Hifi Choice reviews the M2Tech Young DAC

HifiChoice/TechRadar has published reviews of the M2Tech Young DAC (earlier reviewed by us).  Some excerpts...

"The first thing to make clear is that the sound is certainly of high-end breeding. We would have been most disappointed had it lacked anything significant in terms of resolution or neutrality and, indeed, it scored highly for both of those. 

It's actually exceptionally revealing and brought out details we had forgotten about in some of our own recordings – things we remembered from the recording session but hadn't heard in a while via more prosaic replay equipment.

If we have any criticism, it's of the very low bass. Now and then, in recordings which really plumb the depths, we were convinced we missed just a little clarity of pitch in the bass. There's plenty of impact, and extension, as such, is pretty much peerless, but tuned low frequencies (church organ, upright bass, orchestral timpani and so on) don't always quite seem as certain of their tuning as can sometimes be the case."

Review : M2Tech Young DAC

M2Tech is a relatively "young" company, recently became an established name in the digital audio scene with its industry-standard asynchronous USB to SPDIF converters - The  original hiFace and hiFace EVO. The Young DAC is their first, and currently only stand alone DAC.  M2Tech yet-to-be released flagship will be called the Vaughan DAC and is based on similar core technology and design at around 5x the price.

The DAC is housed in a heavy squarish extruded aluminum chassis with black steel perforated grill in the front. It has two buttons, power switch and source selection. The big LED display shows which source is selected and subsequently the sampling rate. There are a complete range of digital inputs: AES/EBU, RCA, BNC, and Toslink, these are 192kHz capable. And if you know anything about the Young DAC, its 32/384kHz asynchronous USB input is probably what you are looking for.  Power supply is a normal looking 15v wall-wart. Unlike XMOS-based USB implementation, M2Tech proprietary USB connection requires a specialized driver. The latest Windows and Mac drivers are downloadable from M2Tech's website.

The underlying DAC chip used in the Young is a TI Burr Brown PCM1795. To get the DAC to work at 384kHz, the guys at M2Tech bypasses Burr Brown's internal digital filter function and opt for a separate Xilinx Spartan DSP chip to to perform digital filtering and upsampling function. 

The Sound of Spring
We didn't waste time and hooked up our Mac Mini to The Young's USB input.  First impression was that it's a very easy DAC to like.  Its midband is smooth and articulate, and essentially free of flatness and forwardness of lesser DACs.  The treble is well integrated and the bass is more full-bodied than most DACs we have tried recently.  The soundstage was very well-defined with excellent integration between the tonal ranges and the instruments.  Imagery is handled very well where depths are fully painted-in.  


One of its strong point seems to be its adaptability - the ability to get right into the groove with any kind of music we threw at it.  It has the ability to cope with both raucous rock music, and can instantly adapt to lyricism of deep classical passage.  Many competing DACs are good with either soft jazz or classical music, but not rock, less-than-perfectly-recorded-pop, nor electronic music.  Not the case with the Young.  It has an urgent sense of timing to the music, and a great sense of "body" when all the instruments came together.  Central images are clearly individual, yet still part of a coherent whole.  The Young is not the most analytic or detailed, but it is extremely easy to enjoy.  We also tried its S/PDIF inputs and fed it with our reference transport, and the sound signature described above were still very much valid.

Compared to...
We have on hand a similarly priced Calyx 24/192 DAC.  They are similar in size and specs.  While the Calyx is less flexible than the Young (only one RCA SPDIF input), it seems to target the same group of potential buyers - those who wants a reasonably priced but high performance DAC as part of their computer-centric audio system.  We compared the USB input of the two DACs.


The Calyx does not need a special driver for the Mac (it does for Windows, as there are still no native USB Class 2 audio built in to the OS yet).  The Young's driver installation for the Mac/PC is easy enough to install and it works silently in the background without a problem.  We compared both DACs' outputs which matched level using a Mark Levinson 380s preamp.  Even though the Calyx can be powered by the USB port or an external PSU, we use both's included wall warts for comparison.


The Calyx's soundstage was wider and it threw a better "speaker-disappearing" act.  Its micro dynamics and nuances were slightly better.  It seemed to have a blacker background which made instrument separation clearer.  However it did not have the rounded full body midrange that the Young offered.  Bass on the Young was at its full bloom but at the same time not bloated.  Calyx's bass was tight and taut, but integration with the midrange was slightly disconnected, when compared to the Young.  The Young was the more "energetic" DAC of the two, with slightly more upfront presentation while the Calyx is more laid back and "open".  The Young is also more forgiving when not-so-good recordings were played.  The Calyx seems to prefer better recordings where it can excels.


Forever Young
The Young is very a well-thought out device.  We do not know how M2Tech came up with the name "Young", but it is actually very descriptive of the DAC.  Its flexibility  immediacy, adaptability make it a DAC that is easy to listen to, and definitely easy for us to recommend.

M2Tech Vaughan DAC

M2Tech's long awaited ammiraglia, Vaughan DAC (est. US$6,000) was shown on silent display at Munich High End show.  The DAC features 32/384khz capability, asynchronous USB with custom drivers, word clock input, ST glass fiber input, 8 x DAC chip used (4 per channel), dedicated discrete headphone output, and 32-bit digital dithered volume control.

• Sampling frequencies (kHz): 44.1, 48, 88.2, 96, 176.4, 192, 352.8, 384
• Resolution: up to 32 bits (USB), up to 24 bits (other inputs)
• Inputs: USB (B-type female), S/PDIF (2 x RCA and 2 x 75 Ohms BNC, dual AES for 384kHz), AES/EBU (2 x XLR dual AES for 384kHz), Toslink (2 x for dual AES), ST (2 x for dual AES), straight I2S, external master clock 
• Outputs: single-ended on RCA and balanced XLR, plus a headphone ouput on 6.35mm jack socket
• Power supply: 115-230VAC, optional battery PSU.
• Controls and display: standby and select buttons, encoder, dual large matrix display to show locked frequency and selected input.
• The Vaughan features 8 D/A IC's (4 per channel in mono mode). A digital dithered volume control will allow for using the Vaughan as a preamplifier. The headphone output is made with a discrete components amplifier.
• Brushed aluminum case and grilled front panel
• Dimensions: 440 x 80 x 440 mm.

An outboard Lithium-polymer battery power supply unit with low-noise regulators will power the Young DAC.  Housed in a matching case and to be called the "Young Supply" (right box in the picture below).  Whether it will also power the Vaughan is still unclear.  The left box is a prototype A/D converter called the "Joplin".

Pictures courtesy of Cybwiz.