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MS300 Review

jrsystems

jrsystems

Super Member
Has anyone seen this review of the MS300 in Ultimate AV? http://www.ultimateavmag.com/mediaservers/1105mcintosh/

The reviewer is somewhat critical of the unit and is skeptical about the FLAC format. He insists the CD in the tray sounds better than the hard drive. Then I notice he is using respectable Revel speakers with a Denon receiver! Please! I don't think this guy knows what he's missing by not running the magnificent MS300 through some proper McIntosh amps. The Denon is a big, expensive piece, but it is hardly McIntosh amps. A weak review.

JR
 
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Is it possible to change the hard disc?Will the unit recognize a larger disc for example a 400 gigabite?
 
Great question. The article shows a regular hard drive. However, I assume the operating system is on the hard drive and it would be VERY risky to mess with it. Perhaps one could pull the HD and put it in an external drive case and then copy the entire contents to another drive.

Anyone ever try this?

JR
 
Reviewers seem to have a hard time understanding servers. As far as FLAC he could have burned a disk back off the 300 and sent it off with the original to see if they were bit by bit identical.
I use burned disks all the time for demo since I always lose them on the road. They sound great to me. Lossless is just that, lossless.

Thanks,
Ron-C
 
Good point. I'm at 600 and there's plenty of room left. Plus 400 slots in the Sony changer. It will be a while before it's an issue, but an interesting question. Not really planning on opening this thing up and messing with anything in there.

JR
 
I have my MS300 since February and I do not have any of the problems this guys says he had. And I recommended this product to a bunch of friends. I knew all the features without reading the manual, even before buying the server, just from the product literature... is this guy really erning a leaving as a professional reviewer?. :thumbsdn:
 
He used a $5000 Denon reciever as his reference system to review a state-of-the-art McIntosh component. To me, that says it all.

I am surprised that such a cutting edge component has not gotten more attention by the audiophile press. This is the future and I would think a legendary company like McIntosh introducing such a component would be a far bigger story. This is basically a giant, high-end iPod for audiophiles and no one seems to notice. Go figure.

JR
 
Given the amount of money I have tied up in Mc gear, including an MS-300, I have to be counted as a major fan of the company. Nevertheless, there's another side to this story.

The MS-300 is the result of McIntosh upgrading a product from its sister company, Escient (both owned by D&M Holdings, the D of which stands for Denon, while the M stands for Marantz).

The Denon 5805 is a first-class piece of equipment, easily in contention for the premier AV receiver of today. It's not quite a Mc unit, but it ain't cheap Circuit City crap, either. It wouldn't surprise me to discover that Denon's engineers spent some time in conference rooms with Mc's, Escient's and Marantz's before the 5802 became the 5805. In fact, I can't imagine D&M not trying to combine expertise to advance all their lines.

The reviewer has a pretty good reputation, although he's well within the cable-lifter club, but if you look carefully, he's pretty reluctant to say much about what the differences between H and CD drive's sounds were. It seems to me like he's hearing a difference, while knowing there shouldn't be one in a bit-for-bit environment.

I think I detect differences between the sound of my MS-300's hard drive vs its CD drive, but they seem really really tiny, and not always identifiable. On the other hand, both modes sound clearly different than my MCD-205, and they all sound different than my MCD-751/MDA-700. I would loooove to get hold of a MDA-1000 to play with for a while to see how much of these differences are in transport and how much in DAC, between all these units.

Ron-C will have to answer whether there can possibly be minute differences between the MS-300's hard drive and CD caused by clock differences and jitter, because I don't know how the HD is clocked compared to the CD drive. If that's possible at all (it may not be), I think the reviewer may have received a bad sample. Note that the super-expensive MDA-1000 goes to the trouble of completely reclocking the signal just to eliminate such differences, and sounds incredible across a wide range of sources because of that.

Also note that I'm no technical guru, and let's all hope someone who knows what they're doing drops in and explains it!
 
Hello Negotiableterms.
I did not want to shoot the messenger, I was surprised by the reviwer's whininng about not knowing the features of the MS300 until he got to page 75...c'mon you can get that from the marketing literature.

But in this hobby of ours I believe is moot to discuss subjective impressions of what any given person hears or think he hears. We can discuss about jitter, recloking, sampling, frequency response, distorsion, etc, etc. Something we can measure and then agreee or not if that measure makes the quality of a particular piece of equipment better.
But the subjective nature of hearing, affected by tastes, age, health, hearing story, preconceptions and many etceteras can't be dicussed or, better stil, can't never arrive to a logical conclusion.
Hey... I know a guy who swear by his Bose speakers and can't hear any difference with my 602 and 402 biampling a pair of XRT28.
Is he deaft?, I do not know. But he enjoys music as much as I do and that is what counts to me.
In this case, the reviewer seemed to me at a lost evaluatiang the MS300.
Back to my Sunday morning session of jazz (with my MS300)...
Have a nice day :D
 
jrsystems said:
In your comparisons, which sounded better?
Click to expand...

My comparisons are unscientific because the MS-300 doesn't have balanced outputs while the other two do, so the path through the C-200 isn't identical. Beyond that, I wound up with three copies of MFSL's Gaucho. Ripped one to the HD, then switched back and forth among them. Can't get the timing exact, but close.

Results? The MCD-205 seems to present more detail, while the 751/700 sounds less detailed but smoother to me. The CD drive and HD from the MS-300 seem in between, and I cannot always tell them apart. Now, which one do I like? I suspect the reviewers of the world will disagree, but I prefer the sound of the MCD-205 to all the others, by a hair. When I think I hear differences between the MS-300's CD and HD, I prefer the HD. The 751/700 comes in last for real-sounding, but frankly, it's the most pleasant of them all to listen to.

Could these results have more to do with the balanced/unbalanced difference than the drives? Yes, absolutely.

One other note: I was able to borrow an Ayre C-5xe for a weekend, and it makes all of these sound like kid's toys. More detail, more punch, more...everything, and butter smooth the whole way. AT $5950 it's no bargain, and I didn't buy it, but there's no question it's better, and I was able to reliably identify them 100% of the time. The vinyl guys will tell you there's big differences between turntable/arms/cartridges. I'll say the same for CD players. I'm hoping that the MCD-201, or the MS-300 via an MDA-1000 will come up to that level.

I'm especially looking forward to the MDA-1000 because Mc claims it's much more immune to transport differences. On the other hand, they also recommend the AES-EBU connection, and the 751 has one, so I really can't wait! In other words, I'm trying to get 99% of Mc's 1000 level performance without buying an MCD-1000. Wish me luck!
 
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