I’ve been on a bit of a journey with the Mystique V3 and I changed a lot of stuff around in my chain since I first got the DAC, so I haven’t really been talking about it much. But it seems like Mojo is kind of in the air these days, so I figured I’d write an update with my thoughts after owning the V3 for a couple months. Sorry in advance for the rambles.
Listening to the Mystique V3 after owning the Exogal really felt like I had crossed some kind of threshold. Things sounded good before, but the Mystique V3 really was on another level. I remember reading hifiDJ’s Spring 3 review and seeing their aside about aiming higher for a Utopia, and I immediately 100% understood the sentiment, lol:
To be completely frank, I personally wouldn’t aim for this level of DAC with the Utopia or D8kP (hear me out). Over the many months of owning and living with the Spring, I’ve never felt satisfied in terms of straight performance and resolution (even before hearing an Amber). That being said, I’m not implying that it cannot sound enjoyable or that it sounds unacceptable. But if you want to hear (or start to hear) what the Utopia/D8kP can be capable of, I highly encourage shopping DACs around the $5k range new, or ~$3k used if you can swing it. After getting the Amber, I realized that that’s when you start to approach the actual value the Utopia/D8kP sells for.
I would echo this same thought given my experience with the Mystique V3 and the MYSPHERE 3. I definitely had a similar moment of like, okay, now it’s starting to sound like I’m hearing what the MYSPHERE can do.
Not too long ago, a few deals came around on some Mojo DACs, and NickMimi reached out to me to ask 1) is the Mystique V3 /really/ an improvement over the Exogal? and 2) should they sell some stuff and buy a Mojo DAC?
My answer to #1 was “yes,” the Mystique was definitely an obvious improvement over the Exogal, but my answer to #2 was actually “no,” that I didn’t think that Nick should buy one.
The way these two DACs present sound is quite different. I’m going to explain this really poorly, but the Mystique V3 kind of sounds like you’re in a pool of blackness, and individual sounds are these droplets that ripple outwards in all directions. The Exogal, while it’s not on the same technical level, sounds more enveloping, and the individual sounds feel more like they’re all sharing the same space with each other. The Exogal is also more set back, so while the depth between the two is probably pretty similar, the depth in the sound is a bit more obvious on the Exogal, and in general, I think the Exogal is probably better if you want a more sit back and relax kind of listen.
At the time, I blamed this difference on the lack of oversampling, which is part of the reason I did the whole HQPlayer thing, but the V3 definitely still has a certain character of it’s own no matter what oversampling filter you use.
When I first posted in this thread about the V3, multiple forum friends made it clear that I shouldn’t be using my phone as a source. (I personally found that my phone was a better source than my laptop, but I understand that neither are ideal.) But yeah, part of what continues to muddy my opinion about the Mystique V3 is that I’ve done a lot of trying to dial in my chain in the wake of buying it.
Since buying the DAC, I bought a microRendu and a fiber optic ethernet converter and a passive pre and I bought a bunch of new cables (USB, coax, RCA interconnects) and that’s on top of messing around with HQPlayer. But I will say, pretty much all of this has been rewarding. The microRendu improved the dynamics, the Curious Evolved USB cable brought me a boost in technicalities, adding a modded Goldpoint attenuator and some Anticables 6.2 RCAs brought more texture to the sounds, etc etc.
However, my overall takeaway isn’t so much that these cables I’ve bought are particularly amazing or anything, but more that my previous chain was likely being bottlenecked by all the little things that I hadn’t taken the time to upgrade.
And I know people say that upgrading cables and stuff won’t make a DAC sound like a different DAC (which is true), but all of these tweaks have felt really worthwhile with regards to tilting the sound in a direction that I like. I’m legitimately excited to buy some new power cables, lol.
I definitely like the V3 more than when I first bought it, and some of it is that I’ve tweaked a bunch of stuff around it, but some of it is probably just that it’s grown on me over time, and unfortunately those things aren’t especially easy to separate from each other.
So um, anyway, the Mojo Mystique V3 sounds fucking incredible, the space is awesome, percussive elements are addictive, it takes really well to tweaks and to oversampling, but it might not be for you depending on your preferences and what kind of experience you’re looking for. It might not even be for me and my preferences, I dunno.