[Jay S]

Wayne has finished upgrading my Mensa to a Mensa PLUS and will be shipping it out to me.  Mine was the very first Mensa and Wayne had learned some new things since then.  I didn't have any performance issues with my Mensa but if the Plus takes it a step further.....  

I plan to spend 200+ hours breaking it in again as some power supply caps were changed, and will probably be done at the end of the month.

[Rob Babcock]

What did this upgrade cost you?  If the Mensa is all that, it must be one of the screaming bargains in high end DACs.

Wonder if Wayne has given any thought to transplanting the DI/O into a nicer case?

[Jay S]

The Mensa Plus is an additional $90 if you already have the Mensa.  Wayne has 3 tiers of mods for the DI/O (info from his website, cost does not include the stock DI/O):

- smART: $260
- Mensa: $410 (or $150 if you already have the smART)
- Mensa Plus: $500 (or $90 if you already have the Mensa, $250 if you have the smART)

I've done the upgrades one step at a time (though I never listened to a stock DI/O).  In hindsight I would have skipped over smART if the Mensa had been available at the time as I craved the extra smoothness that the Mensa brought over the smART.  When I get my DI/O back from Wayne after the Mensa Plus upgrade it will have accumulated about 40,000 airline miles - 2.5 round trips between Denver and Hong Kong!  

Also, there are also 3 tiers for the upgraded power supply:

- Upgraded power supply: $125
- As above with Bybee filter: $215
- As above with Bybee and NITRO: $315

I've got the Level 2 (uses Type 1 power cord, not NITRO).  

I'd be very happy to compare my Mensa Plus + bybee'd power supply with any dac, particularly mega-buck DACs so I can see how large the difference is... or not.  An all-out DI/O with Mensa Plus mods and the bybee/NITRO power supply would cost under $1k, which is pretty darn good in my book for a dac that uses the best parts that can be stuffed in the case.

[Wayne1]

Jay's DI/O was a prototype of the changes that would find their way into the MENSA. The actual production MENSA had all of the changes Jay's unit did but I improved some of the parts quality over time.

Jay recently came to the states with his fiance to attend his college class reunion. I thought this was a good time to do the upgrades so he could save a little on the shipping.

To bring Jay's unit up to date, I changed the way the additional power supply caps were connected to the pc board, I replaced all of the hook-up wiring with NITRO (he still had some belden in there), I changed some of the filter resistors to Riken-Ohm (a couple of the values were back-ordreed when I last worked on his unit), I changed ALL of the capacitors in the input and output filters. (He did have polypropylene caps in the output filters, they are now changed to the MENSA standard polystyrene film and foil). I also applied the Tube-O-Lator treatment and added dampening treatment to the power supply caps and other vibration sensitive areas on all of the boards. I removed the digital output jack and plugged up the hole left in the case.

I have no plans to change the case on the DI/O. I am not a metal worker. I care more about how a piece of gear sounds than how it looks. I really do not have the time and money to spend looking for a case and protoyping something that would add to the cost with no additional sonic benefits.

I realise a lot of folks care more about looks than I do. I really do have too many irons in the fire now to pursue any changes in cases.

[Jay S]

I just received the Mensa Plus minutes ago here at work...  I will hook it up this evening when I get home.