The Cascade DAC - Technical Overview

[@aublumberg]

Amazing to hear the background of all the industrial design and manufacturing considerations and the strong drive for optimization and efficiency.

[@DanielGullmanFrancis]

Thanks! Glad you enjoyed. I am pretty excited with how far our manufacturing abilities have come.

[@BrentLeVasseur]

This is much of a promotion for Grob 5 axis CNC machines as it is for this DAC. lol How long does it take for the machine to mill a case from start to finish?

[@DanielGullmanFrancis]

We are really happy with that Grob! Hard not to talk about. Each Chassis is about 6 hours of machining. Currently checking out new CAM software to hopefully improve those run times further.

[@BrentLeVasseur]

@ That’s pretty cool! The chassis it mills look gorgeous. The smooth curves with no rough edges or tool gouge marks is impressive.

[@klaymoon1]

I love the new design! Does it have user selectable output impedance?

[@DanielGullmanFrancis]

The output impedance is driven by the number of Hybrid DACs. With 8, this matches the select DAC with 75 ohm.

[@klaymoon1]

@@DanielGullmanFrancis one the biggest factors in matching a preamp to a power amp is the impedance. It would be great if MBS let users select the desired output impedance like CH Precision.

[@DanielGullmanFrancis]

@@klaymoon1 ​ We designed our amplifiers to have selectable impedance instead of the DAC. In this case, the impedance is driven by the DAC modules directly so we didn't interfere with purity of the signal.

[@andreas7278]

@@DanielGullmanFrancis It makes sense not comprising the signal there unnecessarily. However, unfortunately this means that for anyone interested in using this DAC with power amps of any other brand can easily run into matching problems since power amps don't typically have this feature. So it's a system that has only been designed to be used as a full MSB chain.

[@DanielGullmanFrancis]

@@andreas7278 Thanks for the feedback, I think the inverse is more true for our preamp. It can easily drives most amps and will run into a few outliers that would be better with a preamp. There can’t be a “do all” design that plays well with everything, so we designed what we thought was best for the most people possible. The results speak for themselves.

[@Malangsufi]

I hope to own the MSB primer headphone setup one day. Keep up the great work, and please have more dealers in Sydney, impossible to find them for demo.

[@DanielGullmanFrancis]

Noted and thanks for the feedback! Cheers.

[@alectiong]

Why not MSB build in a streamer into the DAC?

[@DanielGullmanFrancis]

We do have a network renderer, but will never create a server. The lifespan of servers is quite short lived. We are a small company that wants to focus on long lasting digital. This way, people can choose the software experience they like best with their favored server.

[@goodsound4756]

The streamer module is in the "Director".

[@andreas7278]

I see a lot of nice touches and details here but at the same time a few things seem quite disappointing: 1. After having mentioned several ways of how they were able to cut down costs (e.g. maximize use of LEDs without any waste, getting 3 instead of 2 blocks for the same costs in chassis) all the key parts of the system seem to be exactly what used to be in the outgoing models. From an enduser perspective it seems like price indeed just went up by 20k from the old 3-box reference solution but since the sonic gains of separating the rather noisy digital section put it sonically above the old select II it works out marketing wise that "cost has been cut down for the end user". They clearly say that all these things stayed the same, just a complete redesign to put everything into different places. 2. It actually shows how much damage all the digital processing, from upsampling to all those digital filters actually does compared to NOS R2R DACs which simply don't produce all that noise in the first place. The whole cost of digital creator chassis on top of that is also necessary while having to live with the artefacts introduced in the digital processing. There is a reason it's called noise shaping. One may only try to mitigate the negative effects as much as possible when going down this approach (which MSB seems to be doing probably the best job out there right now in the industry) but it questions the viability of this whole approach in general. Every single processing step introduces some delays in the critical time domain (jitter) and while this DAC certainly does as much as possible at the highest level to mitigate this it makes the overal approach questionable. There is a reason a lot of other highend DACs intentionally chose to go for NOS R2R. 3. The massive power supply section is using heavy filtering to make the measurements "really good" and "calm everything down". Massive filtering exactly does this, like has been seen on all those massive filtering AC conditioners in the past. This approach harms a key concept of a good system, the dynamics are compromised. There has been a huge shift in how many top hifi companies approach good power and that's why we have so many highend passive power delivery systems which intentionally don't put massive capacitors and such into the path but instead rely on passive filtering effects which keeps all the good stuff in place only killing the noise. Just look at what Ansuz Mainz does in their power distributors or Boenicke Audio among so many others. Many people get rid of their active filtering power conditioners or distributors (in which they do active filtering like this, so basically the same) to get their dynamics back. I don't doubt for a single second that the noise floor is really low, it's calm, smooth and measures like crazy. But did you also measure dynamics? I am not sold on this massive active filtering I see here. Transients is what make music alive and believable after all, not single note pitches. Can someone from MSB maybe go into detail on the cost side of things and why they use this approach of going nuts on digital processing and the way they filter the power with those massive capacitors? It seems like a mixed bag of some sort. On the one hand some pretty crazy engineering and attention to details is put in but the approach seems to introduce tons of issues which then have to be all solved really well. Tidal Audio intentinoally using NOS R2R and don't filter in their crazy Tidal for Bugatti DAC, SW1X is not doing it in their DAC X silver for 140k, Lampizator Horizon is not even dreaming of it, Stavros Danos from Aries Cerat explained in intervies why they believe that this should not be done and can be seen in their whole lineup not only in their Ithaka and Homerus DACs. These types of products sound extremely dynamic. I would love to see a section going into details on why they actually choose their approach.

