Metrum Onyx versus Metrum Pavane

I have the Onyx, it sounds so good and I lead such a busy life that I couldn't justify the Pavane. I spoke to Metrum personnel directly and they kinda agreed. Unless you listen critically everyday, it probably wouldn't make any "real" difference.

It's not so much about "how better can it get" rather, how astonishingly good the Onyx/Jade are for the price.

Pavane has more output hardware, dual transformers and two more r2r chips (same generation chips as Onyx/Jade) per channel.  So in theory better channel separation and faster calculation. How audible? You decide.

At this level, I'd concentrate more on speakers, speaker placement, room correction than wondering about source upgrades.

Yes I own the Onyx, I have owned it almost since it came out. The dac progression would be:

Peachtree Decco integrated > HRT Music Streamer + > Cambridge Audio Dacmagic + > PS Audio Perfectwave MK2 > Metrum Onyx

I own a portable high res audio player from Pioneer (XDP 100R) which uses the Sabre ESS9018 chips. This is also a fairly high end player as far as that space is concerned.

And of course I heard plenty of other dacs such as the T+A DAC8 DSD, Mytek Brooklyn etc.

I prefer the rounded, tangible nature of the Metrum over the delta sigma dacs I have owned.  This is also an extremely high resolution, noiseless dac. 

@don

The issue is, many of your questions are system dependent, as in, what are the speakers and how are they placed in the room.  Anything to do with sound stage is more dependent on speakers and speaker placement than electronics. At this level, the electronics are high fidelity and detailed, there's great channel separation, bandwidth and signal to noise ration. 

Secondly I don't think many have compared the Pavane to the Onyx directly, unless there's DAC meetup, these comparisons are difficult to do.

OS dacs sound different than NOS dacs. Delta Sigma dacs sound different than R2R dacs. Onyx/Pavane are both NOS and R2R. Typically these sound more relaxed than delta sigma dacs, I don't know why. But keep in mind all dacs have a sin(x)/x roll off which is compensated in OS dacs. And you can compensate for that in NOS dacs by oversampling in software before sending to the dac.

Either way, with My speakers and electronics (Legacy Signature SE, Lyric Audio Ti 140 MK2, home built HTPC w/ SSD feeding the Onyx via USB) the sound is effortless, noise free and high resolution. You can check my original review for more technical stuff.  If you name some test tracks you use I can play them and get back to you.

I have been very busy but I will get back to my impressions on known audiophile tracks as well the tracks you mentioned. One quick note is as a headphone listener your experience of soundstage is different than a primarily speaker listener. Of course it’s extremely easy to place instruments and even follow instruments as they move with the Onyx ( Train Song):
https://www.lifewire.com/stereo-test-tracks-3134905

my issue is more what soix mentioned, do you like exaggerated soundstage width beyond speakers all the time? As most tracks aren’t recorded that way.