This is a review and detailed measurements of the Musical Fidelity balanced USB DAC. It is on kind loan from a member and costs US $999 from their dealers.
I am a fan of the Musical Fidelity industrial design. It kind of manages to look "high-end" while obviously being priced lower. That is in white. In black, I think that identity gets somewhat lost:
Still, it is differentiated which I like. And I appreciate the hard button for such things as filter selection.
I am disappointed to see an external power supply in a box this big and at this price:
I like to see built-in power supply.
Nice to see more than one of each kind of digital input when it comes to Toslink and Coax.
There are a number of accolades on their website for this DAC. Here is some of it:
As an aside, not sure how any of those quotes are consistent with each other! One says "mellow" and the other "lively?" How can it be both?
Musical Fidelity MX-DAC Measurements
While there are both RCA and XLR Balanced outputs, performance is essentially the same so let's go with balanced output and USB input:
Very sad performance in this day and age at any price:
Measured THD+N is actually better than the specs in the manual. Strangely, the website has an extra zero in there (0.0003%) which is totally wrong. Wonder who wrote the manual versus the website!
Dynamic range won't win any awards but it is not as bad as distortion:
IMD distortion shows the penalty of high noise and distortion:
Jitter test shows higher than expected noise floor which can hide some bad things but overall, it doesn't show any audible interferences:
There are two DAC filters in there but only difference seems to be attenuation:
THD+N versus frequency shows rising distortion at higher frequencies:
Same is seen in our 32-tone test signal:
Linearity is some of the worst I have seen:
Conclusions
The website description says, "The MX-DAC is a tremendous performer. It has ultra low distortion, very wide bandwidth and low noise. The technical performance of the MX-DAC is on a par with any other DAC at any price." At any price? There are DACs at less than 1/7th the price of MX-DAC which run circles around it in every objective score. Next sentence states a bunch of specs which as I explained, is not in sync with their one manual or what I measured. Regardless, this is embarrassing level of performance today. Company needs to retool this platform and build something competitive.
I can't recommend the Musical Fidelity MX-DAC.
-----------
As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.
Any donations are much appreciated using: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/
I am a fan of the Musical Fidelity industrial design. It kind of manages to look "high-end" while obviously being priced lower. That is in white. In black, I think that identity gets somewhat lost:
Still, it is differentiated which I like. And I appreciate the hard button for such things as filter selection.
I am disappointed to see an external power supply in a box this big and at this price:
I like to see built-in power supply.
Nice to see more than one of each kind of digital input when it comes to Toslink and Coax.
There are a number of accolades on their website for this DAC. Here is some of it:
As an aside, not sure how any of those quotes are consistent with each other! One says "mellow" and the other "lively?" How can it be both?
Musical Fidelity MX-DAC Measurements
While there are both RCA and XLR Balanced outputs, performance is essentially the same so let's go with balanced output and USB input:
Very sad performance in this day and age at any price:
Measured THD+N is actually better than the specs in the manual. Strangely, the website has an extra zero in there (0.0003%) which is totally wrong. Wonder who wrote the manual versus the website!
Dynamic range won't win any awards but it is not as bad as distortion:
IMD distortion shows the penalty of high noise and distortion:
Jitter test shows higher than expected noise floor which can hide some bad things but overall, it doesn't show any audible interferences:
There are two DAC filters in there but only difference seems to be attenuation:
THD+N versus frequency shows rising distortion at higher frequencies:
Same is seen in our 32-tone test signal:
Linearity is some of the worst I have seen:
Conclusions
The website description says, "The MX-DAC is a tremendous performer. It has ultra low distortion, very wide bandwidth and low noise. The technical performance of the MX-DAC is on a par with any other DAC at any price." At any price? There are DACs at less than 1/7th the price of MX-DAC which run circles around it in every objective score. Next sentence states a bunch of specs which as I explained, is not in sync with their one manual or what I measured. Regardless, this is embarrassing level of performance today. Company needs to retool this platform and build something competitive.
I can't recommend the Musical Fidelity MX-DAC.
-----------
As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.
Any donations are much appreciated using: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/