Could this be the new Killer, reasonably priced DAC?

[morris_minor]

what happened to this thread?

I forgot about it!

But - the Octave is doing fantastically well. It produces a deep, spacious, smooth sound free of any nasty digital edge and I'm dead pleased I bought it.

I do, however, see Metrum now do a version with 16 DAC chips, called, not unreasonable, the Hex. I would really like to hear this, but price-wise it's in a different league . .

[Paul Hynes]

I forgot about it too! It has been a busy year for various reasons.

As Bob says the Metrum sonic signature is very good out of the box. My unit is the Quad Dac but Bob’s description of the Octave sonic signature also fits the Quad overall. I cannot comment on the differences between the Quad and the Octave, as I have not tried the Quad and the Octave side by side with the same power supplies.

I have completely replaced all the three terminal regulators (LM317s, LM337 and some smaller surface mount types of similar performance) with my high speed shunt regulators. I have also tried 50VA and 250VA custom built mains transformers with the same construction specification as the ones I use in the SR7 power supplies. As expected there were improvements at every stage of the power supply upgrade.

I will post details of the upgrades and the costs in my AoS trade thread when I have some spare time later.

Regards
Paul

[morris_minor]

As Bob says the Metrum sonic signature is very good out of the box. My unit is the Quad Dac but Bob’s description of the Octave sonic signature also fits the Quad overall. I cannot comment on the differences between the Quad and the Octave, as I have not tried the Octave.

. . . and your power supply I'm using with my SB Touch ups the quality even more, Paul.

[Paul Hynes]

Excellent news Bob, pleased you like the power supply.

I missed a bit out in my previous post. I have tried the Octave just not compared it with the stock Quad as this was modified early last year and it has gone to ACS Ltd to be included in their upgrade service. I have edited the post accordingly.

Regards
Paul

[anubisgrau]

paul, would you care to compare these two DACs, fully beefed up by yourself?