Musical Fidelity VDAC

[Luvin Da Blues]

........In comparison, the Music Hall sounded more closed in/congested..........

I find this also when using the single ended connections. Maybe a tube swap would help. Have you tried the balance outputs? Makes for a world of difference.

[LeRoy]

I find this also when using the single ended connections. Maybe a tube swap would help. Have you tried the balance outputs? Makes for a world of difference.

I have not tried any other connections on the M.H. other than the USB. I will have to investigate the other outputs as time allows for it. Since it's a loaner made available to me I don't want to mess with changing out tubes just yet.

Hopefully I will have more time this weekend to putz around with different connectivity and give it another round. Besides, I am anticipating the Stello transport to be arriving any day now so I really am going spend lots of QT with the gear.

[LeRoy]

I find this also when using the single ended connections. Maybe a tube swap would help. Have you tried the balance outputs? Makes for a world of difference.

As it turns out...we don't have any balanced output cables to play with and even if we did the Belles Soloist Pre-Amp and the Rega Brio 3 Integrated don't have balanced input connectivity. So, the testing of the Music Hall is over and done with.

I was surprised to find the M.H. to be such a large unit and is about the same size as my XRAY CDP. Anyway, no way I can give any kind of overall fair assessment of the M.H. DAC without trying out the different options for connectivity.