Nothing wrong with the user experience IMO. It got it to work with no problems. The local dealer is great.
My beef is the sheer cost of this thing and what it offers for the money. Look inside and you will find parts that are exceeded by even a humble personal digital player. Why are they using an ancient off-the-shelf DAC chip worth $20 each, and an SMPS for example - in a DAC that is priced to compete against Playback Designs (which uses its own custom firmware upgradeable DAC chip)? Switch mode power supplies are a dirty word in the high end word, especially since the modest power requirements of this thing would mean it would not cost more for them to equip it with a decent power supply, and there is so much empty space in the case! If it were 1/3 the price it would be good value. But at the price they are trying to flog it at - there is no way.
I paid another $1500 to buy a third party Linear PSU and it made an immediate and noticeable difference. So it ended up costing me an extra $1500 when it would have cost Merging maybe a hundred dollars (if that!) to put a better PSU in it, in the first place.
I strongly urge you to open it up and take a look. What you will see will make you very angry if you had to pay for it.
As for the sound, I compared it against an MSB DAC IV and the Playback Designs MPS-5. And I most recently had a chance to compare it with the Holo Springs DAC (at about 1/5 the price). Every time it is compared to another DAC, it loses. It has a thin, "fast" sound. Nearly everything else has richer harmonics and more of a sense of body.
Oh yes, when I complained on another forum about the poor value of the NADAC, none other than Dominique Brulhart turned up to abuse me.
