Metrum Musette

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Oh. My. God. I love this DAC and it's only been on for all of 2 hours. One of the reviews says it "just sounds like music," but that's wrong: it sounds like *musicians making music.* And that's the one thing I've missed from practically every one of the (way too) many DACs I've owned. At first I thought it might be a bit dynamically challenged, even a bit boring, but the micro dynamics are so well developed that it changes the entire way music crescendos and decrescendos. What else? Amazing vocals, huge but well-controlled bass. I sensed a bit of organizational weirdness in dense orchestral pieces, but I'll revisit as it burns in. Best of all every album sounds different: *like they're supposed too!* I can only imagine what the Menuet and Pavane sound like...

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Thanks, I'm curious about it. Where did you purchase it?

 

Atelier Audio in Montreal. Fast, friendly service.

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Oh, you're a Naimee too, Naim and Metrum are good together

 

They seem pretty good together so far. Lots of speed, but lots of colour too -- funny, I was expecting, per reviews, there to be a relative shortage of colour, but so far I think it's got that aspect better than anything I've heard until now. Very natural sounding too. What equipment are other people using with these DACs? And has anyone heard the Menuet or the Pavane?

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I'm glad you are enjoying your Musette! Could you tell us the other DACs you have owned, and how they compare to the Musette?

 

I also have a Naim integrated amp (5i V2). I currently have a Rega DAC R that I like. But, I am thinking of upgrading my DAC and the Musette is on my list (along with the Chord 2Qute, and possibly the Ayre Codex). Atelier Audio is also about 5 minutes from my home!

 

My last DAC was actually the original Rega DAC -- a halfhearted attempt to trim the expense of my system. I actually like the Rega as well; I think it's the best DAC I've owned for reproducing the full heft, if not quite all the colour, of vocals. If I had a complaint it's that I found it a little opaque and airless; not the best for reproducing transients and colour. On the other hand, it did have a certain solidity, smoothness, and the ability to push the beat along -- combined with the Naim, that actually worked pretty well.

 

Here's a list of the DACs I've had:

 

Peachtree iDecco (Sabre 9006) -- good tonality, good timing, excellent vocals, ok to good microdynamics, good dynamics. Somewhat opaque and a bit colourless. Not the last word in detail, but it does a lot right so you don't notice. The first DAC I ever owned; the only one, besides the Musette, that I still own.

 

Benchmark DAC2 (Sabre 9018) -- good tonality, stupendous clarity, oddly good with DSD64. Problems with timing (it's dull.) Ok microdynamics, good to excellent dynamics. Somewhat colourless. Vocals somewhat shouty -- male classical singers thin-sounding. Hyper-detailed, but the problems with microdynamics and timing causes problems with organization of details. I agonized over this DAC a lot. OK preamp, good headamp.

 

NAD C390DD -- Lots of good stuff. Super black silence. Great detail, great dynamics, good microdynamics, ok colour and tonality. Shouty, thin vocals. All totally let down by the amplifier section which only sounded great when it was way too loud.

 

Chord Hugo (Xilinx Sparta FPGA) -- Good colour, somewhat good tonality. Excellent microdynamics, but only average on dynamics. Actually, kind of average on everything. Not the last word in clarity, not the last word in bass extension, although neither were bad per se. Organization-challenged on dense works. Timing was pretty good. Not great on DSD. Not great value for money. I took a bath on this; I should have waited a few more months to sell it. Good headamp(s.) Preamp/VC ok, but not notably better sounding when put through a preamp.

 

Hegel HD12 (AKM 4399) -- Aggressive, colourful, fun. Great dynamics, very good timing. Ok microdynamics, somewhat unnatural tonality. Detailed, but not hyper-detailed. A little organization-challenged in dense orchestral works. Similar to the Rega, with a bit more transparency. However, so aggressive that it needs to be partnered carefully. Was a fun antidote to the Benchmark. Headamp is ok.

 

exaSound e22 (Sabre 9018 + FPGA) -- Objectively (whatever that means) the best of the lot. This is the other one I agonized most about. Very good timing, stupendous clarity, excellent organization of all levels of detail and lots of detail. Good (but not great tonality,) good (but not great) colour. Excellent micro and macrodynamics. Vocals pretty good , although with occasional intelligibility problems (the best were the Rega, the iDecco, and the Musette.) Notwithstanding it's much-vaunted pre-amp/volume control, I thought this DAC needed a preamp to even out its sound. Unfortunately, that robbed it of its clarity. Also, although it got so much right in depicting the music, I had a persistent sense of the music and the musicians playing it being separate phenomena. Very frustrating as I really wanted to like this DAC -- I also took a bath on it, though I was less angry about that than I was with the Hugo. Great headphone amp.

 

(briefly) Peachtree Nova220SE (Sabre 9023) Didn't really listen past the Class D amp that I loathed

 

(briefly) Wyred4Sound mPre (Sabre 9023) Good preamp. Average, occasionally sharp-sounding DAC. Very good value, however.

 

Wyred4Sound DAC2 DSD variant (Sabre 9018) -- Was built into an SST Thoebe preamp (class A output) Did 97% of the what the exaSound did for about the same price plus solved the preamp problem. However, it had pretty much the same limitations as the exa, without the latter's charm. Outstanding headphone amp(s.) Great (like really great) preamp.

 

Rega DAC (Wolfson WM8742) see above.

 

So what does the Musette get right in comparison?

 

Great (perfect?) tonality, good colour. Excellent micro and macrodynamics. Oodles of detail, and very well-organized (still a (very) little concerned about dense orchestral works, but we'll see.) Pinpoint imaging -- the best of all of them, by far. Great timing: this thing boogies and has tremendous flow. Great vocals; not quite the solidity of the Rega but more character than either the Rega or the iDecco, with intelligibility on par with the iDecco. Excellent presence, and best of all, a real sense of the musicians creating the music. No preamp, no headamp, but nonetheless a great value -- I wonder if the Menuet and Pavane are as great a value.

