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My fried has Magnepan 1.6s w/ upgraded crossovers, Emotiva electronics, and a Bifrost Uber. I brought my Octave by, wondering whether we could hear a difference in his system.
His system sounded good to me w/ the Bifrost, but w/ the Octave it was immediately much more involving. Timing and microdynamics were better, etc. as I had heard in my system.
So, this system did have enough resolution to easily hear the differences.
Follow Ups:
I haven't heard the Metrum Octave, but I'll say that the Bifrost Uber (or indeed the non-Uber Bifrost) delivered remarkable, "haut relief" imaging beyond what I'd ever experience with any DAC or other source. When I subsequently upgraded my amp to a Pass Labs X150.5 which is also superior tin this regard, the combo was amazing.The Metrum Octave is more than twice the price of the Bifrost, with or without USB, something a lot of people can't just ignore.
NOS DACs are not renowned for their resolution but I can't speak for the Metrum Octave in particular. Resolution and imaging are a high priority for me.
I love the music of ... ... Gustav Mahler
Edits: 11/18/14
Yes, this was not an attempt to compare similarly priced items. Just a data point whose answer I had not known.
I think that you may be shocked at the imaging of the Ocatave (at 3 times the cost of the Bifrost, for the MKII). This is probably helped by 4 DACs/channel rather than a 1/2 DAC per channel.
Imaging is not one of my priorities, so don't have the best and can't say much about that but that as I recall in my system, it opened things up in frequency, timing, dynamics, and more solid sound locations.
"I think that you may be shocked at the imaging of the Ocatave"I wouldn't, if it's anything remotely close to the sound of its bigger brother, the Hex. There's a component that really delivers. At $3200?, it's not insanely priced. Me, I aspire to get an Octave myself thinking it might offer 90% of the performance for 1/3 the cost.
marc g. - audiophile by day, music lover by night
Edits: 11/23/14
just curious.
That he wants a new DAC one day. This is not to put down the Bifrost, it can't be beat for the price to my knowledge and I am using one in one system. But we wondered what the difference would be. I thought that maybe we could not hear a difference in his system, but there were improvements that were immediately obvious that we both heard.
Edits: 11/17/14
these types of in one system evaluations are very helpful. it fixes all the other variables and multiple opinions address the bias issues.
I should clarify that I believe we both heard only improvements in the differences, as I know that in most cases of comparing items of similar cost, some changes are good, and some are not.
But the current Octave does cost about 3 times that of an Uber. So, this was not an attempt to compare like DACs.
BTW, the IC are Morrow MA3s and the speaker cables are Alpha Core MI2s.
And the Emotiva amp was better that I knew (previously w/ the cheap Monster speaker cables, I heard grain and thought it may have been the amps, but it was not).
So my understanding from looking at a quick site is that the Metrum is over twice the cost of the Bifrost ( I could be wrong, emphasis is on the word quick). Does the Metrum offer twice the performance?
Yes, my Octave was about 2 times the cost of Bifrost Uber. In audio, price vs performance is exponential (or is it logarithmic?). Overall, to me, it's worth twice as much. Overall sound ~1.6 times. Timing, ~3 times as good.
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