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Product of the Year Award 2025 – stereonet.com
Reviewers' Choice Award – soundstagehifi.com
Outstanding Product Award – Hi-Fi Choice Magazine
A Milestone DAC Design from Musical Fidelity
The powerful, feature-rich M6x DAC is a new milestone in the history of Musical Fidelity DACs. Going all the way back, the M6x DAC is the proud successor to the Digilog model that started it all way back in 1988. The M6x's immediate predecessor, the M6s DAC was one of the first to use the critically acclaimed ESS 32-bit HyperStream II DAC architecture.
With the M6sR DAC, Musical Fidelity continued to improve the firmware and added a few other quality of life improvements. DSD was now easier to use, it had full Roon Support and inputs and outputs were updated to keep up with the fast moving digital audio landscape. And the M6sR DAC was now being made in the EU!
Building on knowledge and experience with Sabre ESS chips, Musical Fidelity upgraded them to the newer ES9038Q2M, and now use two of them in dual differential mode for a pristine dual mono design. The inclusion of a Time Domain Jitter Eliminator results in superb SNR and THD+N performance with unbelievably detailed transient response.
Other advances in the DAC section include upsampling and re-clocking. Upsampling can independently be switched on or off. The 16-core XMOS and CPLD MAX II Altera processors ensure there is always enough headroom for these operations, the new digital filters and the MQA processing.
The USB Class 2.0 input takes PCM sample rates up to 768 kHz and 32 bit. DSD support goes up to DSD256 via DoP and native DSD512. The S/PDIF inputs accept stereo PCM sample rates up to 192 kHz / 24 bit and include full MQA support.
Award-Winning Performance
The M6x won a Product of the Year Award 2025 from stereonet.com in the DAC category.
"The latest in a long line of Musical Fidelity M-series DACs, the 6x is the company’s current flagship number cruncher. An old-school design sans streaming or any other such fancy stuff, it’s still come a long way since the first Digilog of the nineteen eighties. Large, heavy and festooned with buttons and status LEDs, it’s extremely well made inside and out while offering 32-bit, 768kHz PCM and DSD512 playback plus MQA, and excellent connectivity. Its sound is the star attraction though, thanks to its wonderfully open, detailed and musically enjoyable character."
Outstanding Product Award
The M6x was honored with an Outstanding Product Award from Hi-Fi Choice magazine. "Musical Fidelity's latest converter is a winning combination of foolproof usability, wide file compatibility and accomplished performance that favours any musical genre. Add in the eminently sensible price tag, and this full-width DAC has serious X appeal."
It also grabbed a Reviewers' Choice Award from soundstagehifi.com, which raves, "I have yet to hear a DAC at this price level with such natural and realistic sound across such a broad range of music… From a price-performance perspective in this crowded, competitive field, the M6x DAC stands out."
Balanced and Unbalanced Output Buffers
The single-ended RCA and balanced XLR outputs each have their own output buffer. Via the XLR plugs you can enjoy a fully-differential amplifier design enabling a fully balanced output. Both output stages deliver superior audio quality, exhibit very low noise, large output voltage swing and high current drive. The excellent gain bandwidth and very fast slew rate produce exceptionally low distortion.
Super Silent Power Transformers
The M6x DAC displays Musical Fidelity's continued development of its Super Silent Power Transformers. The industrial grade power jack with an EMI filter and DC blocker stop interferences and eliminate transformer hum. The encapsulated toroidal transformer with low core saturation is ideal for audio applications and especially perfect for digital audio due to its extremely low electromagnetic radiation.
Correct PCB Design and Layout
Digital-to-analog converters, compared to analog amplifiers, present their own design challenges. They work in different domains with their own requirements, and they need to be treated as such. Power requirements are unique, and solutions designed for amplifiers will not show similar results when paired with digital circuitry.
Musical Fidelity has always elevated circuit board design and layout up to the highest of standards. The design and layout need to be custom-tailored to each application, measure well, AND sound as envisioned. Only then have the engineers done their job.
Outstanding Headphone Amplifier
The built-in headphone amplifier's current-feedback AB architecture delivers high bandwidth, extremely low noise, and up to 128dB of dynamic range. Three key features make current-feedback amplifiers outstanding for audio. The high slew rate prevents odd order distortion anomalies. Current-on-demand at the output enables the amplifier to respond quickly and linearly; when large amounts of output power are suddenly needed, the amplifier can respond extremely quickly without raising the noise floor of the system and degrading the signal-to-noise ratio. Gain-independent frequency response allows the full bandwidth of the amplifier to be used over a wide range of volume settings.
Mechanically Sound, Too!
With close attention paid to every aspect of the M6x DAC, the mechanical construction is uncompromisingly rigid and solid in typical Musical Fidelity tradition. Front panel and side panels are milled from extruded aluminum profiles. The exterior doesn’t only look clean, stunning and indestructible, but it also protects the internals against outer electromagnetic fields, and in the same way it protects your other hi-fi gear against electromagnetic fields generated by the M6x DAC.
Connect with Your Favorite Music on a Hypnotic Level
The M6x DAC connects you to your favorite artists on a hypnotic level. Unpack the M6x DAC, connect the cables, and then just leave it at its standard settings and feel the immediate musical integration. The whole sound is sweet and clear. The treble is completely grain free and extended.
The bottom end sounds endless with tactile bass dynamics. As you get reintroduced to your music library, you might want to discover what else is possible and hear it from different stages. Customizability and settings turn the M6x DAC into a powerful tool for experts, which elevates it into a league of its own. Explore the sound stage with upsampling or without, and see if you are drawn in deeper. Choose between seven different digital filters and a complete oversampling bypass, disabling those filters. Full MQA decoding is performed on the M6x DAC hardware.