 

What could I stand more of? Colour, probably. A blacker background, maybe. A little more solidity to the vocals, maybe. I gather the Menuet and Pavane provide more of all that. Maybe I'll upgrade at some point and find out. What I do know is that the things this DAC does right are what I will never compromise on again. I wish I could have found it sooner - would have saved me money and agonizing.

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BTW, Samuel at Atelier was great to deal with.

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Trappy. Do you have anything between the PC and Musette, i.e. USB power filtering, etc?

 

Not at present; I used a Regen and a Curious cable at one point (with the SST) but I felt like they cost more money than the benefit was worth, and I also thought they weren't an unambiguous benefit. I might try the Wyred RUR, but I'm in no hurry.

 

Re: the DAC-r. I didn't find the Rega sleepy either, but I could see it dragging a bass-heavy system down. The Musette is considerably airier than the Rega, while giving up very little by way of body. I found it a substantial improvement over the Rega, but it might not be as big a delta in a different system. For the record, I actually liked the Rega a lot. I would like to hear the newer version at some point.

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Nice descriptions of both DACs, Blaine! I think you nailed them. For me, what I can't get over with the Musette is the sheer naturalness of the way it presents. It makes me relaxed and paradoxically more alert at the same time. I can't begin to imagine how you measure something like that, but within minutes I knew that it was something I'd never heard or felt with any other DAC.

 

It was the Rega without the -r I was talking about, btw. I listened to it through a v-link into the coax. I've heard that the differences with the -r are pretty subtle, but maybe that's not so?

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Just a little update. The sound jumped around a lot over the past month; sometimes clear as a bell, sometimes it would go for an hour sounding like it hadn't had coffee and then suddenly snap to attention. It's more consistently smoothed out now. Some of the concerns I had about dense orchestral music have receded; in terms of organization and clarity it's at least as good as anything else I've heard. Tone colour, especially on winds and brass (man, can horns ever blaaat!) is great. The usual problem area of massed violins is perhaps the one area where I could wish for improvement -- it's a bit hard-sounding sometimes. Bass is the other area which is a bit inconsistent; sometimes I'll get a full, well-textured sound, and then I'll get indistinct "one note" sound. I did also change amplifiers in here as well (one up on the Naim staircase, but second-hand and well-burned in) so some of what I'm hearing may be coming from the amp settling down too.

 

Anyway, still the best DAC I've had! I am curious, however, to understand what those of you who don't like this approach dislike in it. The Musette is SO natural-sounding to me that I actually have a hard time imagining what people would object to in it, but we all have different ears! Would also like to hear if anyone has compared the Metrums to the Schiit multibit DACs.

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Discovering that my system volume was set at 2/3 was an eye-opening experience. I seriously have no idea how long it had been set like that. How embarrassing

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Thanks for the reply! I had almost thought of getting a Gumby, just because, as it's now got a Canadian source. But then I thought sometimes curiosity is just silly, and an insult to one's wallet. Your reply has helped me settle down a bit

 

Even with the correction of my discovery of my system volume being turned down I can still say that the Musette is maybe a touch rolled off in the treble. I don't get quite that sense of almost infinite extension that I got from the exaSound e22. Not that it's bad, just not the last word. Bass, on the other hand is amazing, and seems to be still getting better. I can't believe the depths it seems to plumb and the texture it reveals -- and this is on a tiny pair of Dynaudio DM 2/6!

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I am probably not understanding what you mean. Are you saying that Schiit now has a distributor/dealer in Canada?

 

Headphone Bar in Vancouver. They don't have everything, though. No Yggy... yet.

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Same here. Hi-Rez sounds great on the Metrum; upsampling brings in the unnaturalness it was designed to avoid. Although, I guess you were asking specifically about the filters; that might be interesting to hear. I only ever had the trial of HQP and it's long since expired.

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Congratulations on the purchase of a Naim XS2! I have been thinking of eventually upgrading to the XS2 (I currently have a Naim 5i). Don't hesitate to mention the improvements the XS2 offers compared to your 5si.

 

I love the 5si; it's really a lot of fun. Punchy, rhythmic, and with surprisingly good tonality and color. Not a what I'd call a relaxed amp, and I suspect it would play better with more efficient speakers, even though its 60w feels bigger than that. In my small room it made the Dynaudios a little too forward. The XS2 almost seemed boring in comparison (like being velocitized.) Where the 5si is focused on the leading edge of notes, the XS2 pays more attention to the decay trails making the performance seem broader. It definitely wields the power it has (only 10w more than the baby brother) with a lot more authority, a real iron grip on the Dyns woofers. It's amazing how tight and low those little 5" babies go. The XS2 also does scale better than the 5si, which can play Mahler, but makes it sound a bit like baby Mahler. Both amps have good headphone sections, but the XS2's is class A and markedly better; if you listen with phones it's a very good value.

 

Btw, these little Dyns are real stars; they sound better and better as you improve the front end. They cost me a less than a third of what my old speakers cost and I like them better. They were originally going to be a cheap stand-in while I looked for something else. Well, they are the something else.

 

Anyway, this system has synergy out the yang!

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Correct: no BNC on Musette. Just a 75ohm coax. You want BNC, you've got to go Menuet or higher.

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Not in my experience, no. I used both and if anything I thought the USB was actually a bit better.

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2 hours ago, George Hincapie said:

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.

 

 

Please do tell us how it sounds when you're a few hours in. My palms are kind of itching for the Amethyst as a DAC with a decent headamp (but not necessarily a preamp) would be very handy.