Been to many audio shows but nothing beats listening to your own system for critical evaluations. Owned numerous dacs and cd players back in the day (TDA 1541 adcom, EAD 7000 III with the pcm63, B.A.T. Vkd5 cd player, Marant SA 15, Schiit Bifrost 1) and some of them really impressed me. But none of them did so as much as the Musican Pegasus. For starters it is day four of burn in. Listened to it every day with the rca interconnects then switched to balanced interconnects to the preamp for kicks. I'm sticking with balanced connections. NOS mode is best too. No doubts about it. Oversampling is still better then most delta-sigma dacs out there, but go full nos with this multibit r2r dac and never look back. Sound is organic, deep bass, smooth, detailed without being singlebitty. Voices are simply incredible. Bass is fast yet thick and authoritative. Speed is incredible. Still have more days for burn in but loving this dac so far.
One month update:
During this time a few upgrades were made to the system. I have added an audiophile switch, which sits between the router and server (laptop). A linear power supply to power the switch. A usb converter/bridge known as the Matrix X Spdif 2, and a separate lps to power it. Also have tested a couple of new interconnects.
Now that I have many more hours with this dac a few more insights are warranted. Let's start with the inputs. All of them work wonderfully and sound great. If I were to rank them from least to most enjoyable it would be tough to do since I like them all. However here it goes anyway, 4) RCA Coax, 3) USB, 2) Aes/ebu balanced, 1) i2s. Eye-squared-ess and aes/ebu are top notch, with either of these inputs connected you get a texture of sound on front-to-back depth that is both palpable yet clean., not diffuse as with usb (though this connection is very pleasing to the ears as well).
Image definition with the i2s is the best of the lot.
In summary, the Musician Pegasus is a wonderful keeper. It does things that make you want to keep listening to the music. It is not the last word in razor sharp precision, other dacs can do that with utmost incision. Instead, the Pegasus tickles the ear and pulls you into its world. Once there, you may eventually be stuck to your listening chair for hours onwards. This is not a polite dac either, where you would ask yourself, "where's the beef?". Nope, there is both power and finess in this machine? The Pegasus does organic with speed better then most while reaching the nether regions of the subterranean. Remember to wear your seat belt. This dac will take you from 0-60 in a flash. The power of it's dynamic punch is incredible, as if a prime Mike Tyson gave you a good whallop during intense dynamic swings. Fun stuff.
