Pre-ordered silver, but my country only received black. So after four month it was either that or wait for another "period" of time. I must say that I'm slightly disappointed with the appearance. I find it looks a little bland, kind of like my CA DacMagic (which is not a looker and was about a fourth of the price). It certainly does not look the part against my other black gear. My dealer assured me that the front panel would be a brushed finish, which it is clearly not :-(
Straight out of the box and hooked up to my system, the sound was not impressive and did clearly not oust my DacMagic (though that's been always on for the past 1 1/2 years) . I did notice a tendency for a hint of distortion (as noted by someone else somewhere who got flamed into oblivion
) My girl friend - who only cared about my audio when it does not sound good - commented that "I think it sound worse".
Comparing the MDac headphone out to DacMagic through the headphone out of my Parasound preamp (cheap but very well performing model), was not a win for the MDac either.
I had a Rega Dac in my system a while back and while not without it's faults, it was clearly better than my DacMagic from the first note. However this was a dealer demo unit, that had a lot or hours on it.
Will let the MDac break in for at least a few days and try to resist listening to it in the meantime, to avoid the worst conditioning
Then I'll sit down and do a proper listen and report back. Based on other peoples comments and my own experience with break in/warm up, I'm hoping for a somewhat different experience.
So slightly negative post here, but in line with the tread name I guess. Like I said, I'm expecting things to come around.