- Μηνύματα
- 25.100
- Reaction score
- 20.576
How does it sound?
MS250 was connected to various audio installations, featuring speakers from mini monitors to large full response implementations, in order to take the clearest possible impression of its sound performance. As a general ascertainment, I would say that, after 25 years of running audio in the digital domain, it’s so really good to see all these nice chipsets currently available from the electronics industry. As time goes by, it’s getting harder and harder to evaluate the sound quality of a digital front-end.
Well, listening to a wide variety of recordings, from Classical to contemporary Pop music, the basic conclusion remains the same: MS250 is a really good sounding machine. It’s able to deliver all the musical perception somebody might need, while its circuitry is fast enough to reveal all the detailed information recorded. There’s no harshness, no “grain”, no “rounded” treble, no nothing, while the soundstage is brought stable and quite clear, (this demands recordings with the appropriate miking technique). The only disadvantage I could determine is related to the lower frequencies, as the machine showed a clear hesitation to drive the preamp to the appropriate bass presence, but this should be considered clearly traceable only under certain conditions, listening to a really high quality recording with the appropriate equipment. Perhaps an upgrade with a separate, linear power supply, dedicated exclusively to the analog section, would fix that weakness.
A significant problem was that, for some reason I couldn’t find out, I was not able to rip any CD in compressed format. Using either the corresponding setting in the Settings menu or in the ripping menu, ripping was resulting always to uncompressed wave files, regardless what setting was selected. At least, this was what I had available after archiving the whole content either to an external USB hard drive, or a network shared folder.
As for using MS250 as a digital recorder, the machine showed a remarkable sound performance, able to overcome all your non-professional recording needs, but this is not enough. If you attempt to make a recording via an auxiliary input, all you can do is to make the recording and that’s all, as there’s no way to make any editing, to crop or slice the recording into pieces. To do this, you have to copy the recorded file to your computer, make the appropriate editing tasks you want and copy the final wave files back to MS250, or play them via the network connection. Worse yet, I tried to find a way to adjust the recording level, but with no chance.
Finally, during the listening tests the hard drive was released from its special additional screws, as the corresponding leaflet indicates. The truth is that these rubber screws showed bad performance, as the hard drive’s vibrations were able to be transmitted both to the rack and the machine’s top cover as well. While the screws were bolted the hard drive, MS250 showed a clearly quieter and smoother behavior.
MS250 was connected to various audio installations, featuring speakers from mini monitors to large full response implementations, in order to take the clearest possible impression of its sound performance. As a general ascertainment, I would say that, after 25 years of running audio in the digital domain, it’s so really good to see all these nice chipsets currently available from the electronics industry. As time goes by, it’s getting harder and harder to evaluate the sound quality of a digital front-end.
Well, listening to a wide variety of recordings, from Classical to contemporary Pop music, the basic conclusion remains the same: MS250 is a really good sounding machine. It’s able to deliver all the musical perception somebody might need, while its circuitry is fast enough to reveal all the detailed information recorded. There’s no harshness, no “grain”, no “rounded” treble, no nothing, while the soundstage is brought stable and quite clear, (this demands recordings with the appropriate miking technique). The only disadvantage I could determine is related to the lower frequencies, as the machine showed a clear hesitation to drive the preamp to the appropriate bass presence, but this should be considered clearly traceable only under certain conditions, listening to a really high quality recording with the appropriate equipment. Perhaps an upgrade with a separate, linear power supply, dedicated exclusively to the analog section, would fix that weakness.
A significant problem was that, for some reason I couldn’t find out, I was not able to rip any CD in compressed format. Using either the corresponding setting in the Settings menu or in the ripping menu, ripping was resulting always to uncompressed wave files, regardless what setting was selected. At least, this was what I had available after archiving the whole content either to an external USB hard drive, or a network shared folder.
As for using MS250 as a digital recorder, the machine showed a remarkable sound performance, able to overcome all your non-professional recording needs, but this is not enough. If you attempt to make a recording via an auxiliary input, all you can do is to make the recording and that’s all, as there’s no way to make any editing, to crop or slice the recording into pieces. To do this, you have to copy the recorded file to your computer, make the appropriate editing tasks you want and copy the final wave files back to MS250, or play them via the network connection. Worse yet, I tried to find a way to adjust the recording level, but with no chance.
Finally, during the listening tests the hard drive was released from its special additional screws, as the corresponding leaflet indicates. The truth is that these rubber screws showed bad performance, as the hard drive’s vibrations were able to be transmitted both to the rack and the machine’s top cover as well. While the screws were bolted the hard drive, MS250 showed a clearly quieter and smoother behavior.