Sonnet Digital Audio's Morpheus Reviews

This is great, these are your impressions and are valuable to this communtity regardless how others reviewed it. There are other folks out there with similar setups that would probably come to same conclusion, so you saved them from buying an uber expensive dac.

 

We shall see what @ChaChaRealSmooth says, then we'll get a better picture.

Sure, honesty is always the most important ( especially in our hobby with ... ekhm questionable neutrality of certain reviews ) and not everyone is bound to like things I consider good. Nothing wrong with that. Personally, I quite enjoy a good discussion with a healthy dose of disagreement, as long as it stays civil.

But if this unit really isn't damaged and the layering and imaging really is as disappointing as You say ( which I don't have any reason to doubt ), then I really want to know why. Simply because I find that interesting and it might help in future system building struggles.
There are some obvious blends that don't work well together like pairing bright headphones with bright amps ( unless migraines are what You seek ) or pairing tube'y magic with thick and lush sounding gear (although the latter seems to have more followers than the former). But I can't quite figure out what could possibly make Morpheus fail so miserably at layering and imaging.

 

I listened to this live from Netherlands over the internet where they compared the Morpheus, Metrum acoustics and weiss dac from switzerland. The weiss dac demolished the pavane and morpheus. Once you get above $2000 for any dac your open to any and all criticism. There are just too many good $5000 dollar dacs that do better than the morpheus. Better to buy a used dac that meets your sound quality citeria than buying a brand new one that doesn't. Go to the first page of this thread under my april 5th post. With a good set of phones you can tell the differences.

 

You can't tell anything with music captured from a video cam mic and played back from you tube thru your own dac. I just don't know what you are thinking. Weird science.

 

Given that a Weiss dac is going to be at least €7,000, why are we discussing it given the cost of the Morpheus?

 

So I'm next after @ChaChaRealSmooth but I'd like to make a request - does anyone in southern CA have a Holo Spring or Holo May DAC I can A/B against this (since both are "well known" and different enough NOS DACs) for the duration of the loaner? I've heard a few different NOS DACs before but given that this individual loaner DAC may be potentially questionable, impressions may be more worthwhile if I can compare to another NOS DAC to use as a sanity check if at all possible.

FWIW, I'm also going to compare this to a Yggdrasil A2 (the version with USB 5) and a Soekris 1421. Amps will be EC Af and DNA Stellaris. Tube rolling or lack of will depend on time and listening impressions I get with the DAC.

 

@purr1n - I was initially going to ask for a Metrum DAC as a baseline reference b/c it seems like a more obvious choice - if anything is broken, it should be more obvious. However, upon 2nd thought - I'm not familiar enough with Metrum products and Cees / Metrum house sound (if any) to know if the product is 1) legitimately "broken" vs "just the way it sounds", 2) difference in sound is due to it being a different product, or 3) perceived flaws are just due to me not liking NOS (and not knowing this yet).

However, because Morpheus and Metrum vs Holo Spring should be significantly different based on previous impressions I've seen here and elsewhere and b/c the only common factor is NOS, I figure that would let me quickly rule out all 3 of the above by doing an A/B comparison.
Excessive explaining: [[ 1) If Holo is better due to the NOS part of sound in Morpheus "sounding broken" - maybe it's time to have the unit looked at. 2) If Holo is somehow way better but only due to personal preference differences (modern vs denser sound, etc.) but underlying NOS traits are all there and close enough, then it's just a different product and personal preference issue. 3) If I strongly dislike both due to NOS regardless of their traits, then it's just me disliking NOS sound. ]]

 

... Or anger, and driven at a high rate of speed up Beach blvd, weaving in and out of traffic on a Harley with the DAC bungeed to my chest (If I went down, I was gonna make sure so did the DAC). When I buzzed in at @ChaChaRealSmooth 's place I had already taken the bungee off and he was like WTF, you rode here with the DAC on your lap.

 

@purr1n
Now that's some interrogation. Not sure if I'm even supposed to answer, but just for the sake of consistency I'll try.

