Ok. It's been around 10 days of heavy use with the Octave now, and I've formed some opinions.
I'm using it currently on the end of a Squeezebox receiver in place of the Sonifex DAC I mentioned above.
The analogue outs from the SB receiver are greatly improved as you'd expect.
Comparisons with the Sonifex are interesting as this, too was a great improvement over the SB analogue out. What the Octave gives is a wider, deeper soundstage; a bit like going from 4:3 TV to 16:9. Not only that, the sound isn't as lean as it was with the Sonifex. I was going to say it was "fatter", but that implies bloat and excess - which is not my impression at all.
Bass reproduction is cleaner, faster and deeper, and just more tuneful. Midrange, eg for vocals, sax solos etc is wonderfully transparent. I mentioned above, the effect of having cleaned the audio window. Everything is just that bit closer to what I perceive to be the original sound (whatever that may be ).
One thing I have noticed is that small details have become apparent in recordings that I never heard before. Those things that are buried in the mix, and just pass you by. Rather than hearing them subliminally (if at all), the Octave allows you to differentiate them from their surroundings.
Just done a back to back with Brothers In Arms on vinyl (OM40/SL7/Era V Gold) - both into HD650s via a Graham Slee Solo SRGII. The vinyl was no slouch, but the Octave walked all over it in terms of depth (both soundstage and bass), though treble was remarkably similar.
Any downsides? Well, yes. With mp3 files it really shows up the lack of quality. An example was Vintage Trouble "Bomb Shelter Sessions". This was an impulse buy after seeing them on Jool's Later . . . Via the Octave, the sound was pretty nasty - distorted and generally rough; not a nice experience.
So the Octave doesn't gloss over anything, but given a good recording, or even a poor one mastered well - the sound is engaging and enveloping and just encourages you to keep listening. Which I suppose is all you could ask?
Obviously, YMMV, as they say - but the Octave does the trick for me.
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Next step is to compare the analogue out from my Transporter with the digital out via the Octave. This will allow assessment of 96KHz files (the Receiver's feed gets downsampled to 48KHz by SqueezeServer).