I want to do a follow up on my experience with Brian Zolner and his Bricasti M1.
As mentioned before dealing with Brian is a total pleasure he is very helpful and very responsive with his communications and delivery.
Like so much the performance and sound of the M1 that I also sold my PS Audio PerfectWave MkII and ordered a second M1 unit. About a week and half after I ordered the I received a call from Brian letting me know that my units was ready but was wanting to ask me if I would be willing to wait 2 or 3 more days to install an upgrade he has made and was wanting me to try. He said he was very surprised by the effect of the upgrade in the sound.
At that point he did not want to discuss the upgrade so it would be a surprise. Being the way I am I immediately said yes but I told him that is I like the sound he will have to upgrade my first unit. He laughed and said not to worry because the upgrade can be done by the user I the field.
I received my second unit Friday of that week. As soon as I got home I removed the top to replace the stock fuses this time with a set of Gold AMR fuses (the first unit has HiFiTuning Supreme) and saw the change. The M1 has 3 internal power supply units one for each analog channel and one for the digital section. In my first unit the analog power supplies have toroidal transformers and are linear while the digital section has a different power supply non-linear with a stack transformer. The second unit has a different digital power supply now very similar to the analog ones with a toroidal transformer.
I immediately called Brian to let him know I saw the change. He confirmed that the change was replacing the old digital power supply unit with now a linear version. He told me that him, another customer in NYC and me were the only ones with a unit with the upgrade and wants our opinion of the change in sound before implementing the change in production and offering the upgrade to current customers.
As soon as I finished replacing the now 3 internal fuses (there is another one outside near the IEC inlet) I connected the unit in my living room system. Right out of the bat with no burn-in period this second unit sounded better than the already well burnt in and great sounding first unit. What was the change in the sound? Well, the noise floor got even lower so the sound is coming out from a totally black background, there is more air and separation between instruments and voices, the bass got deeper, faster and tighter, the midrange sounds cleaner and totally natural and the high frequencies are detailed and perfectly defined. I was surprised and very happy with the change.
I emailed Brain with my findings and found out they matched exactly his. I also connected with his other customer and the results were also the same. I told Brian that the change was so significant that he should think about releasing it as a M1 MkII or M1.2 or something similar.
About a week later I received the new power supply for my first unit. The upgrade was a breeze. You just have to remove 4 connections and 6 screws to remove the old power supply. The new one drops in exactly in the same position in the unit. It is attached by the same 6 screws and you make the same 4 connections. Voila! It is upgraded and sounding even better.
If you read Aprils Stereophile you will see that the Bricasti M1 is in the A+ category among digital converters. That classification is with the old digital section power supply. With the new one is even better. Unfortunately Stereophile does not have a higher rating than A+ but in my book the unit is now A++.
