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Playback Designs MPS-8 Player/DAC. Image courtesy of Playback Designs

My confidence in the MPD-8 as our DAC of choice was building from all of my reading and conversations. But an understanding of the heroic lengths taken by Andreas Koch and Bert Gerlach in the design and execution of the MPD-8 truly convinced me—their work resoundingly met or exceeded my five search parameters.

But why not the MPS-8 player/DAC with its integrated optical disc player? Two reasons: (1) our listening was going to be to files with no physical media to store, and (2) the MPD-8 is built with THREE fully independent power supplies, one for each of the left analog channel circuit, the right analog channel circuit and the digital circuit, versus the two in the MPS-8 player/DAC. Our past experience with vinyl playback had taught us that massive independent power supplies were a very good thing and made a clearly audible difference. See Parameter #2 above—the power supply makes a difference. Check!

Photo showing the interior of the MPD-8 with the THREE very substantial independent power supplies (right channel analog circuit supply, digital circuit supply, left channel analog circuit supply) behind 1/4" shielding to protect the audio circuitry, fully independent circuits for the left and right analog channels and high build quality. Image courtesy of Playback Designs

The only roadblock was cost. Yikes! As with any statement audio product, it is not an inexpensive undertaking given the design, development and cost of materials that go into creating such a piece of gear. But, my listening partner was on board with seriously considering this as an option.

So, with all of our considerations in hand, and our list of DAC candidates, we enlisted the aid of our counselors.

A long conversation with Dr. David (who so graciously gave of his time to help us) and then an introduction by David to Andreas for another long conversation with Andreas, finally brought us to the conclusion that the Playback Designs MPD-8 was indeed the DAC we needed to purchase for our new digital system. The cost-to-value equation would be achieved.

And so the deed was done. No audition, no home trial—all on faith in our friends combined with some very extensive cross-calibration of opinions received.

And we are very pleased.

 As a side note, one of the other more affordable DAC candidates now provides good service in our secondary system in my wife's office. And with it we are quite happy, but it clearly is not the match to our primary system. Vade en pace.

Selecting Loudspeakers

Oh, yes… headphones.  This was going to be another major change in our listening environment.

It had probably been 25 years since I last listened regularly to headphones and I'd become quite addicted to playing music through speakers—open air, if you will. I was not looking forward to going to headphones and losing a prized aspect of my listening enjoyment: hearing the performers arrayed in front of me and easily identified by location in the soundstage both laterally and in depth.

To me, this ability to hear instruments located in space added greatly to my experience of reproduced music in my home. I'd invested a lot of effort to get our system to the point that, with the right recordings, this three dimensional spatial location was immediately apparent even with just two channels. We'd never gotten into multi-channel sound because what we were achieving with two channels was already so highly immersive.

So, what alternative element could I hang onto as my new hook into the music?

Inner detail, transparency and resolution—the ability to easily follow the musical lines as passed from one instrument to another, to readily identify the timbre of different instruments, to hear the subtle micro dynamics of intonation.

Here it was. This element of music reproduction would be the new hook that would make headphones listening something that I not only tolerated but actually valued. And it would determine our selection of headphones.

Some decades ago I'd spent a lot of time listening to an earlier generation of STAX electrostatic headphones, the SR-X Mk III. My recollection of these headphones made me feel sure that what I'd settled upon could be that positive strength offered by headphones and that there must be headphones on the market today that could deliver this in spades.

STAX SR-X Mk III earspeaker and STAX electrostatic headphone amplifier, circa 1975

Once again we established parameters to guide our search and selection based on what we thought would be important to us. We decided on the following criteria:

1. Corded, not cordless. We didn't believe that wireless was ready to deliver the level of sound quality we sought to achieve in our primary listening system.
2. Comfortable to wear for extended periods without fatigue. Circumaural strongly preferred—yes, those big bulky kind of 'phones.
3. Highly transparent, resolving, and neutral. We knew we'd prefer something that didn't add its own color to the mix.
4. Must have two sets of matching headphones, and the selected headphone amplifier must be able to drive two headphones simultaneously for two-person listening without compromising the sound.
5. Open back so conversation can continue even with headphones on. If we can't comment about the music to each other while we're listening, what fun is that? After all, this is one perk of in-home listening versus concerts.

