DS vs DS Mk2?

Hi Tony, I placed the order on 23Jan - hopefully good things come to those that wait.

Hmm. Mine was only one week before yours and my latest estimate is March sometime.

My order was processed January 19. I havenā€™t requested or received an update. I would guess Iā€™m looking at March sometime. Iā€™m being as patient as I can be. Everything sounds so darned good right now.

I think it all comes down to the quantity of circuit boards on hand vs the lead time to get new ones. Iā€™m probably further down on the queue than most, but was able to get a good trade-in so not complaining - supply chains are bad everywhere. My MK1 plays sweet music.

10 days in on MK2, here is what I can summarize:

First 20min, MK2 sounded exactly like the MK1 in my system and room, not better, not worst.

First 3rd-5th hour, I started to hear what the MK2 is all about.

Fast forward to today, MK2 is like the MK1ā€™s bigger better harder younger brother, same DNA, but everything coming out of it is more ā€œALIVEā€.

If there is aliveness meter, MK1 is around 8:30 to 9ā€™oclock, recording dependent. MK2 is like 10:30-11:30.

4 Likes

That sounds pretty close to my experience. I also added big rel subs at the same time I swapped from mki to mkii. The subs took forever to break in. Donā€™t know which took longer. At this point, the sound of my system is just incredible. Mkii, subs or shunyata Typonā€¦ā€¦donā€™t know. Some of each. I absolutely love Tedā€™s machineā€¦.genius stuff!

I first time heard the Mk II today in an extremely resolving, development orientated setup of a friend. In this setup one surprisingly hears hardly noticeable hum of guitar amps where we usually just hear the music.

I report mine and his experience although itā€™s not of much use for others so far, youā€™ll see why (uneven test conditions). Those who want valuable comparison results should stop reading here and wait for a later, better feedback.

Like mine, his equipment has molecular treatments (I name it MT here) of the signal path (his even more). This makes equipment a lot! better in all aspects. Itā€™s not commercially available and would be insanely expensive then. His Mk II meanwhile has strong MT, as had his still available stock Mk I. My fully modded Lundahl Mk I has weaker and just partly MT at the moment as I exchanged parts like the transformers (Iā€™ll have MT redone soon).

Impressions:

The stock Mk II was no big upgrade to the MT Mk I

The Mk II MT sounds much better than the Mk I MT

My modded Mk I partly MT (cold unit) sounds better than the non MT, stock Mk II (warm unit)

The highly MT Mk II (warm unit) sounds noticeably better than my partly MT modded Mk I (cold unit)
.
.

So you see, nothing of much value for the moment, but the following conclusions are halfway valid anyway for me:

The stock Mk II sounds great and much better than the stock Mk I

A fully modded Mk I with better than XS 4400 transformers seems to be somewhere around the stock Mk II performance with current firmware (Iā€™ll know better after later, better test conditions)

Differences by MT compared to no MT are much bigger than the Mk I-Mk II differences (not of much interest for others)

Some active HF/noise cancelling devices we used on the test candidates also showed much more essential improvements than e.g. differences between the highly MT Mk II and the partly MT fully modded Mk I.

Iā€™ll report back after better and more even test conditions, more similar MT and both units warm.

3 Likes

Is this something you contract NASA or SPACE X for 10 of mils for?

Seriously though, please explain what that is.

2 Likes

I canā€™t sorry and couldnā€™t, even if I knew in detail. Imagine you had to rent a magnetic resonance tomograph for several days each treatment. Something like that.

Several MRI rentals for tens of thousands of dollars each works miracles toward the production of this best dac

Intriguing, is this treatment permanent or you have to ā€œrechargeā€ once in a while?

My tweak treatment made huge SQ improvement without spending big bucks (Thanks to vmax). The ones I can think of include 3M absorbent sheet on equipment, 3M tuning rings on cables and power cords, audiophile fuses, cable lifters, power cord bedframe supports, sorbothane discs and rings, cork supports, and I am sure @vmax can add a few more. I am not kidding, adding all these tweaks made my system sound much better, and more sensitive towards changes,

3 Likes

Permanent, the molecular structure gets and stays changed.

1 Like

The MK2 and MK1 in stock form. MK2 hands down sounds better.
The stock MK2 and the Modded MK1 with nickel transformers and VOCM mod. Close. They just sound slightly different. The MK2 has a bigger sound stage. The MK1 seems a little more focused.
I like them both.
MK2 with nickel transformers and the Modded MK1. No question the MK2 wins hands down. Best of both. Larger sound stage and focused with lots of detail.

All above observations were done with the MK2 in default configuration. ( no ground lifts ) and both used a USB shorting plug.

6 Likes

Itā€™s relative based on your net worth.

Did the upgraded mkI utilize the beeswax transformers?

No. Natural Transformers in both. In the end we discovered the Natural sound best in the MK2.

2 Likes

ā€¦and ext. psu, right?

No external PSU and with external PSU. We did both. It made very little difference in the overall sound comparison. I think the VOCM mod negates some of the improvements made by the external PSU. Thou the external power is good to use with a 1:2 transformer because of the added heat it creates on the internal power supply.

1 Like