Young Dac: M2Tech.

M2TECH Young DAC.



Like a few people on the forums I've been following the development on John Westlake's latest range of dac products for quite a while- 3 years in fact since I started following his discussion thread on DIY-Audio.com. Finally it appears that a limited number are making their way into the hands of our foreign cousins who were lucky enough to have importers who could be bothered to cover the air-freight cost rather than stick them on the slow boat that might eventually bring them to the UK.

I couldn't wait any longer to be honest. Yesterdays must have dac item will be unlikely to still be on the top of the pile in 6 months time such is the pace at which refinements are made, enhanced sample rates added and new communication protocols developed . USB was barely a glint in the eye of serious dac designers when I purchased my last dac. It didn't offer 'enhanced anything' over spdif and was the poor relation in terms of sound quality due to designers having to rely on a very limited number of USB receiver chipsets. Not so today, Async USB sits atop the data communication protocol tree, nudged up on the top seat alongside Firewire. Both protocols offer the ability to run asynchronously allowing the dac to control the generation of the time code and also the rate at which the source sends data to fill the buffers for the dac chips themselves; in terms of jitter performance and sound quality the best of these Async interfaces seem to have the old standards beaten.

My own reference for the past three year has been the Cambridge Audio 840c CD player, a 24bit/192khz sample-rate Toslink and electrical spdif input equipped player that uses dual AD1955 dac chips to handle an Asynchronously up-sampled 384khz signal provided by a 32 bit Black fin DSP chip. When this was a new unit there wasn't a cd player under £3000 with the same sample rate capability and input/output flexibility. Never being satisfied with anything I had the unit modded with the addition of a Tentlabs clock and shunt regulated power supply. The dac chips were given a Paul Hynes shunt reg supply and the output stage was heavily modified, being rebuilt with lower noise op-amps, better decoupling caps and then biased into class A. It has been a very good player, having the edge over my vinyl front end for most of the past three years. A recent upgrade to my vinyl set-up and the addition of a Benz LP cartridge has however swung things back in analogues favour- it was time to upgrade the digital front end.



When I purchased the 840c, CD was my digital source, about 8 months into its residence my laptop became my music repository and I connected up by Toslink. Things stayed like this for a long time then about 18 months ago I purchase a Macbook pro, and the optical out on that sounded worse than on my ACER laptop, ITunes didn't beat Foobar for sound quality, even it did beat it by miles for ease of use and reliability. The Mac was here to stay, so I needed to find some way of improving the output from my Mac. I tried a few Optical to spdif convertors, they made things worse, I tried Songbird, the library database was slow, I tried an external 192khz Firewire soundcard, an improvement but too many boxes and too many cables. Then I came across the Hiface from M2Tech, this little device promised to use a USB port to provide up to 24/192, important for me as I have quite a lot of 176.4/192khz classical music on disc. The Hiface did exactly what it said it did, and for £100 it has been a reliable and unobtrusive bargain. Talk of Hiface mods abounded on the internet after a few months; bodgers were offering upgraded power supplies that looked as if they had been designed in the dark by a suicide bomber. People talked about out of spec spdif level that benefitted from attenuation, my Hiface just played on and on.

An improved Hiface unit with multiple input/output options and the ability to be used with a variety of external power supplies was created- dubbed the Hiface Evo this little box of tricks did it all, for almost any interface format other than Firewire. I was tempted but resisted, if the designer has made this surely he is going to stick a dac onto the end of that at some point, right?



And so here we are, with one from the first shipment of the new M2Tech Young dac, a spdif electrical/optical/ AES/ST-optical/Asynchronous USB 2.0, 384khz input capable dac. It comes in an extruded 20cm square 5cm high aluminium case with a cnc'd logo on the top; the front of the unit has two push buttons, on/off on the LHS and on the RHS a button to cycle through all the input options. Plug the supplied 15v wall-wart supply up it's backside and away you go.

