Review on Bricasti Design M3 DAC

@teajay
Just read it. Nice job!! If I may, your sentence ..." all rendered in an overall grain-less silky-smooth organic presentation" pretty much sums up my experience with the M3.
It is immensely musical and coherent! I just keep going back to this in my head: ’transparent sonic chameleon’ - it does not add coloration, rather it lets the nature of the recording naturally shine through. This I think is what "organic" might mean. All the other important elements are there: bass extension, treble purity, roundness, devoid of electronic grain, seemingly endless resolution, midrange transparency, etc..it just knocks out all the audiophile requirements. The icing on top is that it manages to tie all this together in a very natural, unhindered manner, in total service to the musical flow. Coupling in flawless Ethernet functionality (goodbye USB and its endless contrivances), glitchless Roon endpoint or native streaming, and you pretty much have a reference level dac that is affordable and JUST WORKS!!
For whatever it’s worth, from one music lover to another, I am immensely impressed with their product.


Supporting equipment and recent experience over past 24 months:
DACS: Ayre Codex, Chord Qutest, Chord TT2 (with and without M-Scaler), Exogal Comet plus, MSB Discrete, PS Audio DirectStream, AudioQuest Dragonfly Cobalt (solid DAC for peanuts), Meitner MA-1/V2
Servers/Streamers/devices: Aurender N-10, Sonore Ultrarendu, Innuos Zen MKIII, Innuos Zenith MKIII, Innuos Phoenix USB reclocker, AQ Jitterbug, Auralic Aries, Roon ROCK, numerous PC's and Mac Mini
Preamps: Audio research LS27, PS Audio BHK Signature, Luxman C-900U
Integrated Amps: Luxman 507xi, Luxman 509X, Pass Labs INT-250, PrimaLuna HP Dialogue premium, Octave V110 with BB;
Amplifiers: Luxman M-900u, Pass Labs X150.8, X250.8, X350.8, XA30.5, Bryston 4B3, 4BSST^2, Aragon 8002 (heavily modified), McCormak DNA 125,
Speakers: Dynaudio Contour S3.4LE, S1.4, S5.4, Dynaudio Special 40, Dynaudio Confidence 30, Dynaudio Confidence 50, Focal Aria 948, Focal Aria 906, Focal Sopra No 2, Spendor S8e, Spendor S3e, Klipsch KG-4 (rebuilt), Green Mountain Audio Callisto

I spent a lot of time in the Bricasti room at AXPONA 2019. For some reason, it was sparsely attended. They had great music playing in glorious sound, all at realistic and reasonable volumes. The room treatment they brought with them apparently allowed them to get much smoother and better integrated bass than most rooms I was in.

No BOOM, no trite audiophile music, no danger of ear damage. A great sounding system. That few attendees bothered to spend time there made me scratch my head.

@mike_in_nc I was there as well one of the best rooms indeed.

When I read most of these reviews I have found it hard to understand some of the features , or lack of, that a dac has. The M3 sounds fantastic. Appears to be missing MQA? Also, I found roon to complex to figure out and canceled it before the trial ended. I’d like a dac that can stream using my iPad and an easy to use app or stream directly from the tidal app on my iPad. I don’t have a lot of interest in taking classes to understand how to make something work and worse, then having to buy even more  expensive hardware to make it happen. 

@speedbump6 
you don’t need Roon to enjoy the M3; if u get the version with Ethernet, all you need is iPad or iPhone plus the MConnect app; in this MConnect app you configure Qobuz or Tidal or both , find your favorites then press play. Doesn’t get any easier or cleaner than that!
cheers