I hope you don’t mind me reaching out for some advice, if you have the time.
I have the opportunity to purchase a MSB Technologies Platinum Signature preamplifier/DAC (from around 2009, I believe). I currently have it on trial. It features R2R converters (high-precision resistors) and a dual 32-bit system that upsamples to 80 bits for maximum resolution.
The Platinum Signature version includes a preamp and has the number of digital and analog inputs I need. The Platinum version upsamples to 32 bits/384 kHz, and the preamp uses optional resistor ladder cards.
NB: The DAC has been fully serviced by an electronics engineer. The seller is offering it for €3,000 on Leboncoin and says that the new price with options was €17,000—there were various options at the time that could significantly increase the price… but I’m struggling to gauge its real value despite some online research. It’s hard for me to tell if it’s reasonable to invest in a DAC of this generation, however good it may have been. The preamp section is excellent…[Link to the ad](https://Link)
This would be up to you and very hard to offer advice on. Being nearly 17 years old, it would be hard to gauge how much life it has left. For the price, this sounds like a great deal, but again, it is difficult to know the longevity of a piece electronics this old. We built them to last! Glad to see it is still going strong after so much time.
Thank you for your reassuring response. The DAC III was inspected by an electronics engineer, and it appears there are no issues.
I was just wondering if you provide maintenance and repair services, if needed, for this type of older equipment ?
The seller mentioned that the DAC III has been optimized on the RCA output jacks to the amplifier and that they perform better than the XLR outputs. However, I’d prefer using the XLR outputs to gain more headroom in sound level. I did a quick test, and the results were quite promising.
In case any maintenance or repair is needed, is this equipment directly serviced by your team in the USA?.
We do! Happily. We are still repairing units that are 25+ years old. We typically have parts for common repairs, but if there is a catastrophic failure (i.e. needs the entire motherboard replaced) we may be out of luck.
The balanced output should be ideal and perform better than the single ended. I am sure this is just the previous owners preference. Balanced topology is superior performance if supported by the amplification.
Yes, you can reach out to us on our support webpage and we can service the unit as needed.
I am often stunned to find out MSB products from when I was just a kid are still being used daily. A bit of a challenge to repair at times, but it seems to mean the world to many of our customers. Happy to service what we can!
