@nyev an extra few hundred hours on your Diablo, you are seriously overthinking this. Relax….
Grimm MU1 Streamer - Really "The Best"?
I've recently become interested in the Grimm MU1. While reviews of top end players from Innuos, Aurender and Antipodes and others are typically all very positive, the tone of the many pro reviews of the Grimm MU1 go far, far beyond, with some reviews resorting to using superlatives and gushing of positive system transformation and not being able to stop listening to material, etc.. HiFi Advice and Steve Huff (actually calls it "magic") have such reviews.
Given the delay in availability of the Innuos Pulsar which I'm told will be better than my current Zenith Mk3 + PhoenixUSB reclocker, I am interested in replacing my streaming setup with a one-box solution that includes a high-precision clock. The new streamer will continue to feed my Gryphon Diablo 300's DAC module, which I have no interest in replacing.
I'm actually a fan of Innuos, after they improved the sound of my Zenith with firmware updates and after I added their PhoenixUSB reclocker. I appreciate this commitment to improving sound quality which is why I was so interested in the Pulsar.
The trigger for considering an upgrade is not for improved sound, but rather, to solve some issues I have with too many Audioquest power cords coiled and clumped together. I will get to lose one of them and one of my USB cords with a one-box streamer. I've noticed my sound is very sensitive to positioning of my AC cords and find I often need to re-adjust the PC feeding my amp to get proper sounding vocals at center stage. One of my subs also seems to be picking up AC noise when the crossover is set above 60Hz. The second trigger is simply system simplification, removing one box. All that said I don't really have any complaints regarding sound, and the PhoenixUSB reclocker truly did improve the sound of my Zenith.
While the Grimm MU1 has it's 4X upsampling up it's sleeve with reviewers absolutely glowing over this feature and it's extreme ability to separate tones to the left, right, front, and back far better than the rest, I don't see that Grimm has gone to any lengths with regard to power supply management in the way other brands do including Innuos. The MU1's ultra-simplistic interior doesn't bug me, but the lack of transformers and power management makes me wonder....
Are there any updates from folks who have directly compared the MU1 vs similarly classed streamers from the competition? Did you find it to be as revelatory as the pro reviewers found it? And, how does it compare to other streamers with it's 4X upsampling disabled? Does it sound like it suffers from it's lack of power management? I do see that the clock should be very good...
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@ghasley, yeah, I know…. It’s going strong with the N20 still, constantly, as we speak! I will stick to waiting things out for the DAC. But I will add @lalitk ’s suggestions to the list of DACs I will want to try at the right stage. Means I may not have any updates for quite a while. But I’ll give the purple fuse a go at least.
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I just read that yes, the MU1 truly does have an FM tuner on board with a connection for the antenna, however it was never enabled through software and presumably abandoned. Not sure if they have since abandoned its useless antenna connector on the rear. @ghasley , maybe you can comment on whether your MU1 includes the antenna connector? Not that it matters - I just find it SO odd that a product like this includes an FM tuner and antenna connector - just doesn’t seem to belong! The rest of the product seems so singular in its design approach - minimalist, Roon only, etc. I seriously thought it was an April Fools joke when they announced that they failed to make it work well and had given up! Even Grimm said in their release notes that it’s an anachronistic feature when there are endless great sounding digital radio stations available. Funny. |
@sc2, I've tried upsampling from Conductor on the N20 only briefly a few times over a few days, and I did not listen too seriously. May be a correct or incorrect bias, but my understanding is that upsampling from the app/roon/Conductor/etc is not the path to good sound. My very brief impression was that the sound changed somehow when I engaged upsampling. I didn't really consider carefully how it changed. But when I disengaged upsampling again, things suddenly sounded more together and fluid or something. Not really sure, all I know is it made a slight change, and that I think I liked it best turned off. |
@nyev yes, the MU1 was all set to add FM tuner capabilities. I never even considered it when making the decision to purchase. The thing you must understand is the MU1 was intended to be the digital preamp for an active speaker system. The fact that we audio crazies commandeered it for our 2 channel system was a happy accident for Grimm. It has a number of digital inputs AND it also has analog inputs. I havent tried the analog inputs. |
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