Joining Musical Fidelity's flagship amplification, such as the recently reviewed Nu-Vista 800.2 integrated, the Nu-Vista DAC sports milled extruded aluminium profiles for its front and side panels, which not only help dampen and eliminate vibrations from the environment, but the aluminium chassis also acts as a Faraday Cage to protect the phono stage internals from other electromagnetic fields.

The Nu-Vista DAC is built around ESS 32-bit HyperStream II DAC architecture via two ES9038Q2M chips in dual differential mode for a true dual-mono design, with each channel consisting of a fully balanced Nuvistor output stage with Nuvistor 7586 triode tubes in a discrete Class A amplifier buffer set up.

The unit can host up to three optical sources, one coaxial device, one USB device, a single AES/EBU source, and, finally, an I2S input that teases a future Nu-Vista CD player yet to be announced.

The new DAC also offers balanced and unbalanced, fixed and variable, output options, making it a welcomed addition to any listening system, whether as a dedicated source device or a pre-amplifier that supports up to 768kHz audio files in PCM formats, DSD256 via DoP, and native DSD512 via USB. It is worth noting that the S/PDIF inputs support MQA (up to 384kHz) and DSD (DoP 64). For output, there are a pair each of line-level RCA and XLR sockets.

Musical Fidelity uses a low-noise, low-dropout regulator with a dual-regulator architecture here. A Time Domain Jitter Eliminator is also included, which, the company says, improves the SNR and THD+N performance. Musical Fidelity claims an "unbelievably detailed transient response" out of it, with a total correlated jitter of under 100 femtoseconds. The DAC section also includes optional upsampling and reclocking and the ability to activate an oversampling bypass mode.

The oversampling FIR filters are bypassed for sample rates of 705.6k and 768kHz. At these sample rates, the digital signal enters the DAC block directly. This effectively means that all remaining filtering is turned off, improving audio parameters and the frequency spectrum. We are informed that powering the filter block down reduces the on-chip PSU / ground noise and lowers signal-correlated clock modulation.

Additionally, there are separate PSUs for the analogue circuitry and digital circuitry, with Musical Fidelity's Super Silent Power Transformers reducing transformer hum and interference. There is even an optional PSU upgrade with the Nu-Vista Uni PSU set to be launched in 2024. Moving the AC mains from the DAC to a separate unit should reduce noise or mains-borne artefacts from getting into the audio circuitry.

Musical Fidelity's Nu-Vista DAC is available in black or silver and has an SRP of €10,990 with shipping starting December 2023, although there's no news yet on how much the Nu-Vista Uni PSU will cost.

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