Bricasti M1SE Stereo DAC Review

[kelesh]

You and I are on this site. We constitute about 0.003% of buyers out there. Living in a bubble is not good for reality perception. Most people that are buying stuff, especially OLDER people could not give a damn about us or this site.

Ha! What a coincidence - I don't give a damn about them either

 

[Jimster480]

For the same money, I can, instead, buy 1000 of these Apple DACS or better yet, I can buy a single dongle, hang it on my iPhone and using the saved funds, spend three weeks on the beach in Fiji listening to my music library.

Decisions, decisions…

View attachment 354543

Sure but honestly that is a POS.
At least buy something decent for $70-100.

 

[Jimster480]

You and I are on this site. We constitute about 0.003% of buyers out there. Living in a bubble is not good for reality perception. Most people that are buying stuff, especially OLDER people could not give a damn about us or this site. You know how I know that ? Because if they actually did care about measurements or this site cables costing 10 000 dollars or record players costing 175 000 dollars would not be a thing anywhere, anytime. And this one is actually "the cheaper version", they have one for 232 000 dollars as well. Or maybe you think this cr*p is worth it and "measures great" ?

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Romanel, Switzerland – Wednesday 24th November 2021—Nagra celebrates 70 years with a limited edition Reference Anniversary Turntable. According to the press release, the new turntable is the result of four year’s worth of R&D by a team of designers and engineers in the fields of applied physics...

www.analogplanet.com

Sure there are still older people who don't know. The reality is that more and more people know every day and this is why this site is HATED in most of the audio industry. Dropping ASR @ the Audio Expo in Tampa bay brings lots of hard looks and upset faces. These guys know what they are selling and don't want sites like this one coming in and messing up their money streams.

My peer group is pretty diverse, and spans a large chunk of the Socioeconomic spectrum. most would see it how i do, it's you money spend it however you want! The few with with an interest in electronics, would probably scoff at needing to open it up and move a jumper to get an appropriate voltage setting.

Most of my Peer group would be like "wtf is that, why is it 10k?". 10k is quite a lot of money to most people. Just seems crazy to spend it on something that can be achieved for sub $500 (with all the same features, inputs and outputs, etc).
Most people I know use bluetooth headphones and soundbars. They use Alexa smart speakers and other stuff that sounds like total garbage.
So they would think that I am really making huge money to waste this much on something like a DAC...

 

[Jimster480]

I don't think so. Around 1999, dacs with similar performance used to cost 10k$ with todays dollars.

Mark Levinson No 360S DAC Review

This is a review and detailed measurements of my Mark Levinson No. 360S DAC. I purchased it sometime around 1999 when the new high resolution formats had come out (DVD-A and SACD). It has been a solid foundation of countless audio evaluations I have performed near two decades now. The 360S...

www.audiosciencereview.com

~1999
~R-2R
~-110db highest distortion spike / 20 bits linearity, 105db DR.

Sure but to say that $7000 in 1999 is $10k in 2024 is foolish. $7000 in 1999 is around $20000 if not closer to $30000 depending on the industry.
People really don't get that our money has devalued that quickly.

The marketing for these products markets performance heavily.



8 years ago we had the ODAC, and I think superb Gustard DACs and Benchmark too. We have a lot more now but there were good options then. The Bricasti M1 does predate all of what I just said though.

8 Years ago sure, but 12 years ago I am not sure. Other devices which had this level of performance were probably also very expensive devices. Especially considering how much older "junk" has been reviewed here with terrible performance from around the same time.

 

[Mnyb]

This is a nice story we tell ourselves to make reality more palatable, but from what I've heard from friends with constant exposure to people in this wealth tier, it is unfortunately not true. They might not be idiots on the level of eating tide pods, but some of them are honest-to-god idiots.

Luck exists, luck affects money, there are 8 billion people on this planet, most of them are idiots, and so inevitably you have some rich, lucky idiots.

Gosh, just watch an episode of Shark Tank, do you think they're all acting not-especially-smart as a ruse?

