Sonnet Digital Audio's Morpheus Reviews

Discussion in 'Digital: DACs, USB converters, decrapifiers' started by sahmen, Mar 25, 2020.

  1. neomax

    neomax RobS / hinterlander

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    dude are you ok?
     
  2. Cellist88

    Cellist88 Friend

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    I would add soekris to the list for blackground. Felt it was at least equal to the convert-2. Seems nos is nos....have a feeling the holo may/spring 2 dac will be in the same boat
     
  3. purr1n

    purr1n Desire for betterer is endless.

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    He's OK.

    He just hates "interpretative" DACs and considers these to be "degenerative" forms of audio reproduction. Not any different from how the Amway corporate offices in Grand Rapids only had photorealistic paintings (e.g., Sally Ride standing patriotically in front of the Space Shuttle), but no modern works, expressionist, cubist, industrialist, artsy-fartsy, or otherwise in their lobby.
     
  4. neomax

    neomax RobS / hinterlander

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    arent all DACs an interpretation of recordings though? you are at the mercy of a DAC designer's competency, their biases and prejudices, and so forth. might as well get a DAC that intrepets your recordings in a way that you like. poor guy seems to agonize over these boxes that all have their flaws.
     
  5. purr1n

    purr1n Desire for betterer is endless.

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    Some more than others.
     
  6. Psalmanazar

    Psalmanazar Most improved member; A+

    Pyrate Slaytanic Cliff Clavin
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    Some DACs will be clean as a window but dial in some fat punchy bass and crank the air band like an oversharpening filter. Other DACs will be clean as a window but expand all the transients and then dull the high end to try to alleviate earlier aliasing and other digital bullshit. Some DACs have a magic filter that nukes L to R staging a bit but adds killer depth. Other DACs want their low end to saturate like tape but be pristine elsewhere or to add some nice bass texture and depth. some dacs just want the bass to kick you in the gut but be boring everywhere else.

    Then you just have stupid AliExpress bullshit that's a clone of an evaluation board with everything expensive ripped out of it and a bunghole power supply. If it doesn't come up ion teh measurements the shills test for, it can be ripped out or substituted. It's not supposed to sound good or be accurate. It's designed to pass a bullshit arbitrary test to be sold to people who want to stream videogames and be seen as having better gear than other streamers despite not having ears for shit so they need a raging asshole who bought an Audio Precision analyzer for e-penis to validate their awful budget to mediocre gear. All of these people would be better off with dirt cheap Behringer gear that will die in a year anyway or some smoothed over Focusrite chifi for a few hundred bucks. They're not using it to listen to or record music.
     
  7. msommers

    msommers High on Epipens

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    That derail didn't take long
     
  8. purr1n

    purr1n Desire for betterer is endless.

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    He's got a point though. I wouldn't want to master or mix with this as the DA conversion, or any NOS DAC for that matter. Listening for enjoyment - building synergies around it would be a totally different thing.
     
  9. Psalmanazar

    Psalmanazar Most improved member; A+

    Pyrate Slaytanic Cliff Clavin
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    I mean I understand a chiaroscuro converter but Caravaggio isn’t Picasso.
     
  10. Clemmaster

    Clemmaster Friend

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    The only DAC you want to master on is a benchmark DAC!

    You can also put needles in your headphones. Should please the Slayers slayer!
     
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  11. purr1n

    purr1n Desire for betterer is endless.

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    The strange thing is that I have never seen a Benchmark in any studio environment. Grace yes. Forsell, Lavry, yes. Benchmark no.
     
  12. Psalmanazar

    Psalmanazar Most improved member; A+

    Pyrate Slaytanic Cliff Clavin
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    Yeah and I’ve seen Schiit amps.

    I’ve rarely seen RME converters. Interfaces yes. The rackmount converter boxes, hell no. They’re expensive, don’t have enough channels, the internal power supplies are unreliable, and they sound like shit.
     
  13. Ash1412

    Ash1412 Friend

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    Wouldn't that be done with 192k files that should negate most of the problems with NOS?
     
  14. purr1n

    purr1n Desire for betterer is endless.

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    Most stuff is worked on at 44.1/48 but at higher bitrates. Audio engineers won't use higher sampling rates because of latency, plug-ins, older computers, multi-tracks, etc. A modern Dolby Atmos job is pretty demanding and mixing stations can be very touchy when doing work like this. Most audio engineers don't believe in audiophile highres voodoo. They don't upgrade their gear like us every year, trying to chase the perfect sound DAC. Or at least the sound houses they work for don't want to do that. Most of the money is spent toward the room, the speakers, the amps, and the interfaces. Also, the costs to rent an engineer in a good room are astronomical. I don't think customers want to pay an extra $3500 just so the engineer can diddle around an extra hour converting those 192kHz files to 44.1kHz.

    Don't take it personally. The Rockna Wavedream is one of my favorites, oversampling, but I'm still not sure I'd like to master or mix from that DAC either due to its pervasive mellowness.
     
    Last edited: May 5, 2020
  15. Psalmanazar

    Psalmanazar Most improved member; A+

    Pyrate Slaytanic Cliff Clavin
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    If the Rockna had transformers, more people would buy it.
     
  16. Baten

    Baten Friend

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    How so..? Transformers would make everything right?
     
  17. Levpush

    Levpush New

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    Off topic here, but those bricks are epic.
     
  18. purr1n

    purr1n Desire for betterer is endless.

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    Before sending off to @Hands. Following up more and quick notes.
    • Slightly less incisiveness, less sharp attack, than the Schiit DACs (Yggdrasil + Gungnir Multibit), not soft. The Schiit DACs a tad too much for SR1a / Jot R. Morpheus just right for SR1a / Jot R.
    • Both Schiit DACs do have more slam, macrodynamics.
    • Schiit DACs not competitive with their SE outputs - veiled.
    • Morpheus BAL outputs slightly more resolving, but SE just as good.
    • Morpheus blackground and Gungnir blackground are similar (both BAL out), Yggydrasil slightly murkier.
    • Schiit DACs more resolving of plankton, particularly in the mids. Not so much discernible on SR1a / Jot R. Quite noticeable from my custom x4-45 SET and ZMF Verite. Somewhat discernible from x4-45 Borealis.
     
    Last edited: May 13, 2020
  19. Hands

    Hands Overzealous Auto Flusher - Measurbator

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    I think I'm last on the tour for this, BTW.

    If you send it to me now it'll be like 20 years before I can get to testing it.
     
  20. Firegon

    Firegon New

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    For all the Morpheus users out there - did You find the preamp(volume control) mode to be significantly worse in terms of sound quality?
    I've had the chance to test Morpheus for a few days and turning preamp off gave such a boost in bass quantity, slam and precision and well as overall cleanness of the sound, it actually shocked me. I expected the changes to be rather insignificant.
     

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