubes and transformers. However, no commercially available transformer met his circuit requirements either, so he decided to design an audio transformer from scratch. Again, he started by listening to different types of core materials. Instead of the usual silicon steel, he found some amorphous iron cores from the former USSR to produce the most satisfying sound. A small batch of transformers was hand-built in Taiwan to meet his unique specs. Custom transformer design guided by the ear is always a painful process, and it took many iterations to produce a transformer that he liked. The pain of R&D is, however, irrelevant for the listener, and the sonic refinement speaks for itself.
The tube amplification circuit in Model Two uses no global feedback, incorporating a pair of 6DJ8/6922/ECC88. 6DJ8 is a very popular hi-fi tube, with an ample supply of vintage European, American, or Russian tubes to choose from. The stock tubes that come with Model Two are American JAN-Philips NOS 6922.
The Model Two DAC accepts three types of digital inputs: optical, coaxial, and USB. It supports 192/24 PCM as well as 1-bit DSD stream (over USB). One of the handy features to have when handling different digital formats is to show the sampling rate, and this is accomplished with three flashy Nixie tubes. Dalun even chose Nixies with a decimal point so that 44.1 kHz can be properly displayed.
The test system
Music server: Cocktail X12 ($800, digital output)
DAC:
(1) Marvalve Model Two ($4000, 2x Amperex Bugle Boy ECC88)
(2) Benchmark DAC2 HCG ($2000)
Amplifier: SAC Thailand Minute EL34 amplifier ($900), with 2x Russian 6N5P (rare gold grid military version) and 2x Bendix 6827. The amps is 6W single-ended, driving both speakers and headphones
Speakers: John Blue JB3F (single-driver full-range speaker, $700 per pair)
Subwoofer: Usher SW-210 ($600)
Headphone: AKG K1000 (single-driver full-range headphone, $1200)
The sound
As a current owner of four DAC devices, here is how I would rank them on a 100-point scale:
Presonus Central Station (2006, $500): 68
Benchmark DAC1 (2004, $1000): 75
Benchmark DAC2 HCG (2015, $2000): 80
Marvalve Model Two (2017, $4000): 95
Benchmark DAC2 has often been called a giant killer, matching the performance of digital gears several times its price. The amazing thing is not that Marvalve can outclass the less expensive DAC2, but that the improvement is so noticeable in so many ways. Going from the prosumer-level Central Station to the professional-level DAC1 is an obvious improvement, but going from DAC1 to DAC2 a bit less so. This is the law of diminishing return that we are familiar with. But wait, what’s going on with Marvalve Model Two? For pianos, there is smoother treble, greater clarity, and more palpable ambiance on the Marvalve than Benchmark DAC2. For orchestral music, the sound is fuller and more three-dimensional on the Marvalve. The extra budget invested into Marvalve does not just produce a diminishing return, but a major leap.
Personally, I love to test the tonal purity of audio gears using top-notch violin recordings. One of my academic side-projects is to chase after the secrets of Stradivari violins through scientific research, and our latest scientific paper about Stradivari’s acoustic properties has been reported by The Guardian and The Times. Hence, the ability to accurately reproduce violin timbre is something that I look for in my hi-fi system. In my opinion, one of the most interesting violin recordings ever made is “What about this, Mr. Paganini” (Tacet 036). In this album, the same Bach solo passage was played by Saschko Gawriloff on 7 exceptional violins, ordered according to my preference:
Tier 1 (best): Antonio Stradivari (1683)
Tier 2: Pietro Guarneri of Venice (17??)
Tier 3: J. B. Vuillaume (1870), Guadagnini (1771), Nicolo Amati (1640)
Tier 4: Hovarth (1992), Andrea Guarneri (1671)
Critical listening to this album is conducted with AKG K1000, arguably the best headphone in the world for accurate tonal reproduction with acoustic recordings. With Marvalve, I can hear incredibly complex overtones on the Stradivari violin, a trait that other violins simply cannot match. Moving to Benchmark DAC2, however, Stradivari’s tonal complexity and the silvery edges are partially lost. Listening to a Strad on DAC2 is similar to listening to a Vuilluame or a Guadagnini on the Marvalve. Marvalve’s transparent top end and silvery smoothness are simply marvelous, faithfully conveying the brilliance and woodiness of the beloved Strad. Guadagnini was the finest copyist of Stradivari in the second half of the 18th century and Vuilluame was the finest copyist of Stradivari in the 19th century, but neither could reach the stratospheric height of Stradivari. If Marvalve represents the real thing, then Benchmark DAC2 is a very fine copy--but only a copy, nevertheless.