The overlap of "smartest people I've met" and "richest people I've met" is not 0%, but it's closer to 0% than 100%.

The world is complex nowadays in some area of life we are all idiots, and we all have an hard time following advice at times , we go with our feelings.
The really smart ones do as thier advisors tells them even if they don’t get it . That’s why hired an expert in the first place .

You can get rich by your ability to kick a ball , look nice or inherited funds

Or just simply being a good business person but have absolutely no knowledge of electronics and just buy piles of Veblen goods in general.

 

[kemmler3D]

The world is complex nowadays in some area of life we are all idiots, and we all have an hard time following advice at times , we go with our feelings.
The really smart ones do as thier advisors tells them even if they don’t get it . That’s why hired an expert in the first place .

You can get rich by your ability to kick a ball , look nice or inherited funds

Or just simply being a good business person but have absolutely no knowledge of electronics and just buy piles of Veblen goods in general.

Sure, but I'm saying you don't actually need to be good at ANYTHING to get rich, some of them are just lucky and convinced of their own genius because of it.

 

[Velocipede_Acoustics]

Sure, but I'm saying you don't actually need to be good at ANYTHING to get rich, some of them are just lucky and convinced of their own genius because of it.

What people often miss with their unreasonable conflation with luck as the major factor, is that everyone can align themselves to have better chances a getting luckier outcomes.

For example, I got lucky to get the career position at a great company , doing awesome work. However, there was zero chance I would get that lucky if I didn't do aot of right things in the row that were not happenstance.

Those things I did are not obvious, but they happened. So how could you possibly know? Assuming it was just luck is the exact kind of assumption that narrows the mind and is why those who are unlucky, according to their own self diagnosis, often never find luck.

 

[Mart68]

Sure there are still older people who don't know. The reality is that more and more people know every day and this is why this site is HATED in most of the audio industry. Dropping ASR @ the Audio Expo in Tampa bay brings lots of hard looks and upset faces. These guys know what they are selling and don't want sites like this one coming in and messing up their money streams.

At a show last year there was a bloke selling streamers who decided to buttonhole me and my colleague. He had five streamers lined up from £2K to £10K

'What's the difference between them?' asked my oppo.

'Well' he says, 'The more expensive ones have more storage.'

Then, seeing how massively unimpressed we were with that answer, he added 'Of course as you move up the range the sound quality improves too.'

I take comfort in just how hard a job he has.

 

[totti1965]

This is a review and detailed measurements of the Bricasti Audio M1SE balanced stereo DAC. It is on kind loan from a member and costs US $10,000:
View attachment 354404
The indication says M1 but owner tells me it has the "SE" upgrade. I have been a fan of the industrial design of Bricasti audio products since I first saw them. They remind me of Mark Levinson designs (I believe the industrial designer is the same). While a bit old fashioned with that dot matrix display, it still screams "high-end" to me. The interface is easy to navigate by pushing a button and then selecting things.

The box itself is very heavy and dense. It has an independent linear power supply for each channel which likely is responsible for much of that. It uses an Analog Devices DAC combined with external filtering.

Here is the back panel:
View attachment 354405
Nice to see S/PDIF provided both as RCA and BNC.

Bricasti M1 SE DAC Measurements
Let's start with our usual dashboard using XLR output:
View attachment 354406
I would have liked to see the output level be 4 volts. Manual says there is an internal jumper that causes the output to be variable and then you can set it to a higher value. But why is the default this odd number? I looked the AD DAC they are using and it has a SINAD of 110 dB so they are short a bit in that front. Still what I measured perfectly matches company specifications and lands the DAC in our competent category:
View attachment 354407

View attachment 354408

RCA output is a bit worse as is typically the case:

View attachment 354410

The issue here is high level of distortion as noise performance is excellent:View attachment 354412

They could do better though as indicated by our IMD level sweep:
View attachment 354414
Linearity test shows power supply noise lowering accuracy at very low signal levels:
View attachment 354415

