Mijbil

Hah - I hear you there. I was *shocked* at his rudeness and "bedside manner," truly shocked. Why does he even bother being the one to answer customer inquiries? <br /> <br /> Also - I have heard such good things about the m2tech hiface - that people even use it just to convert to S/PDIF and feed a USB-cable DAC, because it handles the USB signal so much better than most DACs (or at least most entry-level DACs - maybe this stops being the case at the higher-end, Benchmark, etc) - anyone have thoughts/experience with this?

I've been on a mirthless quest for a dac for my computer this last month - started out not wanting to spend too much, and went through the Nuforce Udac-2, the Beresford TC 7520, the HRT Music Streamer, and the Musical Fidelity V-Dac in increasing order of performance (though the HRT easily took the price for the best price/performance ratio, and if I was content to only have the USB input I probably would have stuck with that), but still not quite satisfied. I finally took a big breath (then exhaled) and sprung for the Music Hall 25.3 Dac - which I've been absolutely thrilled with. The level of detail and clarity is truly astonishing - which seems to be what others have found in it as well (Srajan at 6moons said it rivaled the Benchmark - I havent heard that one so can't say myself). As a tubemonkey I also enjoy the capacity to roll it's single 6922 tube. <br /> <br /> It's always very hard, if not impossible, to say what about a DAC is responsible for its various qualities. One would THINK the chipset, but I have had several DAC-specialist manufacturers tell me that they tried out dozens of chipsets in designing their products and could almost never tell any difference at all. But the one quality that the HRT and the Music Hall 25.3 share is that they both run USB asynchronously. (Although I have heard that there are actually two ways in which "asynchronous" can be applied in this context, one "true" (in the sense that it is more difficult and expensive to implement and has the real impact and performance; I think these two both run "truly" asynchronously, but I'm not certain about the Music Hall.) <br /> <br /> Anyways, I share this narative because I'm curious if anyone has heard the Music hall and the Musical FIdelity M1 and can speak to their comparisons? They, along with the slightly pricier PS Audio Digital Link III at $800, seem to be the main competitors in this mid-level price range, at least excluding the plethora of Chinese options, before one gets into the Brysons, Benchmarks, and the rest over $1K. I also wonder how the M1 compares to MF's own V-Dac.<br /> <br /> Cheers all.