This is what I hear in the Meridian Explorer 2 even against the simple headphone jacks on my computers. It lacks dynamic range and transparency or clarity. The Explorer 2 sounds flat, bland, a little compressed and 'lifeless'. A MQA stream through the Explorer 2 DAC sounds worse than a common CD rip played directly from my computer headphone jack.

And that holds true playing basic CD rips or streaming MQA. a product that actually degrades the sound of my system rather than improving it.

What really gets me are all the glowing magazine reviews for this turd. Doesn't matter, it all sounded pretty bad through the Explorer 2. I also streamed a few MQA tracks from Tidal. I played various uncompressed 16/44.1 CD rips from my music library on the Macs as well as a handful of 24/96 music file downloads.

While I expected the small $200 Meridian DAC to be shamed by my PS Audio & Mytek DACs, sounding WORSE than the headphone jacks from two computers is the real shame. I casually observed this for the first time last week with my Mac Mini but didn't bother with more comparisons including the use of a second computer. Just for grins I confirmed again with further listening that the Meridian Explorer 2 DAC sounds WORSE in the signal path vs using the 3.5mm headphone jack on my computer without an outboard DAC at all. Meridian Explorer 2 DAC: Other than being an 'MQA indicator light' here's a DAC that does more audible harm than good as far as I'm concerned.

Audioengine d1 dac sound grainy