March Audio DAC1 now available

[danadam]

with an introductory discount on pricing

In other words, you are kind of covering shipping costs?

 

[March Audio]

In other words, you are kind of covering shipping costs?

Wasnt actually my thought process, but you could put it that way

 

[March Audio]

Hope things go well. I saw you had this up, and yesterday posted a link to your product over on a thread at CA. The question was less than $500 DACs that were of good quality and not effected by the USB connection. So yours fit the bill, measures excellent, sounds excellent, and I could say "yes, I've heard it with my own golden ears, it gets my stamp of approval".

Thats brilliant, thank you. I do have a March Audio CA account, just havent started posting yet. I was going to wait until Amir had the chance to review so there was some hard technical performance data to discuss.

 

[March Audio]

I have a Pioneer PL L1000/Shure V15 IV and Technics SL10/ EPS-310MC. Currently not used.

My amp doesn't have a phono stage. I am looking to getting one but just haven't got around to it.

......mmmmmmm......OK I am thinking about this, could be a nice little product but would have to wait a few months until the rest of the range is sorted out.

 

[March Audio]

Consider 'very high performance' in phono stages is relative these days to what else is being produced. We are a long way from the performance heights of the phono preamplifiers stages of old.

After the introduction of CD, phono stages essentially became 'legacy' stages with a massive downgrading of performance. A huge part of the cost of preamplifiers prior to CD was the high quality phono stages, due to the very lowest noise, carefully matched and expensive high gain, wide bandwidth devices they used.

This is the phono stage specs of one of my favourite preamplifiers. When did you last see a current manufacture phono stage even come remotely close to these numbers? And this preamplifier wasn't even that expensive back when new.

View attachment 18781

The phono stage is a beautiful discrete design (IC DC servo), fully DC coupled and runs on +/-32V rails with a very low output impedance. It would be a fantastic design to modify for a standalone product.

Admittedly I havent performed any real research into this as of yet, do you feel the above is close to state of the art?

I know I can achieve this sort of spec for the front end gain pre RIAA:

​

 

[Webninja]

Can you share the range of price points for your amps? I'm very interested.

 

[Wombat]

My hearing doesn't justify SOTA.

One of these will probably meet my needs: NAD PP4 About $AU250. It will have to wait until my audio budget recovers from the new TV plus LSR305 MkIIs purchase.

 

[March Audio]

Can you share the range of price points for your amps? I'm very interested.

Hi

I will start another thread later today on the amps

 

[March Audio]

My hearing doesn't justify SOTA.

One of these will probably meet my needs: NAD PP4 About $AU250. It will have to wait until my audio budget recovers from the new TV plus LSR305 MkIIs purchase.

SOTA doesnt necessarily entail ultra expensive. Just needs good design and I wouldnt embark on the product if it was going to be half arsed , but to be honest it wouldnt come in at less than $400-500 US. Have to gauge whether there is a justifiable market.

 

[Wombat]

SOTA doesnt necessarily entail ultra expensive. Just needs good design, but to be honest it wouldnt come in at less than $400-500 US.

That sounds reasonable for a high performance product.

 

[Dogen]

I’ve long followed and admired your work! I’m especially interested in your power amps. There’s been so much progress in transparent DACs and headphone amps, Now I’d like to see that kind of improvement in reasonably priced speaker amps.

Best of luck with your new (ad)venture, and thanks for meeting us here at ASR.

 

[March Audio]

I’ve long followed and admired you work! I’m especially interested in your power amps. There’s been so much progress in transparent DACs and headphone amps, NOW I’d like to see that kind of improvement in reasonably priced speaker amps.

Best of luck with your new (ad)venture, and thanks more meeting us here at ASR.

Hi

As above I will start a thread on the power amps later today

 

[Dogen]

Hi

As above I will start a thread on the power amps later today

Yes, I saw that and edited my post. Patience is a non-skill with me.

 

[restorer-john]

...do you feel the above is close to state of the art?...

No, I don't believe those numbers would be current state of the art. It was merely that excellent performance like that was achievable in the early 80s (that is the age of that preamplifier) and I see very few phono stages that are anything more than token affairs with poor specs- even plenty of the rather expensive ones. You have to pay thousands for a phono stage with even half decent specs these days.

Who out there really is pushing the boat out on phono stages that could be potential giant-killers at say $500-600? Ones that are essentially flawless and exceed by a huge margin, the potential of the format itself? There must be someone?

It'd need adjustable loading on both MC and MM to appeal to the right crowd. Implemented either by DIP switches or come with a nice selection of premade audiophool approved loading plugs in a velvet lined box or something.

This is the schematic (single ch RIAA stage only) of the specs I posted above, note the front and back end. No coupling caps. No LF distortion either. Quad paralleled 2SK369 FETs etc. You could mess with the MC and MM loading, change the servo IC to an approved audiophool OPAMP instead of the (perfectly suitable in this case) uA741.

 

[momo7G]

Thumbs up for fellow aussie

 

[elira]

@March Audio Do you have internal pics?

 

[March Audio]

@March Audio Do you have internal pics?

Sorry the secret sauce is remaining under wraps. Suffice to say its es9038 based.

 

[restorer-john]

...Sorry the secret sauce is remaining under wraps...

Fair enough too. Go back to the good old days and pot it all in black epoxy- that'll keep prying eyes out!

 

[March Audio]

Or if someone's that interested they can buy one, open it and invalidate the warranty

 

[March Audio]

@Webninja @Dogen apologies for not getting the post up about the power amps yet, but I have the first units arriving Thursday so I am going to wait until then so I can post pictures etc.