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Micromega MyDAC DAC Review

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amirm

amirm

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FYI I have a filter for testing older products. I research what is being offered and make a judgement call as to whether I should or should not review something. I am flexible at times when a member has offered a bunch of new gear but also an older one. Or, has scratched my back by paying for my last three sushi meals. :D
 

LLL

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Hear hear! These reviews of old gear are not interesting, unless they are expensive high end devices.
Expensive and "high end" (by that I think you mean "state-of-the-art") are not mutually inclusive. Many expensive equipment are technically junk. And this Micromega, for example, is under $200 on eBay (new shipped from the UK), and has pretty reasonable performance; better than multiple "high-end" new equipment that ASR recently tested. How does it make this not interesting?

If you are just looking to spend a lot of money, then by all means, just ignore the measurements (anywhere). But if you care about high-fidelity music reproductions, then performance matters more than money spent.
 

LLL

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That time is away from reviewing new gear, which surely interest most of the people.
Most of the people? According to whom?

Most people probably read What HiFi. This site exists for science-based performance, not for cost.

Since this is a science-focused website, unless there is a data point (a poll, maybe?), I don't think you can make such a claim.

Also, since you are requesting it, are you sending Amir some brand new high-end items to test? Or are you just expecting others or Amir to make the purchases?
 

graz_lag

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soundwave76

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Since this is a science-focused website, unless there is a data point (a poll, maybe?), I don't think you can make such a claim.

Lets have a poll then and let the community have a say. I am willing to bet $100 that the ASR community will prefer new gear reviews over old ones. Are you in? :)
 

Mnyb

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I think it's very interesting to review older stuff . For the perspective .

Example it's said here and elsewhere that for example DAC's reached practical transparency decades ago , But is it really so ? how do we know , measure some old good stuff , the stuff that was said to be very good at the time , then we know .

There are claims that some old amp designs are just as good as much as todays stuff ? really ? i'm curius about that.

Just my 2c .

I would love to se the Logitech transporter measured and an old meridian HT Processor . Others may have other ideas at what was good in 2000's and the 90's . Some users hera are extremely knowledgable about japanese hifi when they where good .

So some well choosen benchmarks from the past would set things into perspective .

Well choosen is the key ! measuring SET amp from the last 3 decades would be piontless, there has always been a lot of bad designed lauded by the audiophiles . So some well perfoming devices DAC/amps/preamps etc from the history of audio . Not just expensive stuff .

Botique high end from the past may perform as bad as nowadays or was it better way back , good question ? (before also the design process got corrupted by woo and snake oil ). Some classical high end stuff would also be interesting.

I have come to think that the audio industry always keeps up an illusion of progress , reading years of magisines in 80's trough to the 2000's you see well known Japanese brand advertising practically the same amp ,but they moved some knobs and led's around and giving it a new name ?
So i would expect 5 year old stuff to perform just as well as new stuff ? Or has things really moved on lately, for real ? Exceptions for the outliers like Benchmark with extreme performance.
 

Ceburaska

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Lets have a poll then and let the community have a say. I am willing to bet $100 that the ASR community will prefer new gear reviews over old ones. Are you in? :)
You’re very confident. I’m not so sure.
If I were an overconfident person I’d say the following:
“Outside of new product lines, such as streamers, I find new gear mostly uninteresting or rubbish.
Another test of a Dac or headphone amp? Boring. Both of those products have been solved...numerous outstanding models, and lots that are audibly transparent. So why test new ones? Just to see if they eke out another 1dB SINAD?
Much easier to take a rule, “if they don’t test it, it’s rubbish”. And if they do test it, Amir is likely just reproducing their results.
Old or new, what is still interesting is amplifiers, and I’d love to get Amir on a plane to Australia to test a bunch of @restorer-john’s old Sonys.
I’m sure they would outperform virtually anything currently made.”
But sure let’s have a poll. We love referenda in Britain.
 
