In fact, the most significant trend I see in the progression from the original Link DAC to the DAC II and DAC III is the ease and…
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I have a warm spot in my heart for MSB's approach to product development. They come from a tweaker heritage and still practice the art: MSB will happily install a 24-bit/192kHz upsampler in your CD player, a 5.1-channel input in your DPL amp or receiver, and true 24/96 outputs in your DVD player. Their standalone products, starting with the original Link DAC, are designed from the start to include space for later additions and enhancements.
The Platinum Link Plus has the same footprint and is twice as high and exactly twice as heavy as the Link DAC III. The Link Plus's built-in power supply is the P1000 Power Base, which I thought was a profound improvement when I reviewed the III in September 2000.
DAC on the Block
I seem to experience a feeding frenzy of DACs every year or two, and the Platinum Link Plus arrived while I was in the midst of the latest one. On the one hand, these frenzies make it easier to set up comparisons that emphasize specific differences; on the other, they make it hard for me to keep an…
Was the sound worse without upsampling and/or interpolation? Only by a very little, and this was revealed only by a slight loss of the MSB's smooth frequency and spatial integrity. MSB has done their homework in adapting their algorithms to interact optimally with each other, and that's the best we can ask of a design team. In fact, one might question the necessity of having these as options and not as fixed settings.
I found the Phase Invert switch and the filter-slope adjustments useful. The need for the former is, despite much debate, still controversial among many audiophiles.…
Sidebar 1: Specifications
Description: Platinum Link Plus Sign-Magnitude Ladder digital-to-analog converter. Inputs: 5 digital, S/PDIF coax, S/PDIF TosLink, AES/EBU, 2 MSB Network, 1 pair balanced (XLR) analog bypass. Outputs: 2 pairs analog output jacks (RCA, XLR). Sampling rate: 32-96kHz input (192kHz via MSB Network). Upsampling ratio: 4x. Interpolation: 8x, 16x. Dynamic range: 136dBA Signal/noise ratio: 136dB. Channel separation: >130dB. THD+noise: 0.006%. Analog outputs at 0dB: 3.6V RMS (RCA), 7.5V RMS.
Dimensions: 17" W by 3.5" H by 14" D. Weight: 36 lbs net.
Serial number…
Sidebar 2: Associated Equipment
Analog source: Heybrook TT2 turntable, SME III tonearm, Ortofon SME30H cartridge.
Digital sources: Meridian 508.24 CD player, Meridian Reference 800/861 DVD-Audio player/control unit, Sony SCD-XA777ES SACD player; Mark Levinson No.360S, Musical Fidelity A324, and Weiss Medea DACs.
Preamplification: Sonic Frontiers Line-3 line stage, Audiolab 8000PPA phono stage.
Power amplifiers: Bel Canto EVo2, Sonic Frontiers Power-3, Classé CAM-350 monoblocks.
Loudspeakers: Revel Ultima Studio.
Cables: Interconnect: AudioQuest Anaconda, Python, balanced;…
Sidebar 3: Measurements
The MSB Platinum Link Plus locked on to S/PDIF and AES/EBU datastreams with sample rates ranging from 32kHz to 96kHz. However, at the highest sample rates, the 4x oversampling button LED changed to 2x oversampling, meaning that the DAC chips run at the same high rate when fed 44.1kHz and 88.2kHz data. The maximum output level at 1kHz was 7.046V from the balanced XLR jacks, 3.522V from the unbalanced RCAs. The latter is almost 5dB higher than the CD Standard's 2V RMS, meaning that care needs to be taken to match levels in A/B comparisons. The Platinum didn't invert…
Harmonic distortion was very low, even into the punishing 600 ohm test load (fig.7), where the highest-level harmonic was the second, at -94dB (0.002%). However, I was a little bothered by the appearance of higher-order harmonics in the spectrum, so I repeated the test using a higher frequency and an analyzer with a higher dynamic range than the Audio Precision System One. Fig.8 shows that the MSB does indeed produce some odd-order harmonics. While these are still at a very low level, they will, all things being equal, be more audible than the more usual second and third harmonics, due to…
MSB Platinum DAC: Manufacturer's Comment
Editor: We at MSB Technology have been producing DACs for over 15 years, and frankly were disappointed at the lack of attention paid to the totally unique character of this DAC. This is the first DAC produced by MSB that is an original discrete design. This means that it does not use any commercial DAC chip internally. We designed and produced a novel DAC design with discrete parts, whose performance is unlike any DAC ever measured or listened to by Stereophile.
Many years ago, all DACs were ladder DACs. Then came a new design: the single-…
What's in a name? One of my favorite Rodrigues cartoons (footnote 1) shows a meeting of a loudspeaker manufacturer's marketing people, trying to come up with a name for the company's latest product:
"Why don't we call it 'XTL-3340'?"
"How about 'GA-75V'?"
"I've got it! The TXT-9'!"
Another approach to naming a speaker is to use a term that suggests something positive about its performance. "Revelation" implies that listening to the speaker will reveal previously hidden or obscure truths. There's also a religious association—Hales Design Group may be…
While the Revelation Three does not make a major industrial design statement, there's a certain elegance in its simplicity and the quality of its fit'n'finish. One distinctive decorative touch is the sculpted diagonal highlight in the grillecloth; this styling feature was introduced in the Hales Design Group's more expensive Concept series, and is implemented here in an easier-to-manufacture manner. The elasticized grille cloth fits into a groove running behind the baffle. While it's possible to remove the grillecloths, doing so without damaging the fabric is a tricky matter, and replacing…