Top level Audio Note digital vs. MSB? What are the sonic differences?

caesar

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Audio Note has a reputation for "go for the emotions and fukk audiophilia vocabulary" sonic signature. Does this hold for their digital lines also?

MSB is frequently referred to as being in a class of its own in digital, taking the crown from dCS.

Anyone familiar with both? What systems have you heard them in? What are the sonic differences?
 

Keith_W

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I have heard both, but not in the same system.

The Audio Note is essentially an off the shelf DAC chip with a very fancy output stage. MOST DAC manufacturers fall into this category. The Audio Note uses an Analog Devices 1865N chip. Now of course a DAC is more than the chip it uses in the same way that a Rowland amplifier is more than a B&O but to me it's a bit like a Fiat 124 Spider. Looks pretty and tarted up, and there are measurable performance differences - but in the end it's still a Mazda underneath.

I heard an Audio Note Level 5 DAC in an Avantgarde Duo Omega system with an Ongaku (an Audio Note Ongaku, not a Kondo Ongaku) amp.

The MSB belongs to a very small crowd of manufacturers who actually design their own DAC from the ground up. Other manufacturers include DCS and Playback Designs. I have heard an MSB on a number of occasions, the most recent being last week where it was in a Vivid Giya system with Tenor amplification.

I can't comment on the sonic differences given they were at different times, different speakers, different rooms, and even different countries. I would have to have them side by side to comment. HOWEVER I would rather give my money to a company that designs their own DAC chips from the ground up any day.
 
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analogsa

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The Audio Note is essentially an off the shelf DAC chip with a very fancy output stage.

This is putting it very mildly. All the AN dacs i have seen show a profound lack of interest in digital tech. The philosophy is clear: even an mp3 player will sound marvelous if its output passes through a few tubes and transformers. And some silver wire.

Comparing this to an MSB is way harder than apples to oranges.
 

Keith_W

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By the way, there are some hifi companies that trade on their engineering credentials. They will boast about their research facilities, their unique technology, their achievements in other fields, the research papers they have published, and show charts that demonstrate how good their product is.

And then there are some that trade on mystique. They boast about a Japanese hermit who only drinks mountain water who hand winds each transformer and makes one every year. Or that the case is made from the same aluminum used by NASA. Or some 1980's DAC chip which is superior to anything modern. Or internal cables which were sourced from WW2 Spitfires.

I have no time for mystique. I want to see the engineering.
 
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Al M.

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By the way, there are some hifi companies that trade on their engineering credentials. They will boast about their research facilities, their unique technology, their achievements in other fields, the research papers they have published, and show charts that demonstrate how good their product is.

And then there are some that trade on mystique. They boast about a Japanese hermit who only drinks mountain water who hand winds each transformer and makes one every year. Or that the case is made from the same aluminum used by NASA. Or some 1980's DAC chip which is superior to anything modern. Or internal cables which were sourced from WW2 Spitfires.

I have no time for mystique. I want to see the engineering.

Same here. The designer of my Schiit Yggdrasil DAC uses a DAC chip, the AD 5791 BRUZ, but nobody else uses it for audio. It's a precision DAC chip for medical devices and miltary applications, among others. The reason not even the manufacturer recommends it for audio is glitch energy at zero crossing. Yet Mike Moffat who designed my DAC wanted to use the DAC chip for its precision, and apparently because it is a current production ladder DAC chip of high resolution (20 bit; the AD1865N is 18 bit). He found a way to address the glitch energy problem, without the usual sample & hold solution which he says sounds bad. The designer of the AD 5791 DAC chip was very astonished that Moffat got it to work for audio (he commented on this on a thread on the head-fi forum if I remember correctly).

Mike Moffat certainly knows his engineering stuff, he is a digital pioneer, of Theta Digital fame. Not one of those guys who simply take an off-the-shelf audio DAC chip, follow manufacturer's instructions and build a fancy output stage and case around it.
 

Hifi Boy

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And then there are some that trade on mystique. They boast about a Japanese hermit who only drinks mountain water who hand winds each transformer and makes one every year. Or that the case is made from the same aluminum used by NASA. Or some 1980's DAC chip which is superior to anything modern. Or internal cables which were sourced from WW2 Spitfires.
Shut up and take my money!
 

opus112

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He found a way to address the glitch energy problem, without the usual sample & hold solution which he says sounds bad. The designer of the AD 5791 DAC chip was very astonished that Moffat got it to work for audio (he commented on this on a thread on the head-fi forum if I remember correctly).