I have to admit to liking its looks right from the start, a compact simple, and practical unit appeals to me, that much is no doubt obvious from what I've written so far. If it just sounded as good as my current unit, but looked as it does then I would have purchased it simply on the basis of its appearance, having a Hiface built inside it and its compact size- oh yes, I'm that shallow. Of course, it doesn't sound as good as my old dac. It actually sounds better.



Since adding the Benz LP to my vinyl set-up my deck has been able to leave to my digital front end in the cold, not only did it have the smoother and more realistic treble that has always separated analogue from digital to my ears but it also had considerably greater weight in the bass, more snap and was able to reveal far greater texture to bass guitar, double bass and kick drum. The Young was intended to redress that balance.

Even from first being plugged in it was apparent that the Young was a sound much closer to what I was looking for, it brought the sound of my digital front end towards the limpid clarity, ease of flow and fatigue free resolution that my vinyl rig provides. My 840c was left floundering with hollow bass lacking in texture. The small amount of digital treble sheen that still remained was brought into bright contrast by the precise, articulate treble of the Young that betrayed no trace of its digital origins. After half an hour of playing either I acclimatized fully to the Young or it settled down/warmed up/burnt in, call it what you will, after 30 minutes use the midrange of the Young had opened out even more bringing an added coherence to massed instruments and highlighting the sense of interplay that exists between the lead and other violins on my favourite Mozart Violin concertos, (192khz, naturally). Technically they are broadly similar players, cutting the filter inputs off their dac chips to handle higher sample rates provided by internal DSP processes- the Young uses a Xlinik Spartan DSP chip to perform the pre-dac number crunching. Where the Young steps out is in its USB input ability, offering a 384khz sampling rate 'input' that no other Async dac can yet match.

The Young is certainly a part finished product, there aren't even a full set of Mac OSX drivers available yet, so all my listening has been made via my old Hiface, I haven't had the chance to try its own in built Hiface Evo and 384khz compatible Async USB 2.0 inputs. I can't imagine they'll sound any worse than the Hiface/spdif input I've been using- potentially it could sound a whole lot better.

The Young dac has provided me with the step up I was looking for and has leveled the playing field between my vinyl and digital front ends again, if anything I'm leaning towards the digital as having the edge, certainly with higher sample rate material- it really is that good. I'm looking forward to the OSX drivers arriving and will probably build out a higher quality power supply than the supplied wall wart. If you love what a Hiface has done for you so far then like me I guess you'll be tempted by what the Young has to offer, once you hear it I'm sure you'll be amazed by the value for money it represents. It's a keeper.

 

Many Thanks for the review Simon. How much is the DAC?

 

Not sure, Keith had messed up the pricing when he announced it so he's wearing part of the VAT, very decent of him. I think it's mid 900's

 

Thanks. So it's competing against BM, Lavry etc.

 

I like the funky display.

 

Dev, very much so, but with newer tech.


Rob, yeh it's a funky thing, dot matrix, but behind a smaller circular mesh cut out, it's a nice looking thing, actually quite dinky.

 

Simon, how have you setup iTunes on the Mac for best sound quality through the HiFace? I have the HiFace Evo and this is one learning curve that I'm keen to get over!

 

I do nothing at all. Everything is turned of in ITunes, volume set to full, sample rate is set to 44.1 in the midi control and the hiface is selected through the 'sounds' preferences panel as the output device.

There's nothing to set really.

 

Exactly what I did. My HiFace feeds a Meridian DAC.

 

NEW DRIVERS AND BATTERY POWER.

It was a busy weekend, new drivers for the Young, enabling 384khz sample rates over USB, I only have to find some source material for it and I lashed up a battery power supply. With both of these inhand it seemed to make sense to revisit my earlier thoughts on the young and how it fares.

Young with native drivers vs Hiface:

I loaded the drivers yesterday morning and listened to the Young again, going through my 20 track demo playlist. To be honest I didn't notice any difference, nothing that stood out as being better or worse. So as a sanity check I plugged the Hiface back inand had another listen- ahh. yeh ok, the Hiface isn't as layered in the soundstage, doesn't seem quite so planted in the room and the treble is a touch coarse compared to the Young. That's a result.