[@alessandrobonicalzi1394]

Interesting

[@goodsound4756]

Will I be able to choose a sound profile like analytical/neutral/musical? Not all listeners have the same favorite characteristic in music reproduction.

[@DanielGullmanFrancis]

Hello. The Cascade will not have this option, but you have several avenues to pursue this. First, I will say why not all three? The Cascade doesn't have to sacrifice one of those for the others. You can also get a music player that will process the files before playback to show your specific characteristics. And then, probably most common, is speaker preference. Speakers often decide the "feel" of a system. We have Magicos and Estelon speakers in our listening room and these two show very different performances.

[@martisgod804]

I wish I had money to buy this.

[@briancampbell7712]

how does it compare to Aqua Audio Formula from Milan Italy❓

[@bobpirzada6323]

i love my MSB DAC, the best.

[@jc51373]

Until you hear the Totaldac

[@Bigirondoug]

Hope all these cost savings will be passed on as a more affordable product.

[@DanielGullmanFrancis]

Of course! There are only three of us doing this engineering work, so it will take some time ;) For now, the manufacturing improvements are fighting inflation and increased cost of materials.

[@simonhebert7069]

The european dude sounds like Rose’s cousin Sven from The Golden Girls… WOOWW… 🤣😂🤣

[@BuzzardSalve]

People make DAC's because they can't fix loudspeaker problems. Problems with loudspeakers are the most difficult to fix which is why companies like this make products that pretend to solve lots of problems when the problems in loudspeakers still exist no matter how expensive their DACs are !!

[@DanielGullmanFrancis]

Sorry to hear that has been your experience, I hope one day you get to hear good digital, amplification, and speakers.

[@BuzzardSalve]

@@DanielGullmanFrancis How does your expensive DAC and amps fix loudspeaker problems ?? From what I can see, all you are doing is selling expensive ice to an eskimo.

[@BuzzardSalve]

@@Jay-eo3wl And that comment makes no sense either because a speaker converts electrical energy into acoustical energy which is what you hear. Find me one speaker that does its conversion better or more transparently than even the cheapest of DACs ?? I bet you can't ;)

[@BuzzardSalve]

@@Jay-eo3wl And of course the more expensive DAC with the more expensive CNC milled out case always happens to be the best :D LOL Like I said show me one speaker that is more transparent than the cheapest of DACs available ? To help you along a bit it should have a flat frequency response within +/-0.02dB from 20Hz to 20kHz. Ultra low distortion of at least 0.001%. Flat or linear phase response from 20Hz to 20KHz. Huge dynamic range of at least 120dB ;) Any contenders ??

[@BuzzardSalve]

@@Jay-eo3wl You can't address the real issue can you. I'll make it easy for you. Get your yourself a cheap transistor radio with its 2 inch speaker and power that speaker with this dudes megabuck dac and megaback amplifer and what do you hear ?? Now get yourself a cheap Topping DAC and a cheap amplifier of reasonable quality and then connect that up to a speaker of the same value as this dudes dac and amplifier. Which sounds better ?? And this is the reason why you should always throw most of your money at the weakest link in the chain which is still the loudspeaker by a long shot otherwise you are just fiddling around the edges ;)