Musica Ibuki DAC

Beautiful is the best word to describe the Musica Ibuki DAC, not only in looks but also in sound. It may not offer all the latest gizmos and high bit rates but what it does offer you is a remarkable sound to allow you to listen to youe CDs that are on a hard drive, spotify, etc and to hear all that music sounding so superb is what it is really all about, making your music collection sound as good as possible, that is exactly what you get with the Musica Ibuki DAC!

Here is an extract from a recent Polish reviewer where the reviewer was left spell bound by what he had just heard.

The Ibuki USB DAC just plays what it does. Its incredible ability, placing it higher than many more expensive DACs (yes!) is the vividness combined with thorough approach to timbre. The resolution in the midrange is splendid, exceptional. We will appreciate every improvement of the sound quality, every better file. Together with the DAC I received three new disc issued by Audio Fidelity on gold, in HDCD: Never A Dull Moment Rod Stewart, Face Value Phil Collins and Who Do We Think We Are Deep Purple. I had a good time! My heart was especially touched by the interpretation (this is how I understand every re-issue) of the Collins disc. This is not easy material, because it is a multitrack recording with compression, etc. But it is splendidly mastered and recorded. And this can be heard from the very beginning, from the delicate In The Air Tonight to the far end, a cover of the Beatles piece Tomorrow Never Knows . I was not bored for even a second, I did not want to take off the headphones or switch off the amplifier.
The edges of the sound spectrum are slightly soft and not as well defined as the midrange. The same case was with the KingRex. But here it does absolutely not disturb, the warming is not as clear as there. The resolution of those edges is better, and this may be the reason, that I never, but really never, paid attention to them in a special way. Everything was just a unity, fullness and depth. The same thing is with dynamics, which seems to be slightly averaged, but which, through incredible vividness, subjectively surpasses that, what - objectively better - devices do! The problem is, that the Ibuki is limited only to CD quality. High resolution files will be decoded fine, but the computer will downsample them. And this part of the process is audible - as a slight brightening and dryness of the midrange. The changes are by far not big, but the magic, that makes us wanting to listen forever with 16/44.1 material, is gone.
This is the reason - I do not believe what I am saying now - if I would compose a system with an USB DAC, then for CDs I would use the Ibuki, and for hi-res some other DAC. Or the Ibuki for the headphone system - it will be incredible! But you have to remember to set the right values in the Sound menu in the computer. If we leave it on 48kHz, then the computer will convert the signal, what will mean a deterioration. But if we will listen to 96 and 192kHz files, please change it to 48kHz - synchronous downsampling (48kHz is the half of 96 and one quarter of 192kHz) is much easier to do and usually gives better results than an asynchronous one.

Anyway, the Ibuki USB DAC is phenomenal. Its sound is very impressive. It is not the best one, it is limited to CD quality files (if you want to get what I am talking about) and is relatively expensive. But how it sounds!... It impressed me so much, that it was the reason to introduce a new kind of distinction this month - Red Fingerprint, a label for products, which can do something others cannot, regardless of their price. The Ibuki-digital will be the first product awarded with this distinction. For details please read the editorial of this month. And it is not so, that this DAC bends the reality and changes the recordings - the worse ones sound worse, the better ones are better. It is only that, when music is good it is extracted from the worse recordings as well, it does not result in a chaos or clatter. This is "not so well recorded music" with the emphasis on "music". And this is what this multimillion business is all about.

Match this DAC to the Musica Ibuki integrated amplifier for a beautiful sounding system that wont break the break, not only is it keenly priced, it takes up very little space and above all it really does sound sublime.