Young with native drivers vs Hiface Evo:
Well the Evo is better than the Hiface, no doubt about that, in fact I'm struggling to tell these apart truth be told. I can't honestly say I can really hear any solid difference between the Evo feeding the Young and the Young connected directly to my Mac using the cheap ass USB cable they supply. It sounds bloody good, both of them are better than the basic Hiface. This is hard to describe, it's like reducing jpg compression by a few % overall before saving a photo, there's not one area that really shows up, it's like a final polish to an already remarkably clean window.

Young with native driver and battery power:



Ok, I know she's not much to look at with straggly wires coming out of her, lying there on her side showing you her back end, but she packs a punch, 4 x 2500mAh LiFepo batteries kicking out a handy 17v at max charge dropping to 14v once they start fading. I figure the Young isn't drawing an amp so i reckon this should be good for ten hours serious listening off a full charge. I will probably get round to casing it up, with a built in trickle charger that can be switched onto while the dac is off at some point in the future but for now- well there she is. I wasn't expecting much difference here, I've used battery power on other bits of kit before, my Passlabs B1 for example and that didn't give much if anything more. But that's not happening here, adding battery power has made a big difference here, more than the new drivers did.

There are a lot of differences. On Stairway to Heaven the entire sound-stage has opened right out, the intro string section is not panned way outside of one speaker, it used to be quite firmly glued to it. The height of the stage seems to have increased as well, with a touch more added depth thrown in for good measure. This is by far the most convincing stereo imagery i've ever had in this room, it's distractingly good almost.

Bass has stepped up its game somewhat as well. Flipping between vinyl and cd versions of William Shatner's Dog by Stephen Fretwell shows the bass from the Young to now be every bit as textured and nuanced as it is on vinyl. This is a big step up, it was good, but not this good. In fact it's so good you should call in for a listen so you can see how smug I now look.

I'm actually blown away that just sticking it on battery power could make such a difference, I'm a big fan of modding power supplies but I've never heard an effect as significant as this from altering a power supply on other bits of kit- the young now sounds bloody amazing.

 

Interesting read, thanks for sharing.
I should be demoing a Young soon, when Keith gets stock back in.
Looking forward to hearing one for myself, if only through S/PDIF.

 

Simon really interesting,just today I spoke to Multi cell,chasing the Lithium pack I commissioned for the Young before Chtistmas, the EVO definitely benefits from it's lithium ps.
Really good work!
Marco has discovered a small firmware problem, so I may need to send you a new unit and have that one back is that ok?
vb Keith.

 

It'll be Ok when you pry it from my cold dead hands...













Sure No problem.

 

I thought you might just use 'special delivery '!
vb Keith.

 

I'll stick it in the post tomorrow Keith with RM -SD, who did you send the big box with, were they cheaper than DHL?

 

Simon keep it until the new delivery arrives, hopefully a week or tem days, vb Keith.

 

Nice review, sounds like like a little cracker!

I use a xindak dac8, was gunn a get a hiface for it, although it has USB, been optimistic about whether it would be worth it? If an improvement would be there over a direct USB it seems as if the evo would be the sensible option.

Dan

 

Dan Hi, I can send you a Young and an Evo to try, plug the EVO into the Xindak and plug the Youmg directly into USB,
vb Keith.

 

Would be nice to give them a whirl kieth thanks, I am leaning towards just the evo only because funds are tight, I would have rang u else and probably snapped up a young after Simons glowing review.

Also after we last spoke I got myself a Mac mini and run osx on one half and windows 7 and foobar on the other half, I am trailing the ayre player in osx at the moment, seems quite impressive, very simple like foobar, I prefer the Mac sound by far, even tho windows is running on the same hardware!

 

Dan Hi, there should be a new batch of Youngs here in a week or so, can you hang onto the Ayre until then?
I believe it preferable to plug directly ,rather than have another conversion ( into s/pdif).
Keith.
Interesting about the comparative, Mac Windows sq!