The Next Level
The MSB Cascade DAC: my initial thoughts (or my personal review part 1)
Good day to all.
I should start this by saying that I am a very lucky guy. My friends love me (and I love them back) and they trust me. So when my dear friend Paul (MSB UK’s distributor) rang me to say hi and said he was in my area and may be able to pop in for a hug, and then nonchalantly (!) added that he had just picked back a Cascade DAC demo unit from one of his customers - and HAD IT IN HIS CAR - I just couldn’t resist and I muttered … well, what if I play a little bit with it this weekend? As cheeky as that may sound, yet I learnt that if you don’t ask you don’t get! Half an hour later the Cascade was nicely sitting on my rack, all ready for my eyes and ears to enjoy 
It is the curse (and pleasure) of the audiophile. It doesn’t matter how good your system is (or you think it is), you’re always thinking on how you can make it sound even better, be it by fine tuning it and thus continuously adding or removing more and more ancillary elements to it (more often adding I guess!), or sometime by replacing what you have to add a completely new, supposedly better component. But I also know that, personally, I have now reached my endgame, 1. because I have really attained a truly beautiful sounding system by now (I am waiting for a Reference DAC to arrive and be the final cherry on the top of my system), and 2. because I cannot afford the extremely high cost involved in improving it even further. I know that at the very decent level my system is, the law of diminishing returns is indeed at a very steep point up there on the potential improvement graph.
Anyway, there it is now, as a very welcome guest in my system, quite mighty and beautifully looking, the brand new MSB Cascade DAC.
It looks beautiful indeed (this is a custom made model with some bronze coloured finishes, I am personally not a huge fan of that but hey!). Being amongst its siblings (I currently have a Premier DAC and as I said I am expecting a Reference to replace it soon, I also have an MSB S202 stereo amp and a Premier Headphone Amp), the Cascade does immediately feel at home in my system and all it’s needed is just swapping the cables and interconnects from my Premier DAC, add a new power cable (the Cascade has an extra component from my usual two box set up, the Digital Director) and I am ready to go.
From the very moment I switched the Cascade on and started to play some music, I immediately (and I mean immediately!) knew I was in for something truly special. The very first thing that strikes me after the first few notes is the absolute lack of background noise. My system is already great at that but the Cascade feels even eerier: there is ABSOLUTELY nothing else in my room either than this sound coming out from nowhere and floating above and around the surrounding silence. Perhaps more than describing it as eerie, I could call the whole experience magical!
The other very apparent thing that strikes me is how so much more controlled the bass seems to be: the Reference has the best bass I have ever heard before, powerful and right to your face, but at times it can be a little over powering especially in my small room (and I have the system set only on one side of it). There is no overpowering with the Cascade: the bass is beautifully tight, like it is on the Reference’s, but it feels much more controlled, I’d dare say absolutely perfect. And alive. I can feel and hear even more vividly the musicians striking the chords, and indeed it does feel as being so close to the players that the plucking (and, perhaps more astonishingly, I can now discern even the slightest change in the amount of strenght and pressure applied to the strings by the player!) is very much as if it’s just happening next to me. I actually wish I wouldn’t be able to say this, but the amount of micro details easily surpasses even that of the Reference! And, finally, I am finding myself almost immediately shivering.
I know we can all shiver and feel our eyes becoming a little wet when we hear music that strikes a chord deep within our soul, be it on a thousand pounds or on a million pound system. That is the beauty of music and it has nothing to do with the hifi system reproducing it. But this felt somehow different. I am already used to moments of deep interconnection with the music and a lot of emotional shivering when listening to my music through the Reference DAC (or with the Premier or even with the Discrete, all the MSB DACs I have experienced - and I only miss the Select so far - are fantastic in their own unique way), but with the Cascade I found myself getting emotional on every single track I had played within the first half an hour. I think this is the hallmark of something truly special here. I am also under no illusion that this is something that many (most) people somehow interested will ever be able to afford (and that group of people - for now at least lol - includes me too), but lucky indeed will be the ones who can.
Anyway, I will go more in-depth with my experience with the Cascade after I acquire more direct experience with it, it’s going to be here for a few days yay! In the meantime, I left it powered on overnight, as I was recommended to do with the Reference the first time I had that on a demo loan back in London three years ago (and the day after the difference in sound quality was night and day). So I am expecting some incredible quality listening time this weekend : I have indeed stocked up on food and drinks and locked myself in at home - see you soon 
