Metrum Octave Dac - What are the Chips used

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When you hear the dac in your system and music is what you care about, the bit resolution is not that interesting; at least I feel so.
Nice to know what's going on technically, but it's all based on speculation so I don't see any sense.
When this thread is about discovering which chips are used and maybe trying a DIY copy, IMO it is a dead end project.
 
There's also a review of the Octave by Hifi Critic, and they measured the actual resolution to be 18 bits.

I read that review and have plenty of doubts about it. The reviewer (Martin Colloms) states:

The actual resolution is about 18 bit...

but does not tell us how he ascertained this. There's ample evidence in this review that the work wasn't very thorough so in the absence of explanation for how he arrived at his figure, I'm not deterred. One could make an educated guess that Colloms is estimating the resolution from a linearity measurement with decreasing amplitude single tone stimulus. In which case he might just be saying that the step size of the DAC LSBs are within 0.25LSB. Hard to tell.
 
nos topic,so perhaps it's rather like
8 x occasionally linear 16bit dac -> frequently nonlinear stereo 18bit resolution
:D

hehehe

good chance he used that same simplistic/flawed math

where is this talk of a diy copy? its been mentioned twice now that this was a goal being discussed
(by the same person, but still mentioned twice) does discussing anything at all at diya mean talking about making a diy copy now?
 
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When you hear the dac in your system and music is what you care about, the bit resolution is not that interesting; at least I feel so.
Nice to know what's going on technically, but it's all based on speculation so I don't see any sense.
When this thread is about discovering which chips are used and maybe trying a DIY copy, IMO it is a dead end project.

I don't think the OP meant to copy this design by finding out what components were used. It's just the need to know that might have led him to ask this question.

Furthermore, in the reviews is written that the industrial DACs are in need of "glue logic" with proprietary software to make them work. Even if one did know all the hardware, not having the software would make it a lot harder to DIY a clone of some sort. IMO not impossible, though.

To me it seems likely that not knowing the type adds a bit to the mystery that is called High End. Perhaps the DAC-ICs are regarded in their field as mundane types (it's actually written in the 6 moons review that they're nothing special, an industry standard). Like we would regard e.g. an NE5532.
Imagine how knowing that would prejudice a lot of people into believing it can't be good...

The company I work for is an OEM of industrial electronics but we do make on item for the high end audio market (no, not Metrum's products). We know what it costs to make and we know what the customer sells it for (big markup!). We also know what's inside, and do you think I would buy it? Not in a million years, it's filled with NE5532s and IC amp modules, but I don't actually know what it sounds like.
Now, do you see what I mean?
 
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where is this talk of a diy copy? its been mentioned twice now that this was a goal being discussed
(by the same person, but still mentioned twice) does discussing anything at all at diya mean talking about making a diy copy now?

Yeah that's all beyond me - can't figure it out. The price of the original is very reasonable, and the measurements suck. Thinking in particular of the high order distortion products on Collom's FFT - yuck! Can't see any point in attempting a clone myself - I'd at very least wanna change the DAC which would make it not really a copy at all...:p
 
Yeah that's all beyond me - can't figure it out. The price of the original is very reasonable, and the measurements suck. Thinking in particular of the high order distortion products on Collom's FFT - yuck! Can't see any point in attempting a clone myself - I'd at very least wanna change the DAC which would make it not really a copy at all...:p

thats what you expect when there is not even any sort of buffer/filter to get rid of the junk from a dac not designed for audio (even an audio dac would be full of junk used like that). the designers clearly (like many nos dac designs) rely on ythe ear/brain doing this filtering.

indeed I wouldnt touch it, its a novel idea, pieter clearly enjoys his but you wouldnt catch me 1. buying a commercial dac at all until I retire from DIY perhaps or 2. going anywhere near this one.
 
...indeed I wouldnt touch it, its a novel idea, pieter clearly enjoys his but you wouldnt catch me 1. buying a commercial dac at all until I retire from DIY perhaps or 2. going anywhere near this one.

