Yamamoto YDA 01 DAC

Charles1dad,

OK, you have me really intrigued now. If the Metrum can deliver as much detail as a Bryston BDA1 or Wyred4Sound DAC2, yet be as musical as typical NOS DACs...it might be IT for me. Given the tradeoffs between musical/detailed at these pricepoints, I was leaning towards a Bryston to go with my tube pre and amp, but then I saw this thread.

A good thing is I'm patient too, so will be looking forward to your feedback.

For reference, what has been your experience, if any, with oversampling DACs?

Lewinskih01,
The Yamamoto is an oversampling DAC and as I`ve stated in several posts during this thread it is really an excellent sounding DAC. It is very natural,dynamic, liquid yet with very good detail/resolution. The Metrum Octave Takes these attributes and raises(significantly) them is my suspicion.

Charles,

Do you have a delivery date yet for the Metrum or are we still looking at about a month out or so?

Jcote,
I placed my order in early july and Cees said the wait time was 8-12 weeks. No specific date as of yet.I think they`re getting more orders than they anticipated.

Hi Charles,

It takes honesty and character to say a much less costly item is preferred over what you payed a large sum for and not make excuses

True, though it is all personal and very much dependent on the rest of the audio components used for the evaluation, especially when it comes to a digital front-end, don’t you agree?

We did some quick research; for those interested in some specifications, here is a datasheet link to the DAC chips used in the Metrum: DAC8580

Check out the distortions (THD) and compare to some older audio DAC chips such as TDA1541A, PCM1704 and AD1865 also used for NOS DACs. Not to talk about the fact that the DAC8580 used in the Metrum has a built-in Digital Low Pass Filter, OpAmp I/V converter and output sections.

Please don’t get me wrong; at EUR800, the Metrum is probably a very, very good value (price/performance) DAC, and without a doubt it will make many audiophiles who like this type of sound very happy, but to even try comparing it to the NWO-M is rather funny, IMHO!

Happy listening!

Alex Peychev