Metrum Musette

[George Hincapie]

Just an update for you Metrum owners.

 

I own a Musette and have been speaking with Cees from Metrum recently. He tells me that the DAC One modules can be exchanged for DAC Two modules as they are pin for pin compatible. The DAC Two modules were made for the Adagio and comprise 2 DAC One modules AND the FPGA in one module. This is a super easy way to hugely increase performance of all Metrum DACs up to Parvane level. For Musette owners you will be getting almost Menuet levels of performance for around £250.

 

Cees also tells me he has created a dedicated hardware MQA decoding module that has been MQA certified. He will fit it as an upgrade.

 

So excited!

 

I am thinking to upgrade to the Menuet as I like the seperate power supplies per channel and upgrade all 4 DAC One modules to DAC Two and have the MQA fitted. That is an end game DAC IMHO.

 

Also to say that with the DAC Two and MQA upgrades, no DAC in production will compete with the Musette at that price.

[George Hincapie]

Buy direct from Metrum and have them factory fit it. The rough price quoted by Cees for the DAC Two and MQA upgrade was 400 Euros, but MQA module pricing wasn't finalised, so may be different.

[George Hincapie]

Will there be an mqa indicator light led? the manual states galvanic isolation on coax do you know for certain if usb is galvanically isolated too. can't find this out . cheers mk.

 

For current DACs that are upgraded I would say no.

 

For new DACs then possibly - but the front plate will need to be altered to add the LED. Send him an e-mail and ask.

 

I have no idea whether the Coax connection is galvanically isolated, but then I don't worry about that stuff. Therein lays the path to madness. Just enjoy the music - the Coax is my connection of choice and sounds awesome.

[George Hincapie]

Can anyone tell me whether the Musette USB connection requires the 5V line to operate?

 

I want to order a Sablon cable to directly connect my femto Aries to my Musette but they have two versions and I don't know which I need?

[George Hincapie]

Can anyone tell me whether the Musette USB connection requires the 5V line to operate?

 

I want to order a Sablon cable to directly connect my femto Aries to my Musette but they have two versions and I don't know which I need?

Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?

[George Hincapie]

I'd recommend you connect using S/PDIF, with a good quality 75Ohm coax cable. Much simpler, and no 5V problem.

 

I use AES with my Pavane and Aries, never looked back. With USB you could possibly pass DSD along, but the Metrum DACs don't do DSD anyway so why overcomplicate things.

 

Why does it have to be 75 Ohm, what difference does that make? I have read that before but not understood the reasoning behind it.

[George Hincapie]

I upgraded my Musette last week with the DAC Two modules. Took 10 mins from start to finish for me to fit them. Cost was around £150 and Cees shipped promptly from Holland.

 

 

[George Hincapie]

6 hours ago, ismewor said:

Just want to find out does the DAC Two now support higher than 192? or still the same as DAC One?

 

That depends; there are two versions of the DAC Two module. One supports up to 192KHz and the other supports up to 384KHz.

[George Hincapie]

7 hours ago, newworld said:

...I realised that adding boxes is not something I wanted to get into, and promptly sold/returned everything and went for a one-box solution.

 

I think this is a really great point and one that I keep coming back to time and again. I have spoken with Cees a lot recently and I am encouraging him to add an ethernet port to future DACs (or make it available as a replacement board for the USB slot on current models) and have it certified as a Roon Ready end point. Can you imagine the SQ that would provide? A Metrum DAC and Roon with the shortest possible data path? OMG!

 

He is thinking about it, but he has 3 projects to deliver currently, so it'll be Dec 2017 at the earliest before he can progress the plans he has. Until then he has recommended I just use a Pi as an end point.

[George Hincapie]

23 minutes ago, newworld said:

I've read some of your other posts. Whatever happened to the Auralic Aries? I'm pretty certain that would sound better than the Pi. If you haven't, try the USB connection and wireless. When I was auditioning the Aries, it sounded great this way.

 

I still have the Mini, with an MCRU/Longdog Audio LPSU, in my headphone system and it's excellent.

 

I sold my Aries Femto - the original was replaced under warranty. The replacement worked but the bloody letters kept coming off every time I dusted it and I just got fed up having spent £1500 on something that looked, frankly, crap.

 

The Pi is a Roon end point using a HiFi Berry Digi+ Pro and a Tomanek LPSU, so the performance is actually very good indeed, but you are right, it's not end game. Whether I end up with an Aries G2 or a Metrum DAC with integrated Roon end point, time will tell.

[George Hincapie]

I can't remember if I posted about my Musette upgrade. I wrote this on another forum - hope you guys can see it and find it useful.

 

https://hifisubjectivist.org/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=48572

[George Hincapie]

8 hours ago, Rak said:

George, I have Metrum EVA evaluation board with Transient DAC-TWO-192:
https://www.audiohobby.eu/et/metrum-acoustics-dacs/11585-metrum-eva-evaluation-dac-module-with-dac-two-192-transient-r2r.html
Inside Transient DAC-TWO consist 2 dacs and the output is balanced.
I use a transformer from old profi console to make balanced to unbalanced signal and fed to RCA.
The sound is better :-)

 

 

Very nice Rak! Enjoy the music!