Just bought the Mangird Tea a couple days ago impulsively on sale. Figured I’ve been saving so long for my living room setup, I should reward myself with one new toy. Will be in next Friday. Any owners here with their thoughts?
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A quick follow up on the M Scaler I have on loan. I threw together my thoughts after a full days use.
After a day of using the Hugo M Scaler with my Qutest I find myself being very impressed.
The overall sound is more focused, with snappier leading edges, which allow for better separation, and even better transients (probably the single thing I love most about Chord DACs).
It’s just a “more of everything” sound that doesn’t really change the Qutest’s voicing, but more so sharpens things up. It’s not brighter, but more crisp. The Qutest still has what I’d call a polite presentation, but it’s enhanced with greater perceivable detail, separation, and a perceived increase in soundstage (those transients really flow into the ether).
Of course this is enhanced with tubes (tubes make everything better 
), but it’s noticeable with a pure SS playback chain. Guitars especially have a special kind of sweetness with reverberations. The notes just carry on, and on…
The biggest surprise was how stage height increased. It’s still that spherical Chord sound, but the height of how things are presented really increased. I’m told this is a result of Chord’s solutions for Time Domain, which makes sense (as much as I understand these complex issues).
Is it worth the high asking price? It’s subtle, but for me very perceivable and I don’t want to listen to my little Qutest without it. The value proposition is very questionable for a DAC with an MSRP of $1700 (about $5k for the M Scaler). I’m gonna be doing some serious thinking about my setup, but I can honestly say that I’m leaning toward buying an M Scaler.
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Got myself a PC panel and a bifrost 2 (thanks @don )
have not had much time with the Bifrost yet to lay down any impressions. but the PC panel I can write about cause I’m impressed with the software. the hardware is cheaply made and the knobfeel is atrocious. but what it does functionally for me is awesome. allows me to have physical controls of specific software you set it to so if you were listening to music in game but wanted to turn musc down you can do that. the knobs are also buttons which allow me to mute and unmute but what I discovered is it allows you to swap from DAC to DAC and lets you program which specific DAC to swap to at the press of a button I can now swap from my new Bifrost to my old d10 to my old liquid spark DAC whenever I feel
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this is honestly what Im the most excited about right now cause multiple DACs have always bbothered me cause of the steps of swapping from one to the other but this thing just fixed it. I didnt even know prior to buying it.
When you just decide to say fuckit. This should be cross posted in the mental health and audiophelia threads as well.
Weiss 502 DAC/Streamer
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ey! that one for 7700 or whatever it was? Let us know how you like it. Im fairly tempted by a 501 tbh
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$7700 That’s like Golden Gate territorry! lol
No, much more negotiating but I think I got it at a fair price given you don’t see many up for sale. I’ve been saying that I was going to sell my old Porsche for a while and finally sold it this week, this is just me getting something nice instead of putting it all into my 401k retirement fund like I should be doing.
It’s end game though, so I keep telling myself and I’ll be able to sell some things to recoup some of the crazy outlay.
…and as always, if I hate it, I’ll just blame @M0N
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Ooooooohhhhhhhhhh
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In a surprising turn of events, I am now the owner of a beautiful African Blackwood Auteur with brass grills and rods. It’s a headphone I’ve wanted ever since I saw it 4 years ago. The almost mythical status of the Blackwood edition only fueled the fire, and it certainly didn’t help my self control today. I’ll be comparing it to my Ash Auteur and Olive VC. No one should have this much luxury in their lives! It’s not healthy.
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Multiple dacs was what caused me to switch to linux in the end 
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LTA MZ3 arrived today. @don is the man w/ a plan and I’m hoping our little “horse-trade” works out great for us both.
Now to put this through its paces and see what she does all across a variety of systems and performance matrixes…hehehe
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Twinsies!
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Really looking forward to your impressions! And always happy to see gear arriving alive 
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I was finally able to get the klipsch rp600 affordably, recommended by mon, veritas and nickmimi… so now my first “good” speaker system is almost complete.
I say almost because I have no speaker cables, rn im recycling old cables so that I can actually hear them.
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Love the space! Looks like a combo work, relax, gaming area. 
Nice!
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Yooooooo sick looking setup! You look like a professional audio guy lol. Looks cool! Gonna have to estrenarlo with some kpop!
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Thanks! its literally that, currently my home office is my bedroom
@Littledrummerboy Uhm Jung Hwa es la elegida para estrenarlas
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Niceeee! Very exciting!! I’ve heard great things about those speakers!
Algo leve lol, aunque que old skool 
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I totally am dig’n the Seahorse !
Also, nice setup.
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