Differences in D100 vs. D150?

rolltide

Super Member
Apologies as I imagine this has been hashed out at some point, but its always good to get fresh perspectives.

I've been using a D100 as a DAC and preamp for a few years now and considering potential changes. Is the D150 an identical product that adds DSD, or does it have other revisions?

I enjoy the sound of the D100 but it has some idiosyncrasies that make me kind of want to move on. The D150 would be the easiest upgrade, but if all I'm doing is adding DSD and the transport connection and there are no other fixes or revisions I should probably pass.
 
Not sure if it is a D100 thing or not. If I leave mine playing all day, it develops a skip that gets worse the longer it plays until power cycled. If it is just "on" it doesn't happen, only if playing all that time. I've tried rebooting the computer driving it over USB to no avail, only a power cycle of the D100 does the trick. I think it happened over the optical link, but its been a while since I had it hooked up that way.
 
Here's an idiosyncrasy that I've noticed about the D100. On cd playback with a very well known song it seems to play just a bit slower than what I'm used to hearing.

The 100's soundstage is wider, deeper and there's more air around the instruments. I'm thinking with the wider soundstage the sound takes a bit longer to reach the listener and gives the impression of a slower tempo?
 
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I have problems using the D100's USB with Roon. I can work around it with usb to spdif converters, but I have a lot of things to connect and would prefer to be able to use USB to free up a coax port. If the D150 has the exact same USB implementation of the D100, I'd probably have the same issues and might look at a C47.
 
I Love the C47. I am so pleased at what it does for my digital music, it sounds so smooth and natural. Not edgy. Blows my 2 stand alone DACS away, it rightfully should given the cost compared to my other DACS.

Anyone know what DAC the C47 uses? Is it a D100?

I highly recommend the 47 rolltide!
 
C47 uses the latest design Mc DAC which is shared with C52, C2600 and MHA150. These DACS all run faster and can decode 256 DSD than earlier designs.

Thanks,
Ron-C
 
Thanks for the info Ron! I wasn't sure if there was a stand alone equivalent. I'm really enjoying it.
 
Not sure if it is a D100 thing or not. If I leave mine playing all day, it develops a skip that gets worse the longer it plays until power cycled. If it is just "on" it doesn't happen, only if playing all that time. I've tried rebooting the computer driving it over USB to no avail, only a power cycle of the D100 does the trick. I think it happened over the optical link, but its been a while since I had it hooked up that way.

The D100 is light years beyond my previous Yamaha in sound quality. I look forward to a C47 or C52 some day.
 
Here's an idiosyncrasy that I've noticed about the D100. On cd playback with a very well known song it seems to play just a bit slower than what I'm used to hearing.

The 100's soundstage is wider, deeper and there's more air around the instruments. I'm thinking with the wider soundstage the sound takes a bit longer to reach the listener and gives the impression of a slower tempo?
Speed of sound at sea level is and always has been 1125ft/s.......How do you think the D100 is slowing the sound down?
Okay, so if it is slowing the playback down, does it change the pitch? Or does it just change the speed? Have you measured any of this?
As RonC said, get the stop watch out, get your peterson strobe tuner out and do some some measurements......lets see you findings...
 
^^^^^I eventually found the culprit and it was not the D100. The cd player somehow was playing slower. I swapped cd players and all is good now. I must admit I did some head scratching on that one. It didn't make sense to me that the D100 would slow things down but being that it was the only thing I had swapped out it got blamed.
 
Interesting comment. I wasn't aware of a merger with Wadia. I assume if you would want to own one after the merger, that you are a fan of Wadia?

Just curious I have never owned anything in their lineup. Do you think Mcintosh incorporated Wadias digital technology in their designs?
 
Interesting comment. I wasn't aware of a merger with Wadia. I assume if you would want to own one after the merger, that you are a fan of Wadia?

Just curious I have never owned anything in their lineup. Do you think Mcintosh incorporated Wadias digital technology in their designs?

I can only speculate. I sure would if I were them. Frequent complaints of firmware issues on the built-in DACs in the last generation of Mc preamps has me gun shy, but the C47 doesn't seem to have these problems. I don't have any experience with Wadia products, but I know they have a pedigree in digital and it would seem intuitive having them in Binghampton is to the advantage of the other members of the family.
 
I don't think there's a stand-alone equivalent, but let's just say I'd be excited to own a McIntosh DAC built after the Wadia merger/acquisition/etc.

Kind of old news here as McIntosh has owned Wadia for some time and the current Wadia products are built and designed in Binghamton by the Wadia engineering staff.
Thanks,
Ron-C
 
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