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Willem

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Testing older gear is interesting because many of us have older gear. The question we face is a simple one: can I achieve sonic improvement by getting something new, or is the old stuff so good that no further sonic improvement is possible?
In my own case, I have tended to keep gear for very long periods of time because what I had was top quality in the early 1970's (Quad 33/303, Quad ELS57). Keeping gear for such a long time was financially very sensible, I think. I finally replaced the speakers some ten years ago with Quad 2805s, and more recently I bought a refurbished 2x140 watt Quad 606-2 because I needed more power for the new speakers and was playing in a much larger room. The sound quality improved, but only at higher levels. I am not convinced that a modern amplifier will bring further sonic improvement but I am happy to be proved wrong. So yes, I would love to see Amir measure the Quad 606-2 or 909. A few months ago I decided to replace the almost fifty year old (refurbished to be sure) Quad 33 pre amplifier with an RME ADI-2 DAC. This has proper digital inputs instead of the assortment of internal DACs in the sources that I was using, and the sound improvement is clearly there. My hunch is that the improvement is primarily due to the better pre amplification afforded by the ADI-2, because the Quad 33 does not really measure that well by current standards.
My point is that I had to take these decisions about replacing old but once high quality gear without measurement data, and it would have been nice to have those.
 

AudioSceptic

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flowjm

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In France this unit was a success and the press identified it as a bargain. With this test, we have an indication: sometimes some audiophile magazines publish, among bs and ads, interesting articles.

Thank you amirm.

For the same reason, I'd really like to see a review of the (original) Audiolab MDAC. It was a massive success at the time, and is still well regarded. It would be very interesting to see if What HiFi et al. were lauding a well engineered piece of equipment for once.
 

AudioSceptic

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For the same reason, I'd really like to see a review of the (original) Audiolab MDAC. It was a massive success at the time, and is still well regarded. It would be very interesting to see if What HiFi et al. were lauding a well engineered piece of equipment for once.
Yes, that and the Cambridge Dacmagic (most versions of both were Westlake designs I believe).
 

Labjr

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Reviews on some older components like preamps and amplifiers, shows that there are deals to be had.

Testing of older DACs has really drawn a contrast on how much better the technology has become in a short period. A $100 DAC performs better than nearly everything that came before it. regardless of price. We may never have known otherwise. That tells me DACs are not a good investment. Kind of like cell phones.
 

AudioSceptic

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Reviews on some older components like preamps and amplifiers, shows that there are deals to be had.

Testing of older DACs has really drawn a contrast on how much better the technology has become in a short period. A $100 DAC performs better than nearly everything that came before it. regardless of price. We may never have known otherwise. That tells me DACs are not a good investment. Kind of like cell phones.
Good point. Is there anything pre-2000, regardless of price, that would still be SOTA?
 

ElNino

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Good point. Is there anything pre-2000, regardless of price, that would still be SOTA?

Early PCM1704 gear (if well-implemented) and probably some better examples of PCM1702 gear should still be close to state of the art. CS4398 dates from that period, is still sold, and still measures competitively as well. The Pacific Microsonics gear should also still be close to state of the art. It depends if you insist on absolutely top-tier SINAD though.

Jitter rejection is likely going to be the weak point for that era, except for a few niche products like the Mark Levinson unit Amir has that used elaborate buffering schemes.
 

Frank Dernie

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That time is away from reviewing new gear, which surely interest most of the people.
Not me. I am interested in the older gear.
I would much rather have a nicely made used box than a brand new but a bit tacky box new for the same price, particularly since what I personally consider to be audibly transparent on music is anything in the top two sinad bands, and probably most of the third :)
 

VintageFlanker

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In France this unit was a success and the press identified it as a bargain. With this test, we have an indication: sometimes some audiophile magazines publish, among bs and ads, interesting articles.

Thank you amirm.
Hum. I see your point, but I beg to differ:

French audio press usually praises everything as a bargain (as in many countries)... So statically, they accidentally praised some product that did really perform.
 

JJB70

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Reviews on some older components like preamps and amplifiers, shows that there are deals to be had.

Testing of older DACs has really drawn a contrast on how much better the technology has become in a short period. A $100 DAC performs better than nearly everything that came before it. regardless of price. We may never have known otherwise. That tells me DACs are not a good investment. Kind of like cell phones.

DAC measurement may have improved, I am really not sure that a SOTA DAC of today will sound any better than a well implemented DAC of the last 30 years. One of the odd side effects of DAC measurement is it seems to have calibrated peoples expectations and rather than looking at them as indicating that DACs have long been at a point where distortion and noise are irrelevant as they are so vanishingly low we instead see good amplifiers etc (which are basically transparent) criticised for not matching the stellar performance of even average DACs. Unless you need particular esoteric features almost any DAC of my adult life will be perfectly satisfactory. The audio DAC is a commodity, most on-board DACs of devices are fine, let alone separate components.
 
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