Jitter performance is very good, albeit with a couple of spikes that should not be there:
View attachment 354416

Multitone test results are better than I expected in critical audio bands (1 to 5 kHz):
View attachment 354417

One channel is worse than the other in the dashboard and we see the same here with 50 Hz stereophile test:
View attachment 354418

There are crazy number of filters here. I demand overtime pay for having had to measure them!
View attachment 354419
View attachment 354420

The implementation is the best I have seen for minimum phase where there is essentially no ripple or early roll off:
View attachment 354421

And you have multiple choices in linear filters as well to get the best attenuation and widest bandwidth:View attachment 354422

The filters are so good that the recommended ones above didn't make a difference in our wideband THD+N test:
View attachment 354424
Alas, we have rising distortion with frequency. Even at lower frequencies, a high-end DAC should do much better.

Conclusions
Many times when I measure a high-end DAC, it lacks measurements. And almost in all cases we wind up with poor measured performance as well. Not so here. The company specifications are very accurate and speak the truth. And that truth lands the M1SE in the category of "competent." Alas, we can buy this level of performance for less than 5% of the cost of Bricasti! You won't get the distinctive and nice look of Bricasti. Only you can decide if you want to pay 95% more for that.

I should note that I think they are being held back by their choice of DAC silicon. The rest of the design seems better than what that chip allows.

I personally can't recommend the Bricasti M1 SE. It is too much money for the level of performance, despite how much I like its looks. But if you have one, you can take comfort in knowing you got what the company promised. And audible performance should be good enough.

------------
As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.

Any donations are much appreciated using: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/

2.000 % more!

 

[Sokel]

I wasn't suggesting they're idiots, on the contrary - they are smart opportunists. All I said was that I'd pass on this device. In fact, I'll pass even if it is given to me free. Specifically because I see no need to propagate the "as long as it delivers and looks a little more expensive than ordinary everything is fine" ideology any further, it's bad enough as it is. The 16 million millionaires can, and have the right to, separate themselves all they want, they are just not going to get any attention or respect from me. I have the right to demand what I see fit for my ten grand of "peanuts", if I choose to spend that much, and this isn't it, even if the performance is spot on as advertised. I agree that performance is of primary importance, but price matters as well.

This is a nice story we tell ourselves to make reality more palatable, but from what I've heard from friends with constant exposure to people in this wealth tier, it is unfortunately not true. They might not be idiots on the level of eating tide pods, but some of them are honest-to-god idiots.

Luck exists, luck affects money, there are 8 billion people on this planet, most of them are idiots, and so inevitably you have some rich, lucky idiots.

Gosh, just watch an episode of Shark Tank, do you think they're all acting not-especially-smart as a ruse?

The overlap of "smartest people I've met" and "richest people I've met" is not 0%, but it's closer to 0% than 100%.

As everywhere else one can find all kinds,that's for sure.
And luck is paramount but one can push it.

Smart is different for everyone of us I guess,for me is someone knowing it's own flaws and do the best with what he already has on hand.
So,as any generalization or judging only by my own surrounding I admit I'm half wrong,half right (that's where luck comes handy )

 

[Fidji]

Maybe bit of view from the other side - or how do you buy expensive audio. Disclaimer: I am fully aware of Topping/Gustards etc - I have/had couple of them e.g. serving as external DAC's for Trinnov AV processor [mostly as result of cable/rack management]

So we start with this [euros]:

1) in a first step you remove VAT [approx 20%] - as it is a common practice to "rent" place where you live from your own company [requires to own couple of other real estate and be in rental business, which is what you do to diversify your retirement money, was no brainer with 0% mortgages]. You need do it properly, as those are things are often challenges by Tax Authorities. Obviously you get also benefit od depreciation of the unit [it being a company owned asset, so long term another approx 20% advantage] - so overall your starting point of overall costs is 40% lower, compared to list price.

