Matt's system

[Jwg1749]

IMO in a digital system speakers are the most important component.

Hi Matt why would this be any different from a traditional analogue system? Curious to understand your thinking here.

Guillaume

Sorry, I wasn't clear: what I meant by "most important" was "deserving the largest slice of the budget". Two related reasons:
1. it's possible to get very high quality from a fairly low spend on a digital front end and DAC; the same isn't true of turntables.
2. experience suggests that people with high-end analogue systems do spend a large proportion of their budget on the turntable.

I think a really interesting experiment would be to compare the Magtech against the 200 powering your Sonus Faber speakers!

Also I wasn't clear on something... with the Magtech what pre-amp are you using? Or are you using a digital volume control in the M-DAC?

Guillaume

I did a very quick comparison on Friday: M-DAC and Magtech VS 200 (with SAM): I preferred the 200. It sounded cleaner and more transparent. Nice firm and tuneful bass too.

The best explanation of the problem with the Martin Logans is that the Dev couldn't provide sufficient voltage and was clipping. Not in a grossly distorting manner, but enough to rob the music of some of its depth and transparency. The Dev produces plenty of current, which is great for driving resistive loads such as electrodynamic speakers; but like many solid state amps it can't generate enough voltage to drive the capacitative load presented by a 'static.

Re. the M-DAC: yes, I'm using its digital volume control.

Matt