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:
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:
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:
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:
RCA output is a bit worse as is typically the case:
The issue here is high level of distortion as noise performance is excellent:
They could do better though as indicated by our IMD level sweep:
Linearity test shows power supply noise lowering accuracy at very low signal levels:
Jitter performance is very good, albeit with a couple of spikes that should not be there:
Multitone test results are better than I expected in critical audio bands (1 to 5 kHz):
One channel is worse than the other in the dashboard and we see the same here with 50 Hz stereophile test:
There are crazy number of filters here. I demand overtime pay for having had to measure them!
The implementation is the best I have seen for minimum phase where there is essentially no ripple or early roll off:
And you have multiple choices in linear filters as well to get the best attenuation and widest bandwidth:
The filters are so good that the recommended ones above didn't make a difference in our wideband THD+N test:
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/
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:
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:
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:
RCA output is a bit worse as is typically the case:
The issue here is high level of distortion as noise performance is excellent:
They could do better though as indicated by our IMD level sweep:
Linearity test shows power supply noise lowering accuracy at very low signal levels:
Jitter performance is very good, albeit with a couple of spikes that should not be there:
Multitone test results are better than I expected in critical audio bands (1 to 5 kHz):
One channel is worse than the other in the dashboard and we see the same here with 50 Hz stereophile test:
There are crazy number of filters here. I demand overtime pay for having had to measure them!
The implementation is the best I have seen for minimum phase where there is essentially no ripple or early roll off:
And you have multiple choices in linear filters as well to get the best attenuation and widest bandwidth:
The filters are so good that the recommended ones above didn't make a difference in our wideband THD+N test:
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/