2) then you start discussion about "real" price - not going to state exact numbers for this one - but I have never bought anything for a full price [but it ranges between 10% and 35% usually]. Not only for audio, but also cars, or whatever. Prices are out there to impress, and create aura of exclusivity and value. Nothing more.

3) now comes a real thing - trade in. I entered the train back in 2008?/2009? buying traded-in DS0 guise of this product. Asking price for new was around 16k, got it for 7, traded in smth, do not remember what, if my memory does not fail me it was Theta Digital Gen VIII. Mind you - with 1 update in those 15 years [new DAC board] [which resulted in me getting so called RENEW unit - basically completely working unit in ugly box, that I could sell and recoup 100% of the update costs]

We are here actually in "1 Topping per year" cost of ownership territory.

so, at the end of the day, really only a fraction of initial asking price changes hands in form of cash. You amortize ownership over really long period, you get absolutely fantastic looking, kind of jewellery grade of looking thing [Bricasti is ugly], audibly transparent, with all the bells and whistles, flexible, FW updates, endless adjustment opportunities, DRC, one-box rules them all solution.

of course it helps, if initial asking price is e.g. just a small part of your yearly bonus/stock compensation. Also BMW 7 is not for everybody.
BTW - Linn has limited capacity on their case machining, so you can expect to wait couple of months, as you are in the queue.

 

[Axo1989]

Maybe bit of view from the other side - or how do you buy expensive audio. Disclaimer: I am fully aware of Topping/Gustards etc - I have/had couple of them e.g. serving as external DAC's for Trinnov AV processor [mostly as result of cable/rack management]

So we start with this [euros]:
View attachment 354970

1) in a first step you remove VAT [approx 20%] - as it is a common practice to "rent" place where you live from your own company [requires to own couple of other real estate and be in rental business, which is what you do to diversify your retirement money, was no brainer with 0% mortgages]. You need do it properly, as those are things are often challenges by Tax Authorities. Obviously you get also benefit od depreciation of the unit [it being a company owned asset, so long term another approx 20% advantage] - so overall your starting point of overall costs is 40% lower, compared to list price.

2) then you start discussion about "real" price - not going to state exact numbers for this one - but I have never bought anything for a full price [but it ranges between 10% and 35% usually]. Not only for audio, but also cars, or whatever. Prices are out there to impress, and create aura of exclusivity and value. Nothing more.

3) now comes a real thing - trade in. I entered the train back in 2008?/2009? buying traded-in DS0 guise of this product. Asking price for new was around 16k, got it for 7, traded in smth, do not remember what, if my memory does not fail me it was Theta Digital Gen VIII. Mind you - with 1 update in those 15 years [new DAC board] [which resulted in me getting so called RENEW unit - basically completely working unit in ugly box, that I could sell and recoup 100% of the update costs]

so, at the end of the day, really only a fraction of initial asking price changes hands in form of cash. You amortize ownership over really long period, you get absolutely fantastic looking, kind of jewellery grade of looking thing [Bricasti is ugly], audibly transparent, with all the bells and whistles, flexible, FW updates, endless adjustment opportunities, DRC, one-box rules them all solution.

of course it helps, if initial asking price is e.g. just a small part of your yearly bonus/stock compensation. Also BMW 7 is not for everybody.
BTW - Linn has limited capacity on their case machining, so you can expect to wait couple of months, as you are in the queue.

Good point. If you produce AV material, relevant audio equipment is deductible (depending on your tax environment either up-front or depreciated over time). Which helps. As do leases, trade-ins and discounts.

 

[IAtaman]

For the same money, I can, instead, buy 1000 of these Apple DACS or better yet, I can buy a single dongle, hang it on my iPhone and using the saved funds, spend three weeks on the beach in Fiji listening to my music library.

Decisions, decisions…

View attachment 354543

Why no wait a decade or two, and for 10K you can buy a humanoid robot who can sing you whatever song you want.

 

[DSJR]

Sure but honestly that is a POS.
At least buy something decent for $70-100.

Ummm - How is the Apple dongle NOT decent???