He addressed the glitch but didn't completely eliminate it - it was visible at low level. There was a thread on CA about this with a poster claiming (no evidence mind) that this visible glitch was actually audible. In the end he arranged for a firmware update which moved the glitch somewhere else. So now the traditional -90dB sinewave looks nice and clean.
 
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awsmone

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I cannot comment on Audionote versus MSB, but I can versus Emm Labs in my own system

I have an original that is AN dac, with burr brown chips in it, and tarted up
I also have Emm Labs DA2 v2 which also doesn’t use off the shelf chips, and is also long time manufacturer of professional adc dsd recording equipment of which I own three.

I have to admit, that even though the Emm labs is more transparent and modern sound, the audio note does do a lot of things very well

I would not say it’s tarted up with special material, but seems to have concerntrated on how it sounds over what specs it has

It really is very enjoyable to listen to

I have an old friend who has spent 20 years modifying these old dacs and the sonic results are pretty spectacular with good input from a great transport

I am sure if people like Mike Love the msb it is spectacular, but I cannot deny that the Audio note DACs, do have some unique qualities that are very appealing

These include
1. Natural timbres
2. Excellent soundstage, and presence
3. Lack of digital artifacts
4. Excellent PRAT

I am not sure though that the top tier AN pound for pound have the same engineering tech as the MSB, nor would I pay that much for one to be sure, in fact I would for much less buy my friends one, which have greatly improved power supplies and clock and output stages, over the top of line audio note DAC

I recently heard the Kassandra which use 16 of the same DAC as the audio note, but also does dsd and high resolution pcm
 

Al M.

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He addressed the glitch but didn't completely eliminate it - it was visible at low level. There was a thread on CA about this with a poster claiming (no evidence mind) that this visible glitch was actually audible.

Yeah, I know. A friend and I directly compared my first generation Yggdrasil with a many, many times more expensive DAC that measures quite perfectly. We also directly compared my first generation Yggdrasil with his second generation Yggdrasil that has the clean sine wave (he bought his Yggdrasil after hearing mine). The verdict in both cases: the glitch is not audible. By the way, even in the -90 dB sinewave it is 20 dB down, so as Mike Moffat commented to that guy who claimed that the glitch is audible (as a bright sound, and on sibilance I think?), you would have to have "platinum ears" to hear it.

In the end he arranged for a firmware update which moved the glitch somewhere else. So now the traditional -90dB sinewave looks nice and clean.

What do you mean? The DAC chip is a given, so there can't be a firmware update like in an FPGA. Or did Mike Moffat get a special re-programmed AD 5791 chip from the manufacturer?
 

morricab

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He addressed the glitch but didn't completely eliminate it - it was visible at low level. There was a thread on CA about this with a poster claiming (no evidence mind) that this visible glitch was actually audible. In the end he arranged for a firmware update which moved the glitch somewhere else. So now the traditional -90dB sinewave looks nice and clean.

I would have stuck with BB PCM63s if I was Mike, like he used in the Theta Gen V. Maybe they are too hard to get these days in quantity?
 

morricab

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I cannot comment on Audionote versus MSB, but I can versus Emm Labs in my own system

I have an original that is AN dac, with burr brown chips in it, and tarted up
I also have Emm Labs DA2 v2 which also doesn’t use off the shelf chips, and is also long time manufacturer of professional adc dsd recording equipment of which I own three.

I have to admit, that even though the Emm labs is more transparent and modern sound, the audio note does do a lot of things very well

I would not say it’s tarted up with special material, but seems to have concerntrated on how it sounds over what specs it has

It really is very enjoyable to listen to

I have an old friend who has spent 20 years modifying these old dacs and the sonic results are pretty spectacular with good input from a great transport

I am sure if people like Mike Love the msb it is spectacular, but I cannot deny that the Audio note DACs, do have some unique qualities that are very appealing

These include
1. Natural timbres
2. Excellent soundstage, and presence
3. Lack of digital artifacts
4. Excellent PRAT

I am not sure though that the top tier AN pound for pound have the same engineering tech as the MSB, nor would I pay that much for one to be sure, in fact I would for much less buy my friends one, which have greatly improved power supplies and clock and output stages, over the top of line audio note DAC

