First Alex played the Premier. It sounded very good, natural and non-fatiguing. But how could that be? It’s digital! Where was the brightness, the harshness, the digititis, the sensation of ragged dry ice particles dripping on you in the shower? Those traditional digital characteristics were totally missing, and were replaced by an analog-like sense of smoothness and relaxedness and ease. The horrifying thought that today’s experience with digital, completely unexpectedly, could upend my entire audio world view suddenly flashed across my mind -- and we started the session by listening to the less expensive MSB model!
Alex switched to the Reference DAC. The Reference was a little bit more transparent and provided a little bit more information than did the Premier. There was less “gauze” and more clean air, clarity, quietness and “blackness” between and among the instruments.
I leaned over to Keith and I asked him if he could very roughly quantify the incremental improvement in sound. I thought the improvement was 10% to 20%. Keith agreed, and later confirmed he felt that the Reference was noticeably better than the Premier, but not more than 20% better than the Premier for twice the price.
I was relieved because I was now more comfortable that the LP sound I heard from this track at Steve’s and Jeff’s was noticeably more transparent and more present and more believably “in the room” than what I was hearing now. But these MSB DACs change entirely the substance of the analog versus digital conversation. The conversation is no longer “can I stand to listen to digital”; the conversation now is “what are we still hearing in analog that remains a little bit better than digital? Buy what increment is analog sounding superior to digital?”
The MSB DACs sounded inexplicably good, but they did not have quite the in-the-room-real sensation that I heard at both Steve’s house and at Jeff’s house. I leaned over to Keith and I said “I wonder what will you think of this same track on LP,” now feeling confident that analog was holding the winning hand in the Alma Audio sonic card game yesterday.
When Alex put on the LP (admittedly a $100,000 analog front-end versus $20,000 and $40,000 DACs) I was relieved to hear the incredible transparency and presence of Neil Young’s voice which I heard at Steve’s and Jeff’s but which I did not hear, in its full realism, from MSB. (But, again, the fact that MSB instantly changed the conversation for me from “can I stand to stay and listen to this longer?” to “am I sure am analog is still better than digital”? is a dramatic and revolutionary change of mentality and orientation. Nonetheless digital playback, through MSB DACs anyway, is without doubt a legitimate high-end medium of music reproduction. It was by far the most enjoyable and analog-like reproduction of music I have ever heard from digital.
Alex, Keith and I all agreed that the LP was at least slightly more transparent in the voice (I thought it was significantly more transparent in the voice) and significantly more realistic in reproducing the sound of piano. Alex then played a high-resolution remastering of “After the Goldrush” and the LP’s margin of superiority narrowed considerably.
Nonetheless I was greatly relieved to hear and to have confirmed (to me, anyway) that analog is not in any serious danger of truly being bested buy digital any time soon. (Yes, I am aware that MikeL is reporting that the fully-optioned out MSB Select further narrows the gap between digital and analog.)