[Goodness, our parameters for all of these decisions seem consistently to have come in sets of five.]

And so we were back to asking our friends in whose ears we trust: What have you heard? What do you like? Why?

With suggestions from friends, reviews, comments in the online forums and cross-tabulating it all against what I could figure out about listening preferences and the types of music to which opinion providers listened, we came away with several candidates we thought good for us.

But nothing could replace actually listening to the headphone candidates. I was willing to make a decision on the DAC without an in person audition, but transducers are something we've found we actually need to hear for ourselves.

To our surprise, we found that HeadAmp, the headphone amplifier manufacturer and a retailer for a number of different lines of headphones, was located only an hour west of us. A phone call put us in touch with Justin Wilson, who could not have been more helpful or accommodating. Justin didn't operate a physical retail store, but he said he'd be happy for us to visit. He would set up something so we could listen to the headphones and amplifiers that were our candidates.

Turns out, we were being invited to his manufacturing, warehousing, and order fulfillment site in Charlottesville, Virginia. Justin designs and builds two of the amplifiers we'd be interested in, depending on which headphones made us do the happy dance. So, we got a shop tour plus the opportunity to listen to the three headphones and two headphone amplifiers that were at the top of our candidates list.

During our audition, I would listen to one set of headphones while Ann listened to another, both playing the same music. I kept watching the body language next to me. Listening to one pair, she shrugged, did the wavy hand thing indicating they were okay but not what she got excited about. Then she listened to another pair and I saw a thumb go up and down affirmatively. Then she put on the STAX SR-009S and suddenly there were two thumbs up, she was bouncing up and down on her seat, and looking at me with this big grin on her face. Yep, these were going to be our headphones.

The STAX SR-009S electrostatic headphones played through HeadAmp's Blue Hawaii SE electrostatic amplifier punched all of our little audiophile buttons. It was simply a matter of purchasing TWO headphones (yes, Justin had two in stock) and ordering the Blue Hawaii SE amplifier that would be shipped to us in 6-8 weeks following final assembly and factory burn-in.

Like these lads here:

Interior shot of two amplifiers showing underside of main circuit board. Note that the tube sockets are mounted on the other side of this board where they can stick up through the top plate of the case. Image courtesy of HeadAmp

Completed units lined up for final physical inspection before final case assembly and burn in. Image courtesy of HeadAmp

Want a different color? Image courtesy of HeadAmp

Completed units undergoing burn in before a final test and then packaging for shipment to purchasers. Image courtesy of HeadAmp

Above images courtesy of Justin Wilson, HeadAmp, posted here with permission and previously posted by Justin to the Head-Fi.org discussion forum.

We've now reached the point in this story where the critical components that will be the core of our new digital-only and headphones-only audio system are selected.

I have yet to tell you how we decided to hook all of this together, set up file storage, get files to the DAC and choose the right delivery system for us to manage our music library as we move into this brave new world. Nor have we talked about some of the music we found that started making us very, very happy in this new digital world. Nor have we yet talked about how it sounds. These, my friends, will be topics of our next conversation.

In the interim, if you have questions for me, please post them in the comments. I'll be happy to reply.

Our new digital and headphone system as of December 2019. Much smaller footprint!

All images by Rushton Paul except as noted.

Yes, There Really Is Music After Vinyl - Introduction

Yes, There Really is Music After Vinyl - Part 3

Yes, There Really is Music After Vinyl - Part 4

Downsizing Journey Update: Four Years with the Playback Designs MPD-8

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