Hi Chris
Just noticed your post and I was just chatting to someone yesterday who had mentioned I had not updated this on your forum for a while. So sorry guys - will now rectify that.
I have had a number of people over to my place and have gone over to a few others with this very interesting DAC.
First to really unlock its potential you need something like an Audiophilleo or Off-Ramp and upsample to to 176K or 192K depending on what the DAC will handle. It is only specced to 176 but I believe many will go to 192 - I am fortunate - mine will. Fed that way it is very very accurate. You get the feeling of extreme transparency.
A friend got one and here is his initial reaction:
http://www.digitalaudioreview.net.au/index.php/news-blog-and-showcase/john-darkos-blog/item/297-metrum-nos-mini-dac-octave-first-impressionsIt has created a lot of interest out here in Australia and I will attach a few of those to save wading through them all.
Metrum - this one was like the ultimate SS DAC. It had detail, speed, transients all nailed down. Really impressive. The recording replayed in perfect detail. A bargain too.
A friend came over with an Audiphello2 to check out the Metrum. It easily bested the Stello - the Stello was darker and slightly blurry compared to the Audiophello. The Audiophello sounded more accurate and closer to what I heard with the Off-Ramp - but from memory the Off-Ramp let more detail through and was more dynamic. At least that is from memory - a direct comparison needs to be done to verify it. The Audiophellio is $579 compared to the Stello's $499.00. However you do not need a SPDIF cable with the Audiophello.
Anyway once it was determined the Audiophello was better all listening was done using it. We confirmed what I found previously - the Metrum is a very accurate DAC - it really is spectacular in a Hi Fi sense. When upsampled it shined even more - which was something I hadn't really noticed before. We played Sammy Davis Bye Bye Blackbird from the Wham Of Sam and the clicking of the fingers was very spectacular. We compared it to the PDX. It was not as spectacular - still pretty spectacular mind you - but it, to my ears, sounded more convincing and real.
This is a really fascinating piece of kit. It shows up differences between transports (and presumably cables) with ease. It's "lightning fast" all right, capable of great dynamics, but it doesn't seem to be harsh.
What it is, though, is NOS. I am not a fan of traditional NOS DACs at all - NOS might as well be spelled MUSH as far as I'm concerned. However, bring in software oversampling in a computer-based music player combined with 176.4 or 192kHz output from a good USB-to-SPDIF interface and you open up a whole lotta new potential.
Despite some software glitches that prevent me from sending sample rates higher than 96kHz to this DAC... and despite what appears to be a ground loop problem that forces me to include my pre-amp in the signal path where normally I'd go straight from DAC to power amp... first impressions of the Metrum Octave in my system are that it's un-f***ing-believably good.
I shall restrain myself to just that comment for the moment. I need to swap my Rega back in and try to rule out expectation bias or me having forgotten how good my usual system is after listening to some music in my car earlier in the day.
The Rega is pretty darn good. The Metrum - in combination with software upsampling and an Audiophilleo - is astonishingly so. I don't think I've ever heard digital like this: depth and purity, power and precision, truth and beauty.
Muse's "Time is Running Out" opens with viciously sharp edges while Eva Cassidy singing "Imagine" just flows like honey. Two of my long-used test tracks from Thom Rotella Band - solos by bass guitar and drums respectively - thunder out with slam, extension and articulation to match anything I can recall hearing. Tommy Emmanuel in a solo live-stereo-mike-direct-to-vinyl-cutter recording, transcribed to CD, has such presence, body and sweetness that you're looking around for the turntable. Or at least you would be, if you weren't so utterly engrossed in the music.
And then there's the "shimmer" factor discussed recently: this DAC has it too. There's no audible noise floor, no phase smearing, no roll-off, no noticeable noise or distortion other than any that software upsampling can't shift into ultrasonics.
This is the kind of sound I've been searching for over the past couple of years, and this time I can afford it! Pending approval from the finance committee, I'll be ordering one of these and putting the Rega up for sale.
Something to bear in mind: it is necessary to have a transport of the calibre of an Audiophilleo, as well as a computer with high quality upsampling playback software, to get the results I'm describing. Feed the Octave with jittery 44.1 and you'll get that horrible (IMO) NOS mush out of it, whereas a Rega or Audio-GD will do a bang-up job of de-jittering and digitally filtering whatever old toslink input you have to offer.
It won't be to everybody's liking I'm sure, but it sure hits my spot. This is a DAC to put on your audition list.
First so everyone understands the biases etc involved this listening session was done with Mike Lenehan and one of his staff Tony. As most people here know he makes the PDX it will be compared against so may be biased. However I had been telling them about this DAC for a while and they were interested in hearing it. I must also give them my thanks for letting me take time from their busy schedule because they are really busy putting the finishing touches on a new speaker they are working on - I interrupted them while Mike was doing the final tweaks and measurements to the new crossover.
Anyway they set up a pair ML1 Reference speakers and connected them up to the Mac 501's they use. The Metrum was direct connected to the amps and the volume control of Itunes with Bit-Perfect was used but only initially upsampled to 96K. First thing that was noticed was how accurate and low distortion it was. It was easily better than any of the other DAC's I had taken down so they could hear - in fact they said it was even better than they thought it would be from my enthusiastic build up. However with Kdoot I had noticed the higher the upsampling the better this DAC sounded so we went to 176. Very noticeably better - greater detail and bass. The detail was very well defined but perhaps the top was slightly hard and maybe slightly etched.
Ok - we decided to pop in a level 2 PDX which is a PCM1704K DAC that uses the I2S of a modified M2Tech as input and has an SRPP valve output stage. Immediately it sounded more real and palpable just as it did on my system. The top end was less etched and the detail was perhaps less defined but there was no sense it was not there. I thought this was just a characteristic of the valve output stage but Mike was not so sure - he thought something else was going on. Anyway we popped the Metrum back on and Mike said - got it. He detected a slight bloom in the lower vocals. Now he identified it I listened then heard it. That was it. It was the bloom that was the cause - its absence made the sound more palpable and real sounding. Well I will be fooked.
OK to test out the theory we decided to pop on the a base level PDX without exotic stuff like Duelund output capacitors. The conjecture was it will introduce some of the bloom and guess what it did - maybe half to one third what the Metrum had. It was sort of halfway between the Metrum and Level 2 PDX in sound. Mike thought the cause may have been the capacitors in the Metrum. But when I explained the Metrum had no output stage or capacitors we were scratching our heads.
A bit further investigation indicated this 'bloom' may be related to how you orientate the power supply of the Metrum - one guy did a bit of experimentation and found it changed as you moved the power supply around.
I just had an acquaintance over to check out my DAC's. His preference was the Metrum fed with the Off-Ramp over the PDX. Unfortunately it also confirmed the Off-Ramp is in a different league to the Audiophilleo.
Bill, thanks for having me over on Friday afternoon, the Metrum Octave, and especially the Empirical Off-Ramp, really exceeded my expectations, and I'll go as far as saying the combination was the best digital that I have heard to date.
Bottom line here if you are in the market for a DAC in the under $2.5K then you owe it to yourself to check the Metrum with the Audiophellio 2. It performs a lot better with the Off-Ramp with Turbo-Clocks but the cost is now $2.5K and in that price bracket other DAC's come into consideration such as the PDX or Lampizator and you should check those out as well.
Thanks
Bill
