Musetec Audio (LKS Audio) MH-DA005 Review (DAC)

[Prana Ferox]

Amir, this test was clearly botched and it's no wonder the results were bad, the display says right there, remove the film before use

 

[antcollinet]

Amir, I very much respect your technical background. Measurement numbers are not the same as sound quality which is necessarily subjective. How many live concerts have you gone to in the last 3 years? I have never read a music review that you wrote. Are you qualified to talk about the sound of music?

Do you know what subjective means? It means it is specific to the subject (you). If you hear great things, that only applies to you. It is absolutely meaningless to anyone else. You hearing great things is not the definition of good sound quality, only of your preferences.

We don't even know (because you haven't tested blind) if the great things you hear are due to the nature of the sound reaching your ears, or are due to what goes on in your brain due to the unconcious bias you (like everyone else) are subject to.

 

[sarumbear]

With his expertise and the resources available it should answer some questions about why the product is so inferior.

You do realise that he doesn't owe us anything, there is no should when he is doing it for free. Get a grip --- please!

 

[norcalscott]

A person over at the Audiogon forum reportedly contacted the designer of this DAC, "Jinbo Lee" and asked about the measurements here and he responded with this:

Thank you so much for sharing. I read this post carefully.

I can explain the content of the subject test through our design experience.

It took me more than three years to design DA005. Roughly estimated, I had done nearly ten different designs. In the test, I found that if all the parameters were set according to the "best" of the instrument test, the final sound was not what I wanted.

Our development process also confirmed the widely debated idea that hiFI systems are generally not sound good or bad through test instruments. Any experienced electronics engineer can do it well, and it doesn’t require much effort or musical awareness. I don’t really want to argue too much about that. The customers who have heard about our products have the best say.

 

[sarumbear]

A person over at the Audiogon forum reportedly contacted the designer of this DAC, "Jinbo Lee" and asked about the measurements here and he responded with this:

If he designed the unit "by ear" then why publish specs that cannot be verified?

 

[SubsonicLurker]

An explanation of the results he gets is the point. With his expertise and the resources available it should answer some questions about why the product is so inferior.

I would expect an explanation for its marginal showing, whether it's a sample-related issue or the result of specific design decisions, to come from the device's maker - not the person performing the test/review of their product. If they can show that there were procedural issues on Amir's end, it would be to their benefit to say/show what those were, no?

As it is his answer is, this is crap and I get to try to figure out why on my own.

He showed how it performed with 2v output, and the graph showed that best SINAD was in the range of 1.5v, so what exactly are you complaining about there?

 

[formula 977]

You do realise that he doesn't owe us anything, there is no should when he is doing it for free. Get a grip --- please!

I am not saying we are not getting our monies worth. We are, that's the problem.

 

[formula 977]

I would expect an explanation for its marginal showing, whether it's a sample-related issue or the result of specific design decisions, to come from the device's maker - not the person performing the test/review of their product. If they can show that there were procedural issues on Amir's end, it would be to their benefit to say/show what those were, no?


He showed how it performed with 2v output, and the graph showed that best SINAD was in the range of 1.5v, so what exactly are you complaining about there?

The normal 2v sinad claims -95db. Upon further investigation the best case sinad happens at 1.5v as you say. At 2v, however, the sinad is at -104db on that same graph. What do you suppose is gong on?

 

[The Jniac]

I forgot to mention that I did no see any regulatory/safety certification on the box.

So not only is it worse than an ODAC, it might burn your house down. At least it will look good while doing so.

 

[amirm]

As someone who works for a consumer/pro electronics manufacturer, I can tell you that products of any price usually don't ship with the latest firmware for logistics and tracking reasons. FW updates can involve a whole change request process including labeling updates, documentation updates, manufacturer coordination of the change over, manufacturing process updates, etc. If a major bug is discovered in the FW, the devices may have to be recalled by the distribution center and hand updated/reverted to a corrected FW. It is a costly endeavor that has little benefit.

I am well aware of that unfortunate trend which has gotten hold in mass market products with some devices shipped with nothing but a bootloader! This DAC is not one of those. This is a very low volume device sold at very high price. While typical smart devices have massive amount of software so huge potential for bugs, etc., whereas this is a simple device and I expect it to come to me in working condition. It is not like I am complaining about functionality of the UI, etc. that is software intensive. This is electrical performance I am measuring.

 

[amirm]

The normal 2v sinad claims -95db. Upon further investigation the best case sinad happens at 1.5v as you say. At 2v, however, the sinad is at -104db on that same graph. What do you suppose is gong on?

The above graph is from XLR output. Don't confuse that that with the 2 volt output Dashboard which uses RCA out. The XLR output goes to 4.2 volt.

 

[SubsonicLurker]

View attachment 207476
The normal 2v sinad claims -95db. Upon further investigation the best case sinad happens at 1.5v as you say. At 2v, however, the sinad is at -104db on that same graph. What do you suppose is gong on?

