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The hiFace M2Tech

Uncategorised By Mar 15, 2010

Getting Pure Music was the motivation I needed to try the hiFace M2Tech again. Last time the results were a little dissapointing: it wasn’t the giant killer that various forumites had been writing about. It was OK value for it’s price of around £105 including the BNC output, but in my opinion no more.
To recap the M2Tech is a USB2 to S/PDIF device that comes in a small portable package.
More info here.
One caveat, and hence one more experiment required, is that I have been using the M2 with a 5metre coaxial digital cable terminated in BNC plugs. Maybe it would work better with a 5m long USB cable and a short digital? That’s for another day.

Remember that I’m comparing a budget USB to S/PDIF device with a more expensive Firewire based device powered by a good stiff linear PS (a modified Naim PSC). No great surprise that there was a difference especially as the Konnect 8 is my favourite way of getting digital music from a computer so far.

The results using the same system as used for the Pure Music listening, but substituting the M2 and cables for the Konnect 8 and cables, wern’t in the same league. The M2 is  rougher, more two dimensional and just lacks the sheer class of the Konnect 8 based interface.

Pure Music works well with it, and Memory Play sounded cleaner and tidier than standard play.

With this and the Pure Music listening it’s just the start of the process.  More when I’ve experienced them in more than one system.

Postscript: I experimented today with a 5m long hi-speed USB cable and a one metre BNC to BNC S/PDIF cable.  There was a small improvement over the 5m S/PDIF cable but the results were still a little dissapointing.  To be fair, the M2Tech is a budget product and as such sounds great.  It just doesn’t really cut it in a high-end system.

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