This is beginning to get really annoying — reading posts of those ignorant self-professed experts. This past weekend, I attended AXPONA. Prior to coming, I had arranged to have a one hour private session with the CEO/founder of Grimm Audio — primarily to explore the capabilities of the company’s new MU2 DAC. In particular, I brought along three of my CDs (Take Five/Dave Brubeck; Heart Shaped World/Chris Issak; and Beethoven’s 9th Symphony/Cleveland Orchestra) to see how this Bricasti DAC performed in reproducing specific challenging elements of a track from each disc in comparison to the two DACs I use currently. At, present I have a Wadia CD transport and a Wadia 2000 DAC as well as a Theta Digital Casablanca V DAC and a Theta Digital Compli CD/SACD transport. The Wadia components were considered stat-of-the-art 20 years ago; the Theta Digital DAC was unquestionably state-of-the-art five years ago. My power amps are two mono McIntosh 611s (600 watts), my speakers are Revel Ultima Studios, and my cabling is all Wireworld Eclipse and Silver Eclipse. Overall, my audiophile friends think my audio system is really quite good.
With the Take Five track, I wanted to hear how the opening notes of the alto sax sounded, but more importantly how lifelike did the drum set solo sound when reproduced by the MU2. Using my Theta system, the alto sax sounds pretty good. The drums, however, are a mixed bag; the snare drums comes across nicely tight, but the toms decreasingly so, and the bass drum “thunky”. With the Bricasti DAC, the alto sax was vividly lifelike and all of the drums sounded like a professional drum set. Moreover, I could easily tell how the five drums were positioned — something I had never experienced previously with either of my DACs.
In Chris Isaak’s song Wicked Game, a female chorus very softly sings “this world is only gonna break your heart”. With neither of my two DACS, am I able to clearly hear all of these words. In comparison, with the MU2 DAC, every word — still sung softly — was crystal clear. Frankly, I wa amazed.
Lastly, The 4th movement of Beethoven’s 9th symphony was played. Heretofore, all I could make out were mass choruses; and the positioning of the lead singers were never sharply defined. With the Grimm Audio DAC, I could tell these choruses consisted of numerous individual singers and the lead singers were clearly positioned in front of them. Listening to all of the singing “Ode to Joy” was simply astounding.
The point I am trying to make is that all DACs are not the same, and the best of them help enable a listening experience truly better than most people will ever hear from a CD or streamed. Frankly, until this AXPONA experience, I had no idea a CD recording could sound so good.