Just wanted to post a small writeup regarding the bit of comparison I had a chance to do this past weekend at a local Denverite's (Gary) home. He has a pretty sweet setup in his basement, a dedicated listening room. His equipment consisted of an Accuphase DP-65 CD player directly driving a Spectron Musician amplifier, which in turn drove a pair of exceedingly nice Selah Audio Excelarray speakers (which are super-transparent. Very nice speakers!)
So, I had brought over my trusty Mensa DAC with the upgraded power supply from Bolder Cables. I also brought over my AVA T7 Preamp, which was lucky because Gary has no preamp. In goes the preamp, and we hook both the DP-65 and the Mensa (being fed the digital output from the DP-65) up to 2 seperate inputs on the T7. The first thing we listened to was Diana Krall's rendition of "My Love". Nice track w/some serious ambiance, very simple, unadorned instruments and vocals. Great test track.
Switching back and forth between the 2 in realtime, it was difficult at first to discern the differences, overall the 2 were very similar in transparency, detail, attack, decay, and instrument deliniation. Gary and I were both shocked that this little $600 DAC could even keep up w/the Accuphase in ANY area, let alone sound almost identical in many areas. I don't think either of us really believed what we heard those first few switches. After switching back and forth and trying a Patricia Barber track as well, we came to the conclusion that the Mensa was actually a bit more full bodied and also a bit more dynamic that the DP-65!! Interestinly enough, it didn't seem to lose any detail, and for the spatial presentation, the Mensa seemed to have a deeper soundstage to boot.
And that's pretty much it, a very suprising finding during a very pleasant listening session. Hopefully Gary will be along to add some thoughts.
One other note, regarding cost, the Accuphase lists for roughly 10x the price of the DIO, but I do have to say the Mensa is nowhere near as attractive looking, and the Mensa does not have balanced outputs like the DP-65.
