Musical Fidelity
M8x DAC
Introduced 2023$4,299 MSRP
The M8x DAC is Musical Fidelity's flagship standalone converter, using dual ES9038Q2M DAC chips in a dual-mono, dual-differential configuration paired with a fully balanced discrete Class A output stage and a high-power balanced headphone amplifier (The Absolute Sound). It offers full hardware MQA decoding, eight selectable digital filters, switchable upsampling/reclocking, and native DSD512 playback via USB (Musical Fidelity datasheet).
MSRP
$4,299
Used market · Excellent
$3,050
-29% vs MSRP
as of Sep 1, 2026MSRP to used market
From $4,299 at launch to $3,050 today.
Specifications
- SNR
- >100 dB A-weighted at 1 kHz @ 0 dBFS
- Price
- $4,299 / £3,600 / €3,999
- THD n
- <0.001% at 1 kHz @ 0 dBFS
- Jitter
- <100 femtoseconds peak-to-peak total correlated jitter
- Weight
- 10.6 kg
- DAC chips
- 2× ESS ES9038Q2M, dual mono, dual-differential configuration
- Dimensions
- 483 × 102 × 381 mm (W×H×D)
- Output level
- RCA 2 Vrms @0dBFS; XLR 4 Vrms @0dBFS, both fixed or variable
- Digital inputs
- USB-B (USB Audio Class 2), 3× optical, 1× coaxial, 1× AES/EBU, CD I²S
- Format support
- PCM up to 768kHz via USB (192kHz other inputs); native DSD512 via USB, DoP DSD64/256; full hardware MQA decoding
- Headphone output
- 6.3mm unbalanced + 4-pin XLR balanced; 3.9 W/8Ω, 3.2 W/32Ω, 400 mW/300Ω balanced
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