All but one of the aformentioned were used in my own headphone chain ( SuSy Dynahi -> Shipibo.audio Chacruna ( modded HE-6 ) - so no speakers. The only exception is the R2R 7HE, as back in the day I used to have a different system ( LFF Code 6 + Audio-GD HE-9 and Stax 007mk1 with KGSS ). But I've had Yggdrasil on both the old and the new setup, so there at least some way to compare the two. I've owned the DACs I've mentioned in the comparison ( a few months each ), except the Dave, which I've had only for a week. That being said I was able to compare it directly to Yggdrasil 2 . I've owned quite a few more, but those are the ones worth mentioning, the rest isn't really anywhere near the price point.

Sure, it's not a back to back comparison, but living with a DAC for a few months and listening for a few hundred hours gives a fairly decent picture of what it can and can't do. Sadly, no photos of multiple DACs - never had the need to take them, as I'm neither a reviewer nor an influential figure.

Mostly testing things on the same few albums - Bernstein, NY, Mahler Symphony no3 ; Kleiber, Vienna, Beethoven Symphonies No 5 and 7 ; Karajan, Berlin, Holst: The Planets and a bunch of Zimermans recordings of Chopin, Rachmaninoff and Liszt are a few worth mentioning. It's mostly classical stuff, although it depends on the mood.

Morpheus impressed me the most, because of this clean, precise, tidy way it presents sound. If I was to describe it in one word, I'd say: order. Everything was very well defined, everything had its place even though the sound itself was rather thick and the soundstage itself was NOS size. So when I read the exact opposite, it got me confused.

I don't have any problems understanding how someone may not like the NOS sound. To be honest I don't love it myself. Nor do I have any issues understanding how one may not enjoy particular bass, mids, treble or soundstage, because a) we all like different things and b) those are heavily system and synergy dependant.
But when it comes to aspects like resolution or imaging of a DAC - I've always thought those are absolute. Meaning if DAC A does it better than DAC B, it should outperform B on every system. But apparently that's not the case. So I'm curious what affects it - that's why I asked.

@JK47
Apologies, didn't mean to sound like an as* in my last post ( like i am demanding an answer directly from You, which wasn't at all what I intended ) It was just a failed attemp to reword the previous "i am curious". I meant it as a general statement.

 

I definitely agree with @purr1n on the headphones vs speakers topic. Just like OS might be too much (intense / sharpened) with headphones, NOS might be too much (relaxed / soft) with speakers.

I am more of a NOS guy the last few years but, similarly like @Hands, do not mind subtle (2x) upsampling/oversampling. It helps me to achieve a "best of both worlds" listening experience. Would like to see manufacturers offering this as an option, rather than trying to take it to the extreme (16x or even more) with oversampling.

 

Maybe i am misunderstanding a part of what you said but with which DAC are u getting that x2 from?

 

I think he is talking about upsampling from software like HQPlayer or Roon

 

That's what i was thinking but wanted to be sure.

 

Indeed, I am using HQplayer to achieve that with Metrum Onyx.

In the past, I had DACs like Meier StageDAC or Audio-GD Compass2 that allowed for 2x OS with no need for software upsampling. The quality of filters in HQplayer is of course higher though, therefore would recommend going that way rather than chase some old-school DAC with questionnable filters.

My original point was that I would like to see some modern DACs with similar "best of both worlds" approach. Maybe some of the Soekris DACs can be programmed for that? Not sure.

 

Have a Morpheus setup with JBL L100 speakers/ Aeiger / Pi2Aes. The Jbls are fun somewhat warmish speakers (wife's preference). Even with this warmish setup, there is zero muddiness heard. In fact the opposite. Musical layering is cohesive and can easily identity positioning, staging. The highs drop off slightly but not too far off the Yggdrasil, both dacs are pretty close just different flavors (imo). My headphone setup with the morpheus it's pretty much the same, minus the obvious sound stage difference. It does sound bloaty on shitty headphone amps though, so your whole chain has be taken into account.

Side note; wife was playing spotify from her phone and it sounded like crap.. so crap in crap out. Also the usb is horrible on the dac and if that was used for demoing, it probably sounds worse than a Modi Multi-bit. Point is, your chain is important and if you're using usb/spotify with the morpheus, go get a used modi multi-bit instead, will probably sound better and you'll save 3k.