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Member Reviews: Metrum Acoustics Octave

Currawong

No frills, no options, just great sound that defies the fact that it is non-oversampling.

Posted

Pros: Great, non-fatiguing sound. Small footprint. Fantastic value for the sound quality.

Cons: NOS (Non-oversampling) so needs high-res files or high-quality up-sampling for best results. Coax input is only RCA. Only basic features.

  This DAC came to my attention when I found a long thread about it on Stereo.net.au. While, in principle I wasn't interested in a NOS (Non-oversampling) DAC, due to their reputation for rolled-off and distorted (if pleasant) sound, some aspects of the design caught my attention. It doesn't use the old Phillips or BB chips that popular designs use, but industrial-grade high-frequency DACs. The designers also show graphs of it reproducing an impulse response perfectly, something that a regular DAC cannot do without pre- and post-ringing. These effects are, arguably, responsible for the "digital" sound that modern DACs have. Some modern designs, such as the AKM chips, claim to fix...
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