Musical Fidelity M1 DAC-A - HotDeal.

Also, I have purchased the MF M1. So I like the sound signature obviously. The HFs need to be lively and same time unfatiguing. That was my pri-1 criteria. So take my observation with a pinch of salt. And I guess someone looking for best bass performance will look for Audio GD mostly.

Also bypassing the preamp of the Audio GD or connecting it to a power amp would have tilted results in its favour. Never know.

But the opinion about other DACs were mostly same for all the gathered as I mentioned earlier.
 
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Blasto is there a provision of auditioning MF MI DAC from Delhi distributors?

How would you compare it with Beresford DAC?

I found Beresford to be extended in HF, bass exggarated but with a nice midrange. You could feel the air coming out when the singer sang.
 
heliumflight said:
Blasto is there a provision of auditioning MF MI DAC from Delhi distributors?

How would you compare it with Beresford DAC?

I found Beresford to be extended in HF, bass exggarated but with a nice midrange. You could feel the air coming out when the singer sang.
Click to expand...

Honest opinion without hurting the owners, It was inferior in every way to the MF. It was slightly better than the oppo. Constricted sound stage.

Arcam rdac was comparatively much better too.

Guys in the meet, jump in.
 
Blasto, What was the digital link between source and m1 dac ?pl indicate the source and the name of digital cable. I am using also musical fidelity m1 dac with a plane stereovox coaxial cable old one connected to a philips dvd player.
 
heliumflight said:
Blasto is there a provision of auditioning MF MI DAC from Delhi distributors?

How would you compare it with Beresford DAC?

I found Beresford to be extended in HF, bass exggarated but with a nice midrange. You could feel the air coming out when the singer sang.
Click to expand...

Yes, you can audition at Bass and Treble, I spoke with them on monday and they have the MF M1 in stock, but their is a considerable diff in the price being mentioned by Bass and Treble
 
BLASTO said:
Guys in the meet, jump in.
Click to expand...
Sorry for chipping in so late. PC at my Mom's place conked off & I'm typing from my mob.

Firstly about the setup. The B&W floorstanders are too big for the room. Also, the right speaker was placed deep into right corner. The Bass was overpowering to such an extent that not only the midrange got obscured but even the furniture was rattling. Pulling the speakers about 2' into the room & right speaker 1.5' from the side wall did improve things but the rattle was not fully gone. We located the culprit to the attic door on the left top corner. We kept the attic door open 3' & bingo, the rattle was history.

The Oppo sound was disaster of sorts. The bass was bloated, sound stage was narrow & mids were thin & distant. Beresford DAC did improve things but bass was lean & sound stage was still narrow. We replaced it with M1. The sound stage was much better but the bass was tighter but still leaner, comparatively speaking. The highs didn't have the sparkle. We felt that things would improve if the speaker grills were removed. Removing them resulted in a huge improvement. Mids became more bloomy, the sparkle of HF came out beautifully & there was overall improvement in sound stage. So in all fairness, w wanted to hear the Beresford again. Things were better than before but it was apparent that M1 was better. We them introduce the audioD. I have no hesitation in saying that it not only matched the costlier M1 note for note but improved the bass majorly which was taut & impressive. Of course the highs were not as prominent as in M1 but according to me, the AudioD would be more suited to long listening sessions as fatigue would be lesser. Someone wanted to go back & listen to the Oppo once more. Sure enough, the loose bloated bass & narrow sound stage were back. I could not listen to the Arcam as I had to leave.

I feel that we should've experimented more with AudioD; use it's pre amp & bypass that of Rotel & vice-a-versa, trying out different settings, different op amps etc.

IMO the AudioD is far greater VFM than M1.
 
captrajesh said:
Sorry for chipping in so late. PC at my Mom's place conked off & I'm typing from my mob.

Firstly about the setup. The B&W floorstanders are too big for the room. Also, the right speaker was placed deep into right corner. The Bass was overpowering to such an extent that not only the midrange got obscured but even the furniture was rattling. Pulling the speakers about 2' into the room & right speaker 1.5' from the side wall did improve things but the rattle was not fully gone. We located the culprit to the attic door on the left top corner. We kept the attic door open 3' & bingo, the rattle was history.

