Review MOON 680D (V2)

The Sound

What can we expect from a dac/streamer of 9500 euro? In fact a level above our own combination. After all: the Ambre with Pavane costs around 6700 euros without cables. With cables about 7000 euros. So the MOON should give a little more insight than the Ambre with Pavane.

Insight

And fortunately it does. We hear a strikingly detailed picture with wonderful timing behaviour. We immediately feel like tapping into the rhythm of the music. Think of “The Order of the Night” by Eelke Kleijn. Or Little Fuge in G Minor by The Jacques Loussier Trio. (Check out our playlists here) If we continue to Royals of Lorde, we’ll hear a big and warm reproduction. As it should be. The MOON sucks us into the music. Lovely.

Time for some refinement. House of Cards from Radiohead. The high-hats are reproduced the ‘Radiohead-way’ by the Focal Beryllium tweeters. Airy, but clearly present. Can it rock? Well…. let’s try. 7empest and Tool’s Fear Inoculum are dumped in the playlist. Quite a switch we have to make after Radiohead, but in a few minutes we’ll be acclimatised and relaxed. 7empest remains a genius track. It’s not just musically genious; it’s also well recorded. just like the rest of Tool’s work.

The MOON 680D lets you hear flawlessly what’s going on in a recording. We find that striking, because not all manufacturers know how to get the most out of an ESS Sabre 9028pro. That dac can be really annoyingly sharp. If the power supply and clocking is not in order, the dac still reproduces quite a bit of detail; but it does get messy and annoyingly sharp. This is absolutely not the case with the MOON 680D. It is true that the chain has to be right. The speakers, amplification and acoustics must of course be at the level of the dac / streamer for the potential to be heard.

We’re going to Emanuel Santarromana’s Opéra. A very spacious song with a lovely vocal piece. Goosebumps guaranteed on a good system… The MOON just put it down again with full conviction. The scale is right, the bass is nice and deep (also with Barberry where it goes nice and deep) and the insight in the effects is great. As it should be at this level.

MiND App

Of course, we mainly played with the MiND2 streamer. This integrated player can be controlled via ROON (which we mainly used) and via the own MOON app. This app has been improved quite a bit lately. And that has made everything just a lot easier to control. At first we weren’t at all impressed by the usability: the new app makes up for a lot. The app works fine on our Android phone. We find our music and can operate the 680D very well. However: we still find ROON more pleasant to use. However, that’s partly due to our habituation and taste. If you don’t have a ROON, you can now stream without it without problems.