The MPD-8 is a good DAC - a friend of mine owns one and he brought it over for a week long listen. I’d say it’s just below the MSB Ref DAC in its sound presentation. It sounded too digital for me personally - too analytical for my taste. But it’s still good.
The Vitus MP DAC is analogue sounding. On most albums it literally sounds like our TT in its presentation.
As for being “far behind” I prefer to say that all these upper end DACs sound good. I was looking for the most analogue sounding one I could locate. With that in mind, if I were doing this on a percentage basis and considered the Vitus a 99, then I’d say the MPD was about an 80 “in our system.”
This said, IMO one really needs to hear a DAC in their own system before they purchase one. We all hear differently and we have different systems. The rest of the system influences what a DAC sounds like.
I need to re-clarify what I meant. Both DACs probably produced the same amount of detail, but the Vitus handled the detail better to my ears and in my particular system. Since IMO the Vitus handled the sound better, I stated the Ideon sounded over detailed. But please don‘t elevate this as it was only “slightly” - and this is in my system and to my ears. Someone else may have different results in their system and actually prefer the Ideon over the Vitus.
But as I already stated both are excellent DACs. And they hands down beat everything else we heard.
Just to put everything you shared in context, do you have financial interest in any of the brands you mentioned?