The Oppo sound was disaster of sorts. The bass was bloated, sound stage was narrow & mids were thin & distant. Beresford DAC did improve things but bass was lean & sound stage was still narrow. We replaced it with M1. The sound stage was much better but the bass was tighter but still leaner, comparatively speaking. The highs didn't have the sparkle. We felt that things would improve if the speaker grills were removed. Removing them resulted in a huge improvement. Mids became more bloomy, the sparkle of HF came out beautifully & there was overall improvement in sound stage. So in all fairness, w wanted to hear the Beresford again. Things were better than before but it was apparent that M1 was better. We them introduce the audioD. I have no hesitation in saying that it not only matched the costlier M1 note for note but improved the bass majorly which was taut & impressive. Of course the highs were not as prominent as in M1 but according to me, the AudioD would be more suited to long listening sessions as fatigue would be lesser. Someone wanted to go back & listen to the Oppo once more. Sure enough, the loose bloated bass & narrow sound stage were back. I could not listen to the Arcam as I had to leave.

I feel that we should've experimented more with AudioD; use it's pre amp & bypass that of Rotel & vice-a-versa, trying out different settings, different op amps etc.

IMO the AudioD is far greater VFM than M1.
Click to expand...

Sir, Whatever you have written of Beresford is actually of DAC magic.
Beresford came in after you left I think. :)

Rest all is correct.
 
Rajesh Sir, thanks for suggesting the placement for speakers and about Grills. I never thought improving grills will improve sound that much.
As Rajesh Sir said, Audio GD and MF M1 are the best of the lot. Other are also good VFM Dac's. Thanks Murthy and Sachin for getting those DAC's. Audio GD and MF m1 are higher priced DAC's and also sounded good.

Audio GD has excellent bass control, better than MF1, while MF1 scored in other departments (HF). We didn't test Audio GD properly with Power Amp and all. So we don't know how it perform, if tuned to its full potential.

Only problem with Audio GD is, its not available in India and service can be a problem, even if its free shipping. That's only drawback. Otherwise Price to performance ratio is excellent. MF M1 is costliest out there but it performs exceedingly well for its cost.

Ravi, can you post the link for Audio GD? Thanks.

Other's can also chip in with their comments.
 
Thanks all for coming, its always nice to meet Audio enthusiasts and find out new things. Rajesh Sir, its a pleasure meeting you. Nice to meet Murthy and Ravi for first time. Always a pleasure to catch up with Blasto, Sachin and Krish. Sorry OP for hijacking the thread :-)
 
Yes i think Rajesh has mistaken the dacmagic with the caiman, can understand as we ended up with so many dac's and so little time.

The modded caiman did not impress me much, prefer the dagmagic over that. In my opinion the M1 was overall winner, details and lot of details :). But would like to hear the AudioD more, with the modifications. For its price with a pre-amp , it is a really good option.

The pics are on sajjads phone ..
 
Oops sorry guys mistook the DAC Magic to be Beresford Caiman.
Thank u Sajjad for being a wonderful post. I thought my X30 was impressive but your 65" Sammy was super impressive.
 
BLASTO said:
Yeah, So the internals can obviously be altered for the sound you like according to what ravi_d mentioned that day also. (If you are experimentation oriented I mean)
Click to expand...
There is nothing to be altered. Its just removing the top cover and swapping (no soldering required) the op-amp with another that suits your sound signature.
The Dac can be switched between the Non-feedback discrete o/p stage (Op-amp bypassed with no coupling caps in signal path) and op-amp (presently it has OPA2134 which we didn't try) based output stage on the fly using a button on front panel. In fact the second op-amp based o/p stage is given just to give the users the option to try different sound signatures by rolling the op-amps.

The alteration I was talking is required only to upgrade to asynchronous USB module with 24bit 192kHz support and not for op-amp rolling.
BLASTO said:
He has actually ordered some op-amps from china to experiment himself.. :)
Click to expand...
The op-amps I ordered were LME49720 and LM4562 from element 14 Indian website which I'm yet to receive.

BLASTO said:
Also the DAC had a volume control (a preamp) attached and we did not know how to bipass it.

So there were 2 preamps in the chain (DAC and integrated) so not sure how it works out completely with a power amp alone.
Click to expand...
The option to switch between the variable out and fixed out is given inside with the help of a jumper. Changing to fixed out will only bypass the volume control. As I have been using it with headphones I left the default variable option as it is. I only noticed its in variable mode at the meet.
 
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binoymehra said:
Blasto, What was the digital link between source and m1 dac ?pl indicate the source and the name of digital cable. I am using also musical fidelity m1 dac with a plane stereovox coaxial cable old one connected to a philips dvd player.
Click to expand...

I dont think digital cable matters, but we were using MX optical and DAC brand coaxial.

MX was ~700/- and DAC cable was ~900/-

Source was interesting. The sound quality improved by bounds when moved from oppo to PC's coaxial with same CD. There wasn't much difference between mp3 and original CD of the same song through foobar (which is a wonder).
 
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