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...

 

 

nyev

@fastfreight :

BUT, I have so far failed at being able to restore my roon database from a backup.  I have a bunch of playlists so I want to do this.  I have found the instructions for this confusing.

That’s because you did not restore from back up initially when setting up your Grimm as the new Roon Core:

  1. Since this is your first time launching your new Core, you will be asked to log-in. Instead of logging in, click "Restore A Backup" in the lower-left hand corner 

 

 

However, you can still restore from existing backups (of the database). Go to Settings (on Roon), then Backups, then pick at the bottom Find Backups/ Browse. I hope this helps

@fastfreight , hope you are getting your issue resolved.  Just wondering if you’ve noticed any burn-in effects of the MU1, assuming you’ve been running it 24 hours? @ghasley mentioned he thought it should only require a few days.  Any changes in the sound?

Eelco Grimm sent me a note indicating that their support engineer would be in touch with me on Monday and he had a couple of theories as to what could be going on with my drive issue.  He also noted that he has seen this thread.  Maybe this thread has helped them sell a few MU1’s….

Thank you @thyname ,  I have tried all of this, and I have done this before on my room nucleus. But when I go to Roon and try to restore back up, I can’t see any of my back ups. They are on a USB hard drive that was plugged into my nucleus. Now I have it plugged into my laptop, which is on my net work. I can see the back up folder on the raid hard drive, but I can’t seem to get it into the MU one folder, which should not be the heap folder, correct? 

@fastfreight : if your Roon database is in your network, then I think you will need to do "add network share" in your Grimm before you can access your files. I am sorry I cannot help much not being there. You can also try to copy the Roon database from USB hard drive to the internal storage of your Grimm, but I really don't know whether this is possible. 

I connected mine last week and the jump in SQ was huge coming up from Roon/Quboz on my PC with NAS to an Auralic Aires G1, KS Emotion usb to my Tambaqui. Now the Grimm feeds the Tambaqui with KS aes Elation to my Audionet Humboltd to YG Haileys. You guys will be blown away on many levels, easily my favorite source at this point. Bonus since Roon is in it it’s more user friendly too.

Thanks Bill.