His statement immediately preceding that graph said, "I suspected the output stage may be saturating so ran a sweep". Did you not read that?

If your question is why did the output stage saturate, then that's something to ask the designer(s), because I doubt Amir received a copy of the circuit schematics & PCB CAD files with the unit.

 

[asov87]

To those users that assume Amir hasn't tested the DAC properly, in case you missed my post #141, I (still) have the DAC and tested it myself before I even knew ASR will do it. I got the same results and although is back in its box, hoping to find a new owner (by the way is on-sale for two weeks now so not related to this review), I can happily run some other tests if it makes you feel better (in my spare time of course so please don't expect immediate output)

As a side note, I personally assumed that this is an intended "sound", through the choice of parts selected. My personal ABX test, and a few friends that participated, resulted in us all failing to identify this DAC compared to a SOTA. I don't want to say is bad since I can't identify it from a SOTA, but in my (personal) opinion it doesn't justify the price (and I believe this is what most of the forum users are trying to point out). For those that do look out for those specific parts and can live with a decent SINAD, then it might be a good choice. The measurements however do not lie, it is what it is.

Thanks,
Adrian

 

[amirm]

Amir, this test was clearly botched and it's no wonder the results were bad, the display says right there, remove the film before use

I was wondering how long it would take for someone to find that mistake!!!

 

[fatoldgit]

Two possible reasons that come to mind:

1. auditory acuity - some people, particularly younger people, have better hearing than others so they may pick up on things that (dis)please them
2. listener preference/bias - it's perfectly fine to say I prefer the sound of "X" over that of "Y", but that's not a basis for saying "X" is objectively better than "Y".

My contention on this is that over time we get conditioned to a specific musical reproduction paradigm.

Example: Long time vinyl spinners wont/dont like the sound of digital (where, in theory, 44.1/16 has better technical performance) or visa versa where a digital native doesnt like the sound of vinyl.

If you have been in this game long enough you cant help but become biased.

In my own world, I listen 90% to blues/jazz music recorded between 1957 (when stereo recordings become a thing) and 1969 (cut off mainly for jazz as after ~1969, jazz started forinicating with other genres).

Irrespective of format (started collecting vinyl in 1970 but now "spin" 100% digital files), I find modern jazz recordings bloated in the bass.

I put this down not to the mastering of modern jazz (cause its one genre where stuff like loudness isnt an issue) but to the fact that over 50 years I have become accustomed to bass recorded/cut in a way that needed to be squeezed into a vinyl groove. The sound of bass on modern Jazz recordings is potentially truer to "real life" but my bias/conditioning gets in the way.

Thus the push for subjective evaluations (which is not the reason ASR exists) no doubt has validity with many people because if reviewer A has a set of biases/conditioning that matches listener A then Listener A can generally "follow" the musings of reviewer A with a high degree of probability that if they (reviewer) like it, I (listener) will like it.

Peter

 

[neg]

The measurements are pretty bad, very disappointing. THD is not the top, but IMD and ess hump is the real problem.
The power supply seems to be implemented very well meanwhile. However, how did it happen that the measurement results are much worse than the specification? Is it a broken unit?​

 

[AudioSceptic]

“I’m not likely to make any progress here?” I think you are the one being dogmatic. Rather than hanging on to a belief that burn-in is real, why not open your mind and question your beliefs and look at the science? We are all here to learn, not to preach. Audio is science, not religion.

Yes, but science is not required, just basic logic (I would say "common sense" but that is surprisingly uncommon).

 

[amirm]

The measurements are pretty bad, very disappointing. THD is not the top, but IMD and ess hump is the real problem.
The power supply seems to be implemented very well meanwhile. However, how did it happen that the measurement results are much worse than the specification? Is it a broken unit?​

IMD ESS Hump is a design issue. It is not caused by a broken unit. As to reason, seems like they company gave us the answer above. They messed with the design until it sounded good to them. Without measurements, they are shooting blind and created what we see. If the measurements were wrong, I am sure they would have responded with better ones.

 

[norcalscott]

If he designed the unit "by ear" then why publish specs that cannot be verified?

Yes, that is the $3,299 question

 

[AudioSceptic]

Do you know what subjective means? It means it is specific to the subject (you). If you hear great things, that only applies to you. It is absolutely meaningless to anyone else. You hearing great things is not the definition of good sound quality, only of your preferences.

We don't even know (because you haven't tested blind) if the great things you hear are due to the nature of the sound reaching your ears, or are due to what goes on in your brain due to the unconcious bias you (like everyone else) are subject to.

^^^ This ^^^
I think subjective audio reviews might be more like music reviews (subjective by definition) than I ever realised before (duh!). I take notice of reviews by music reviewers or magazines whose taste is similar to mine; others, not so much. I used to do the same with audio gear.