Playback Designs

I got the MPD 3 after hearing the MPD 5 because of the price difference and am very happy with my choice for DSD listening. The difference in price to my ears was not worth the small increase in performance.

A couple of issues to be aware of though.

First the designer of the DAC has not done any output filtering so if you feed it into a very high bandwidth amp (the one I used had a 3db of 10Mhz) you can have problems with rustling noises etc during playback probably caused by the amp amplifying very high frequency stuff it would normally not be fed.

Secondly it's a noisy dac compared to others I own and you need to use a pre amp rather than direct connect it and use the volume control in a player on a computer. Using a pre-amp the noise is perfectly OK but otherwise its a bit annoying.

Finally via DSD this DAC blows anything I have heard away and everyone I have demoed it to agrees. However via PCM other cheaper DAC's are better - its not bad via PCM but to my ears in my system other DAC's sound better.

Thanks
Bill

If you want SACD playback, the MPS5 is the only one that does it. The MPS3 is CD only.

I think you are getting the last bit of performance on the MPS5 for double the price.

Bill,

Will that noisy issue also happens in 5 ?