Grimm MU1 Streamer - Really "The Best"?

@richh84 , if the MU1 is better than my Innuos Zenith Mk3 and PhoenixUSB, with or without the outboard Merason DAC, I won’t likely bother with the Statement. The logic being that most who have experienced my Innuos gear and the Statement say that the Zenith and reclocker gets you 90% of the way towards the Statement (non Next Gen version). If however my current Innuos gear is equal or better than the MU1 in my system, then I 100% plan to trial the Statement. As I mentioned earlier Innuos kindly offered to send a demo to my local dealer who is not even an Innuos dealer.

I do think I might head the Shunyata route. Only because I’ve trialed their power cords before (Omega and Sigma NR v2) and was impressed, along with their level of customer service. Even if I didn’t end up buying last time. Plus, I’ve read so many accounts over the years of people saying how Shunyata interconnects sound, in general (which is consistent with how I felt their Omega power cord sounds), that I don’t think I’ll be overly surprised. But thanks for sharing your experience with Siltech. I do think I know what you mean about the benefits of silver/copper without the negatives however. Know people feel silver is harsh/fatiguing/revealing/overly lean, but I’ve not actually found any of that to be the case in my system with my components. Except for the revealing part, which I like. But my system seems to do okay even with poor, harsher recordings. Probably because my current DAC is known to be warm leaning. And possibly my amp too although there is some debate whether it’s the Diablo amp or DAC that provides the warmer mids. The Merason DAC1 is also reported to be revealing with a softer smoother midrange so that should be a really interesting comparison when it arrives.

So I’ve been enjoying Bob Dylan’s Time Out of Mind Bootleg Series. MQA version. Not my typical music but the seller of my Merason DAC1 mentioned how much he was liking it and I have to say I’m really enjoying it too.

I was playing the MQA version of Bob’s sessions, and realized that I had years ago read up on all the controversy, went “huh” and promptly ejected it from my mind. So I read up on it again. Found out my current Diablo 300 DAC doesn’t support it. Then I wondered, does my Innuos gear deal with MQA? Went to check settings in Sense, and nope. Nothing about MQA, only DSD stuff. But wait! There’s a new version of Innuos software with press releases saying they now deal with MQA and is “core certified”. So I promptly updated my Innuos software to 2.3.1. And found by default Sense now does “the first unfold” for MQA. Naturally, I tried disabling it and…. I found things were definitely better with it enabled. Interesting!

Now, the Merason DAC1 doesn’t support MQA. And the MU1 seems like by design it encourages you not to worry about MQA beyond the first unfold by Roon. As it’s upsampling board can’t be used if you are passing the MQA stream to an MQA enabled DAC. I like this approach. Makes an argument that having an MQA-enabled DAC is really pointless with a MU1, because a big part of the reason you buy the MU1 is for the 4X upsampling. And you get that benefit even on non-MQA material.

That said I have to say the MQA unfold by Sense, feeding my non-MQA DAC module, sounds pretty good…. Really looking forward to seeing what the MU1’s upsampling can do in comparison.  Not really an apples to apples thing I know.  Just an interesting side note really with the latest Innuos update.

@ghasley you will roll your eyes I’m sure but I am going ahead with Shunyata Omega for the AES and Sigma V2 for the balanced analog interconnects. Made possible by my recent sale of the N20. Fought the FOMO, and lost….

I do recall how much I liked the Shunyata Omega PC, despite the fact that I ultimately picked the AQ Dragon over it.

The MU1 and the DAC 1 will have no excuses to not perform their best…

@ghasley , just watched a highly technical review of the Merason DAC 1 and the reviewer states, twice, that the AES inputs are limited to 96k and only the USB goes to 192k. Is that true? If so, does this pose a limitation for the MU1’s up sampled AES output?

DAC 1 Review, see 6:18 and also mentioned earlier.

@nyev The Merason is 24/96 at the AES input. When I owned it I had an Innuos Zenith and fed it via USB. Since I never enabled Roon to upsample so I only fed it native resolutions. Regarding how it sounds with the Grimm MU1 at 2fs only, it will still sound good.

The Merason was suggested as a very solid, well executed, beautiful sounding dac for very reasonable money. It will give you a good idea of where on the performance bar your Gryphon dac board measures up. I suspect the MU1 will elevate the performance of your Gryphon dac via aes that you have yet to experience and the Merason dac will provide a very nice data point for comparison. IIRC the Merason runs dual mono with two dacs with true balanced outputs. Since the interconnects you’ve chosen exceed the $ value of the Merason, I also suspect that $3.5k-ish USD preowned invested in the Merason dac and the $5k-ish USD retail Shunyata interconnects will prove to be a less attractive value proposition than your Gryphon dac. (Subtle, tongue in cheek poke at you there haha) But this exercise should tell you alot. You can set the Grimm up as your roon core, attach the wonderful Shunyata Omega (v1 or v2?) AES/EBU cable to your Gryphon dac and you will hear all your Gryphon dac is capable of. You could also configure your Innuos as an endpoint feeding your phoenix and then via usb to your Gryphon dac and switch between the two streams conveniently.

Did I roll my eyes???? Yeah, I have to be honest I did a little bit LOL.

At the end of the day, try not to get too hung up on bit rates and focus on the sound. I predict that your opinion of your Gryphon dac will spike once you’ve heard it with the Grimm once its well run in. There are many roads to happiness with this exercise. Are there even higher performing solutions? Of course…for me, my system and my ears I found the Grimm to be first class experience for frequent flyer miles money. Let me clearly state though and you already know my feelings…dropping in $10kish USD of cables on the two sides of the Merason leaves me with heartburn although its your party, you get to design the menu.