I'm sure the DAC boards are very similar. But it looks to me like the digital is better isolated from the DAC and analog with the MC-8. For example, the the FPGA is on the digital board whereas the FPGA is right next the the DAC in the Hapi. Also it looks like there are two ESS DAC ICs in the MC-8 and the Hapi only has one.
Hi, I'm quoting an old post here but do you know what this FPGA is doing?
Is it up-sampling before the ESS DAC chip?