Said Apple dongle does have shortcomings such as low output (for use as a line level dac although it's certainly usable with many line stages and of course the dreaded EU hobbles output further), obviously no facilities other than its one connector plug and maybe the still inaudible jitter could/should be better, but it's a damned fine little thing and should be a kind of lower end benchmark in the audiophool fraternity who'd never give it a second glance...

I have trouble with understanding this (as I grew up on simple being better of well designed) but a maker who sells in the far east told me this and later on, a speaker maker who's increased prices by nearly 50% in under ten years has found no loss in sales - the market they sell into will pay for greater exclusivity...

...It does seem the far eastern market regards quality as to how expensive the product is. A $12k phono stage will ALWAYS be judged to be better than a $2k one even if the cheaper one is better on the test bench and maybe to the ear as well. This dac no doubt sells to these people the way most of us would look at am SMSL, Schiit or Topping low to middle cost unit and the ten grand actually gives it some exclusivity. Sure, a better designed single master power supply could be used instead of three separate ones, but that's not the point in this market.

At least this dac performs more than just 'okay' and it looks well put together in an expensive case. Quite a lot of HiFi News reviewed products seem very expensive when they're a simple internal circuit in a hugely lavish case. This unit looks the business to those who don't understand or care about the fine details.

I'd add finally that these people described above never would dream of looking in to sites like this, or audio forums in the first place.

 

[Velocipede_Acoustics]

At least this dac performs more than just 'okay' and it looks well put together in an expensive case. Quite a lot of HiFi News reviewed products seem very expensive when they're a simple internal circuit in a hugely lavish case. This unit looks the business to those who don't understand or care about the fine details.

I'd add finally that these people described above never would dream of looking in to sites like this, or audio forums in the first place.

I guess ill buy a $10 DAC, put it in a fancy case and charge $5000.

 

[pablolie]

...

Most of my Peer group would be like "wtf is that, why is it 10k?". 10k is quite a lot of money to most people. Just seems crazy to spend it on something that can be achieved for sub $500 (with all the same features, inputs and outputs, etc).
Most people I know use bluetooth headphones and soundbars. They use Alexa smart speakers and other stuff that sounds like total garbage.
So they would think that I am really making huge money to waste this much on something like a DAC...

I don't judge the people that buy this - as Amir said, you pay for design, but you also get audibly OKish performance. So if you like it and it fits your decor and you're itching to feel 10k, hey, your decision and none of my business.

PS: Mind you, I personally wouldn't. Zero reason to "upgrade" if one already has a decent system. But ultimately, what I decide to blow money on is my decision, and sometimes a poor one. I bought Yahoo stock near the peak back in the day, so there...

 

[DLS79]

But ultimately, what I decide to blow money on is my decision, and sometimes a poor one. I bought Yahoo stock near the peak back in the day, so there...

Yep, I have a mechanical pencil that some here would probably flamethrower me for spending as much as i did. Same goes for a pair of wire strippers I own.

 

[Lupin]

So in conclusion you'll get more performance out of a mobile phone that costs 1/20 of this DAC... nah think I will pass on this one.

 

[Yevhen]

There are also lots of photos online for the inside of this device, if anyone is curious. Here's a random one I selected. The very earliest models (non-SE I believe) used an SMPS for the digital board, instead of only LPS.

The design looks clean and all these compartments/walls give you a feel of good isolation between the boards. But from a technical (and environmental) point of view, this milled box is sad to look at: a waste of aluminum and time for CNC machining just to justify the 10K price tag. Unfortunately, they don't use feed-trough capacitors or filters, so all the noise from one compartment is picked up by the cables and transferred to the neighboring one.

 

[DLS79]

But from a technical (and environmental) point of view, this milled box is sad to look at: a waste of aluminum and time for CNC machining just to justify the 10K price tag.

I'm pretty sure this in an extrusion that's been finish machined. The top and bottom are removable panels, and the big giveaway is that the internal corners have no radius!