Highly anticipated yes, late coming to market yes, was it worth the wait? Absolutely!
The casing is a cast aluminium shell, the front panel is a steel mesh with two buttons, an on off switch and an input selector. The front panel is complete with the over sized LED display that indicates the input selected, and switches to the incoming data rate when signal lock is obtained.
On the rear panel are 5 digital inputs, and a pair of unbalanced outputs via gold plated RCAs. Inputs include AES/EBU, S/PDIF via RCA and BNC all capable of receiving data rates up to 24bit/192kHz, a single optical input with data rates up to 24bit/96kHz and an asynchronous USB input capable of data rates up to 32bit/384kHz. All internal processing is done at 32bit/768kHz.
We are now shipping all Australian units with an upgraded power supply, simply because we had to source local power supplies and preferred to use an uprated supply rather than a standard wall wort type of supply. It costs us more, but with it's greater regulation and filtering, we think it is well worth it.
In use, the Young could not be any easier to use, after loading the software driver on your Mac or PC, simply select the Young as your output and away you go. When you select the input via the front mounted selector switch, the incoming data rate is displayed and is very readable from almost any distance away.
Using a variety of high res and standard red book music files, the Young sat there switching data rates without a hitch. From 44.1 to 192 and then 96kHz, all without a single hicup. And the sound?
To me, in our demo system, the Young provided a very special sound quality. There is something very unusual about the sound of the Young, an openness and clarity like no other I have heard, no doubt due to the unusual way in which M2TECH is using the Burr-Brown PCM1795 DAC chip.
I will not go on any further than that as you would expect us to sing it's praises, so please, if you can arrange a demo now if you are in the market for a new DAC because it is already selling very fast, and when word spreads on just how good this DAC sounds, it will sell out even faster.
"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...There's also something of an irony in the treble, which is beautifully pure and open, even with CD-format source material. That could somewhat undermine the case for high sampling rates, were it not for the fact that at 96kHz and upward it gets even better...This isn't the first 384kHz DAC, though it's the first affordable one. But kudos to M2Tech for doing it and huge respect and admiration for doing it so well."
Hi-Fi Choice
Comments (6)
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The M2Tech Young is a high performance, very high value-for-money D/A converter capable of handling up to 384kHz sampling rate and 32 bits resolution (USB input).
$1,499.00
Incl. 10 % TAX
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