Outboard DACs

And so it comes to pass that after nearly five years, the Audiolab M-DAC finally gets itself a bigger brother! Rather like that famous difficult second album that recording artists battle with, it was never going to be easy for Audiolab to improve on one of the strongest products it has ever released. When it came out, the original M-DAC (HFC 359) had no real rivals at its £600 price point. Indeed, it got off to a good start because it was essentially the digital converter section of the 8200A CD player – itself one of the best silver disc spinners under £1,500, thanks to designer John Westlake’s prodigious talent. Also, interestingly, it was one of the first DACs to use the (then) new and highly regarded ESS Sabre 9018 DAC chips.