That's the point (for me).
I have always been reluctant with NOS dacs because of the bad measurements, as pointed out above, and I have never been impressed by the TDA1543/1541 school of DIY NOS dacs sound wise.
Until I auditioned the Octave, actually by chance, in my system (which is revealing in character because I like to hear details as much as possible).
When (as much as possible) analog like reproduction and transparency is what you're after, this dac is very much worth a listen.
I did, and was not bothered by technichal issues at all.
When you know beforehand that it is not for you for whatever reason, that's up to you. I have learnt a bit of open minded-ness in my audio life :)
 
never going to happen, the utterly proprietary nature of everything about it from the silly dac chip, not handling DSD, single ended?, no output filter, tweak proof 6 layer PCB and somewhat crappy chassis turns me off, it also wouldnt work with my system anyway which is multichannel for digital XO and needs i2s input. analogue like and transparency are 2 different attributes? sounding totally unlike my 4 channel ESS with discrete NTD1 (mid-bass) and sen/cen jfet IV (tweeters) which both sound fantastic and are already beyond what any speaker can reproduce; if true cannot mean transparency

what good is an open mind if the unit is a closed book?
 
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pot kettle Pieter; pot kettle.

far from knowing everything, I just know everything that I want for the foreseeable future and have a pretty good idea by now of what I like and I dislike audiophoolish descriptions like 'analogue' as a descriptive term, what does that even mean? sounding like analogue? what does analogue sound like? its like 'tubie' sounding like a tube, what does a tube sound like? transparency to describe something, when as far as that goes any mid-fi dac should be pretty transparent to the point of outperforming everything after it. I do still believe there can be flavor, but we are now at the point that you pretty much have to degrade performance in a particular way to get it

the only part of my post that I have not already said in this thread are the description of my current system, which should make it obvious even without my opinion on the dac chip that buying a dac like this would be idiotic. then comment on the crappy chassis and i dont think there is any doubt about that at this price point, doesnt have to be ott but you can get nicer chassis for considerably under $100 in lowish quantities. It looks like and probably is a hammond prototyping case. OK for DIY but its not DIY

is my system the be all and end all? nope, nowhere near it, does it outperform the metrum? yes I believe it does and pretty handily. it certainly has more to offer a digital XO as well as being far more flexible, i need more I/O than the metrum offers even if it wasnt totally not to my taste or needs otherwise.
 
is my system the be all and end all? nope, nowhere near it, does it outperform the metrum? yes I believe it does and pretty handily.

As long as that word "believe" cannot be changed to "know" because of not auditioning the Octave, you actually know nothing.

This thread and the positive reviews have actually gotten me very interested in checking this Octave out. How and when I don't know yet, but I'll report back.
 
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well I used believe specifically for that purpose, my dac and ancillaries outperform it easily if the measurements published are whats in question, but i used the word believe because i was taking subjectivity into account. going by experience of dacs of this type i wouldnt like the sound either but i havent heard it so.. but given other factors it could never be useful to me anyway

funnily enough I actually recommended it to a couple of people a few months ago so i might hear it just to satisfy curiosity.
 
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I dislike audiophoolish descriptions like 'analogue' as a descriptive term, what does that even mean? sounding like analogue? what does analogue sound like?

'Analog' as a descriptive term works pretty well for me - it means lacking the glare or hash in the HF so common in digital. It means having a high degree of mid-range clarity. It means dynamic, as opposed to compressed like plenty of S-D DACs sound.

Anyway that's my take on the word.
 
'Analog' as a descriptive term works pretty well for me - it means lacking the glare or hash in the HF so common in digital. It means having a high degree of mid-range clarity. It means dynamic, as opposed to compressed like plenty of S-D DACs sound.

Anyway that's my take on the word.

Abraxalito,
You pretty well describe the sound of the Octave dac as I perceive it.
 
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