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Upsamplers, DACs, jitter, shakes and analogue withdrawals, this is it.

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I do not doubt you. Of course, I have spent years getting my system to not sound cold or analytical (I went down that wrong path years ago, where only audiophile recordings sounded good). Maggies really take work to get to sound good; stock is very bright to me.
I really wanted to hear the MHDT Stockholm, Altmann, etc, but could not afford those. I did consider the Scott Nixon DAC in the more affordable category. But then I came across the Octave at ~$800 and figured that it was worth a try to get the sound that I wanted, and it worked out very well for me.
What I heard was that the Metrum is much closer to the sound that you like, with much more texture, smoothness, musicality etc. than the other OS DACs that I have heard, I could imagine that the older chips could have more texture, etc.
Speaking of thin-ness, this was the property that varied most during during break in. It never became harsh or had glare, but was a little thin and less involving at times. By thin here, I don't mean so much a lack of texture as lack of warmth in the low end. This aspect would oscillate on the order of a day; if it was a little thin one day, it would be a little different in a day or two. Until about 3 months of power on, mostly w/ signal going in. At 4 months, the sound quality became constant.
I would imagine that using 1 or 2 old R2R DAC chips would have more texture, but less dynamics than the 8 chips in the Octave. I'm sure the design around the chips would affect dynamics a lot. I can only imagine, since I have not heard.


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  • NOS - sbrians 19:42:34 03/25/14 (0)

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