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Mola Mola Tambaqui DAC and Streamer Review

Purité Audio

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Mola are introducing a ‘streaming’ module for the Makua, preamp, DAC, phono stage and ROON all in one box.
What else can do all that?
Keith
 

Joachim Herbert

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Purité Audio

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I don’t need power, active loudspeakers, I have tried DIrac I don’t think I would use it now.
Keith
 

Svperstar

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Very impressive. Too bad "Mola Mola Tambaqui" is probably the worst name I've ever heard. lol.
 

Xulonn

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but it's a very good answer to all those who say on other audiophile sites that ASR's first intention is to "explode" high-end equipment.

Indeed. I am very pleased with the Mola Mola's performance, because it does several things:
  • Establishes the fact that a very expensive, very "well-engineered" DAC can indeed be the very best of the lot when judged by ASR's "aribitrary" and controversial - but logical - single factor benchmark - SINAD. A moneyed audiophile with one of these has very credible bragging rights.
  • The competence and excellence of the Mola Mola DAC helps to establish one of our regular "technical expert" members, a person who does not hide behind a handle or fake name, as deserving of the reputation he brings with him to ASR.
  • The Mola Mola at the top allows the less expensive, but also well engineered DACs from around the world to compete to match it.
  • And as Fredo said, publishing this test destroys the ignorant myth that ASR intentionally denigrates expensive boutique audio components.
  • This DAC test reinforces the ethical reputation of ASR that will allow any designer and manufacturer of expensive, high-end audio components to send them to Amir for testing if such gear is indeed well engineered and not a bottle of snake oil. Companies who resist having their gear independently tested will remain suspect.
 

Joachim Herbert

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I don’t need power, active loudspeakers, I have tried DIrac I don’t think I would use it now.
Keith

Nor do I. Roon > pi/DigiOne> Adam S3V. But an impressive package for $5,000.
 

renevoorburg

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Matias

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The Mola Mola DAC module is custom designed and used both in Tambaqui standalone DAC and as an optional module for the Makua preamp.

View attachment 45040

https://www.mola-mola.nl/dac.php

Inside the Tambaqui itself.

image--001.jpg


And the same module inside Makua preamp.
image--007.png


The difference between the two is that the Tambaqui employs a digital volume control where the Makua employs an analogue control (relay-based directly controls the gain of the output stage).
 
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MenloBob

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Shouldn’t this get the Golf swing panther for setting a new performance standard?
 

anmpr1

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It's probably an afterthought. But who knows, maybe it's good. We'll see when amir measures it.
An $11,000.00 component should not have any 'afterthoughts'. For that price, it should be pretty perfect. Also, after realizing the form factor (it's 12/5 inches deep), the placement of a phone plug in the back is ridiculous. Stacked with a preamp and amp, and it's unusable. What's more, my guess is that anyone who can afford this machine probably has a dedicated headphone amp. So, what is even the point? That part of the design on this otherwise SOA product is just plain weird.
 

Purité Audio

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anmpr1

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Very impressive. Too bad "Mola Mola Tambaqui" is probably the worst name I've ever heard. lol.
If it's the best, it can be called "My Little Pink Pony" and still hold its head up high. Or, as someone has probably already said, it should me Moola Moola, given its price. But, again, if it's the best, it can have the best price.
 

Frank Dernie

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Very impressive. Too bad "Mola Mola Tambaqui" is probably the worst name I've ever heard. lol.
I am a lover of sea life and one of my favourites is Mola Mola, and I have eaten barbecued Tambaqui, a fruit eating Amazonian fresh water fish, on a floating restaurant on the river so I rather like the name...
 
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amirm

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Shouldn’t this get the Golf swing panther for setting a new performance standard?
I use the soccer one for European products with the same value. :)
 

Tks

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Color me surprised (I seemed to have noticed after scrolling around and seeing internal pics, proper isolation of parts seems to play a very important role in performance).

As @Xulonn said perfectly, this dispels that ALL high cost devices don't strive for measurement-based performance.

Only issue being that filter a bit (though a FR may shed more light if there's anything odd going on). Oh and one physical issue I have is those front buttons. That is just plain eye'rollingly bad. At least have some sort of internal beveling or something, little nipples sticking out like that is just meh, reminds me of the sort of stuff I used to see when I used to vape. Here's one with a similar plain look as the Mola Mola buttons, and one with more compelling finishing.

IMG_7233.jpg


IMG_7424.jpg
 

KarVi71

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Mola are introducing a ‘streaming’ module for the Makua, preamp, DAC, phono stage and ROON all in one box.
What else can do all that?
Keith

The NAD C658 does streaming, preamp, DAC, phono stage (only MM), and Roon, (and some more) all in one box.
I own one, and find it to be rather good.
I wonder why the Roon endpoint in it is not certified yet (Roon works perfectly with it), as the product has been on the market for about a year.
 
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amirm

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@amirm Bruno posts that the ADC is limiting the measurements and that a notch at 1 kHz should be used to show the DUT real distortion artifacts. I know this is not the standard measurements here in ASR, but for this one, could you make an exception and test his hypothesis?
Ok, more time to type now. :)

The problem is at hand is how to get an Analog to Digital Converter (ADC) to have less distortion than state of the art DAC under test. Even the best ADCs are going to have distortions of their own that in many cases can be higher than the DAC. There are two solutions to this. One is to notch out the 1 kHz as Bruno mentions. By doing so, the ADC is left with very low level signal to capture and hence, its distortion products become negligible. This was the solution used in older Audio Precision analyzers which Bruno is using.

The new general APx555 analyzers do this differently. Instead one, two ADCs are used. One path is notched out as before and fed to one ADC. Then an unmodified path is fed to the second one. Then the output of the two are stitched together to produce a single graph. This way, you see the primary tone as well as distortion products. With the other methods, there is a hole where the 1 kHz tone would have been making the display odd.

I have explained this here: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...s-a-new-audio-precision-analyzer-apx555.3442/

And there is a short video demonstrating the same:

 
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