11/10/2022 0 Comments Metrum onyx dac review![]() ![]() I've had a valve amp for a year now and just opening my eyes to the possibilities for digital. I did own a Hegel 360 amp for a couple of yrs but never really took advantage of its Dac section, I might have plugged in my laptop a couple of times but no real motivation to divert from Vinyl/CD. Very interesting thread for a DAC newbie. I also found that the XLR (as have a few reviewers) sounds better than the RCA. Steve also makes a Dynamo PS which is a modded Paul Hynes - optimised for digital that I haven't tried yet. If you can use a good PS - such as an Sbooster, you will never look back. BNC is the sweet spot and the Synromesh is true 75 ohm. I have compared almost every combination possible and I can say that the onboard Xmos USB in Metrum is not great. The effect of the Syncromesh isn't subtle and adds improvement is soundstage width, height, detail, dynamics and most importantly renders a very natural and "in the room" sense. Steve Nugent from EA has just updated what was a stellar performer to a 7 psec specification. The biggest difference to the DAC ($12,000 AUD) has been the addition of Empirical Audio Syncromesh. I find the Metrum to be extremely responsive to the set up. I have a Metrum Adagio which is by far the best DAC I have ever had. I am highly impressed with what Metrum can offer for this kind of money. If you listen to a lot of well recorded acoustic, or jazz.the immediacy and organic nature will astound you (given the rest of your system).the short intakes of breath, blowing on wind instruments, hands plucking guitars and fingers sliding on the strings, little things you've never noticed before that were always on the recordings but just muffled/veiled will just be there all of a sudden, not as distractions, rather as parts of the recording. Those are two of my next points of upgrade, hence the thread. It basically sounds good with everything, a very high res, high bandwidth dac which has no fatiguing qualities as far as I can tell, and this is without any USB cleaners or power conditioners on my chain. Like I said, Stupendous Fidelity.Īdditionally, after about a month or so of listening: The Onyx EASILY tells you that, along with making Lindsey and Christie's vocals much sharper and easier to discern within that sound stage, among the cacophony of everything else. ![]() Now, the few great dacs should be able to tell you that Christie is taller than Nicks and is standing farther away. All the cymbal hits should be striking and decay very nicely. One of my typical reference/test track is Fleetwood Mac's 'Dreams', all dacs should and will place Stevie Nicks in the middle of course, most dacs worth their salt should be able to place Lindsay to the right and middle height during the chorus, and Christie to the left, and you should be able to discern their backup vocals among all the other instrumentation. My PWD2 was always used on NativeX mode (NOS), and you could say I prefer this sound signature, the Onyx is easily a lot more high resolution, without really trying, the details are just there. The delineation of instruments in space is very precise, from a width and depth perspective, DM+ was pretty vague, but I'm not gonna use typical audiophile lingo here as DM+ is a high-res, good dac for the price, but not at all in the same class as the Onyx. As a stop gap I have been using the CA Dacmagic+. My reference dac was PS AudioPerfectwave MK2 for years till that started acting up on me. I haven't heard the Yggdrasil though so can't comment on that, I'm just not a fan of OS dacs so it wasn't really in my list to buy. I would have a hard time believing anything bettering it at it's price range. ![]() Copy and paste from my head-fi post, I reviewed with actual music and noted my observations, unlike going through the same 5 audiophile recordings and using nebulous descriptors like blacker backgrounds and tighter bass, so bare with me: ![]()
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