I recently heard the Kassandra which use 16 of the same DAC as the audio note, but also does dsd and high resolution pcm

What were your Kassandra impressions?
 

morricab

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Yeah, I know. A friend and I directly compared my first generation Yggdrasil with a many, many times more expensive DAC that measures quite perfectly. We also directly compared my first generation Yggdrasil with his second generation Yggdrasil that has the clean sine wave (he bought his Yggdrasil after hearing mine). The verdict in both cases: the glitch is not audible. By the way, even in the -90 dB sinewave it is 20 dB down, so as Mike Moffat commented to that guy who claimed that the glitch is audible (as a bright sound, and on sibilance I think?), you would have to have "platinum ears" to hear it.



What do you mean? The DAC chip is a given, so there can't be a firmware update like in an FPGA. Or did Mike Moffat get a special re-programmed AD 5791 chip from the manufacturer?

If the glitch was moved...where was it moved to? Since it was not gone, you cannot conclude that it is not audible unless it was moved out of the audio band completely. I haven't heard the Yggy so I am not sure what the overall character of this DAC is but seems that some find it a bit bright...
 

morricab

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Yeah, I know. A friend and I directly compared my first generation Yggdrasil with a many, many times more expensive DAC that measures quite perfectly. We also directly compared my first generation Yggdrasil with his second generation Yggdrasil that has the clean sine wave (he bought his Yggdrasil after hearing mine). The verdict in both cases: the glitch is not audible. By the way, even in the -90 dB sinewave it is 20 dB down, so as Mike Moffat commented to that guy who claimed that the glitch is audible (as a bright sound, and on sibilance I think?), you would have to have "platinum ears" to hear it.



What do you mean? The DAC chip is a given, so there can't be a firmware update like in an FPGA. Or did Mike Moffat get a special re-programmed AD 5791 chip from the manufacturer?

The de-glitching circuitry sounds like it is handled by an FPGA, which can be re-programmed. The de-glitching cannot be handled on the chip itself, which is probably just a bunch of resistors on a chip, unless there is de-glitching circuitry added to this chip but sounds like not.
 

Al M.

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I haven't heard the Yggy so I am not sure what the overall character of this DAC is but seems that some find it a bit bright...

It seems you haven't quite paid attention to the comparisons I described.
 

opus112

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What do you mean? The DAC chip is a given, so there can't be a firmware update like in an FPGA. Or did Mike Moffat get a special re-programmed AD 5791 chip from the manufacturer?

I meant he introduced a digital offset so the glitch, instead of being at digital zero was moved a little bit away from digital zero. Back in the mists of time, Philips did this with the SAA7220+TDA1541 combination, there's 0x20 added in the filter to move the DAC's glitch away from the zero crossing.
 
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awsmone

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Very organic and dynamic

Like an audio note dac on steroids with a groove pill :)
 
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Jeffy

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Nothing great about Theta in the day. It was a very foward and bright sounding dac. The Timbre TT1 was way more musical at that time period.
 

morricab

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It seems you haven't quite paid attention to the comparisons I described.

What you think is quite clear...no need to pore over every word you write about your Yggy.
 

Al M.

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What you think is quite clear...no need to pore over every word you write about your Yggy.

What you feel about me writing on the Yggy is not the point. The point is that the comparisons made clear that the glitch does not introduce brightness into the sound, and is not otherwise audible as an obvious artifact either -- regardless if anyone thinks the Yggy does sound bright nonetheless (I don't) for other reasons.
 

morricab

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What you feel about me writing on the Yggy is not the point. The point is that the comparisons made clear that the glitch does not introduce brightness into the sound, and is not otherwise audible as an obvious artifact either -- regardless if anyone thinks the Yggy does sound bright nonetheless (I don't) for other reasons.

The glitch is still there. It is moved away from zero crossing but still there. Where is the proof that it is not affecting the sound? If the two Yggy's sound the same this is not the proof. If other's think it is bright in version one, where is the proof of the brightness root cause if version 2 sounds the same? Circular argument... It would have to come from either external comparison with other DACs or somehow Moffat would have to make a glitch free version and then see if the brightness is gone (I know you don't think it is bright and I haven't heard it so it is hypothetical to some extent).
 

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