The Purist Approach
Benchmark DAC2 is already a world-class DAC and represents cutting digital technology, but Marvalve simply belongs to a higher echelon of audio products, reserved for the purists. The difference is anything but subtle—as obvious as the difference between a fine Stradivari and a fine copy by Vuilluame. Having the Marvalve in my system means that the audio signal does not pass through any transistor after it leaves the decoding chip, only vintage tubes and custom-made transformers. There is no crossover distortion such as class A/B amplification or speaker crossovers, since my JB3F speaker and AKG K1000 headphone are both single-driver designs. Accurate audio production these days is all about splitting the signal into multiple components and recombining them: class A/B amplification, op-amps, and three-way speakers. Even some headphones now come with multiple drivers, and the use of switching amplifiers and switching power supplies are also gaining popularity. Perhaps resolution and analytical accuracy can be achieved by this divide-and-conquer approach, but how about the holistic, natural feeling of music itself? Old-school single-ended tubes and single-driver playback have their apparent technical limitations, but I have come to love their organic and holistic tone.
When I asked Dalun Yuan why his new DAC can produce such lush and airy sound, he said it is probably because he did no use high-gain amplification circuits which need to be suppressed again via negative feedback. Marvalve Model Two has no global feedback and rather high output voltage, even higher than Benchmark DAC2 at the highest volume setting. It would be very easy to pair a passive preamp with the Marvalve. However, Dalun also commented that many audio designers brag about no-feedback circuits, but to pursue the ultimate transparency and liveliness is much more complicated than that. In the end, it all comes down to the ear. The audio designer has to fine tune every parameter in circuit design according to his own ears.
The Verdict
If my trusted workhorse, Benchmark DAC2, represents cutting-edge digital music playback, then Marvalve Model Two simply represents the audio truth behind those bits. The truth is that our 44/16 CD recordings have a lot more air, more ambiance, more three-dimensionality, more smoothness, more silvery detail than I previously thought. The high-frequency range on the Marvalve is always crystal clear and incredibly smooth. The hidden information in digital recordings, even those poorly recorded ones from the 1980s, is brought back to life by vintage tubes and custom transformers. I don’t know what kind of black magic this is, but I certainly don’t mind digging deeper into those bits. In my conversation with Dalun, he said that there is no test equipment that can really track the dynamic voltage and current changes in a real audio system. The test equipment replies on a lot of feedback to analyze simulated steady-state signals, but the dynamic intermodulation distortions are impossible to keep track of. As impressive as DAC2’s measurements look, I now know there is still something missing. For me, the Marvalve DAC represents the audio truth. Digital music is in fact warmer, smoother, fuller, lusher, more airy, and more spacious than we previously assumed. The beauty lays hidden under those bits, and Marvalve Model Two brings back the sleeping beauty. This knight in shiny armor even comes in a very small footprint and flashy Nixie tubes.
Epilogue: The Cure
For many years, audiophiles have complained about the coldness, analytical-ness, and the harshness/shrill of digital audio, calling it “digititis.” A lot of audiophiles still prefer vinyls, including Dalun himself. For a seasoned designer like Dalun, when he hears distortion, he immediately recognizes it. Nothing is perfect—he hears distortions in both digital music and vinyls, but he prefers the latter. When he set out to design a DAC, he certainly wanted to cure “digititis.” I think that goals has been met, not just because it easily beats a world-class DAC by a wide margin, but also due to the complete lack of “digital feeling.” The sound is just so transparent, so airy, and so lush. There have been many terrible digital recordings of great violin virtuosos recorded in 1980s. Digital audio gears and mastering facilities in that era simply did not reach audiophile standards. Surprisingly, Marvalve Model Two can cure these old recordings of “digititis” and bring back the fullness and the ambiance. I don’t know what black magic this is, but perhaps we were too quick to criticize digital audio. When Sony and Philips said that the 44.1/16 CD format stood for “perfect sound forever,” perhaps they were not so wrong after all. Marvalve Model Two can faithfully bring out what was truly recorded, restoring the glory to master performances from decades ago which had been contaminated by suboptimal digital technologies.
The need for the digital antidote goes beyond poor recordings. Even with Claudio Arrau’s Final Session volume 2 (Philips 434626), one of the finest piano recordings I have ever heard (both sonically and musically), Marvalve’s top-end clarity and smoothness can make the Benchmark DAC2 seem muddied and veiled, even though many mastering engineers consider the Benchmark to be highly resolving and trustworthy.
Conclusion
Although Marvalve is a very small boutique brand that no one has heard of, the radically innovative Model Two DAC is truly an audio marvel that borders on being a little bit of a miracle, in my humble opinion. If Benchmark DAC2 HCG is close to state-of-the-art in digital conversion, Marvalve Model Two DAC is the gateway to analog magic in a digital realm.
