Yamamoto YDA 01 DAC

"It`s all personal", Alex, always has been and always will be.Of course not everyone will agree with Srajan`s conclusions, you can`t get audiophiles to agree on anything in an unanimous fashion, it is`nt going to happen. Pointing out measurements don`t impress me at all, they`re a ton of components the look great on paper yet sound can sound like total crap, no need going that route again.

Srajan owned the NWO-M and earlier this year and declared it the "best" digital playback he`d heard to that point(would you question his system or ears based on that?).
to this day he still admires the NWO-M and feels it`s one of the very best. Obvoiusly they`re qualities with the R/2R Metrum Octave that he found better(personal opinion).

Another thing, if one is`nt into trophy audio gear and judges instead on pure sonic criteria, there is much in high end audio that`s over priced. Conversely there`re many reasonably priced components that perform briliantly.

I`d would never use the price of an object alone to determine which is better if there`s the opprotunity to compare directly, which both he and is friend did in this case.
Best Regards,

I was curious about the exact chip used and could never get an answer from Cees on that topic. Not sure why. Thanks for posting the information.

Interesting, not saying that this isn't indeed the DAC used in the Metrum however find it odd that the spec sheet mentions tv's as a primary use candidate when the Metrum site argues these are not used in conventional consumer industry.

Unless you reverse engineered one of these I'm curious how you were able to identify the chip in use since that was supposed to be known only to the manufacturer and is a reason (competitive advantage) the Identifying marks are removed.

Good observation Jcote, the same thought cross my mind. In the end it does`nt matter and does`nt alter the fact that Srajan and friend feel the Metrum sounds fabulous(regardless of price or pedigree). They relied on their ears, and preferred it in their respected audio systems, In this context the specs and measurements are a very distance second in relative importance.They compared the two DACs "directly" and heard what they heard.

These R/2R chips could be sourced from Walmart, who cares if it "sounds" better than NASA approved parts/chips.

I didn't realize my email to Charles' inquiry would end up here but why not. It remains my understanding that the chips Cees is using (good for 24/176.4 streams) remain unidentified. In my exchanges with him he stressed that to his knowledge this chip has never been used in hifi before and that it took him two years to sort through his non-audio chip sources to 'discover' it.

The more important point Charles makes here is listening and listener preference/bias. Dan and I have quite different systems and rooms. Each of us has both a NWO-M (Dan gave me mine as a gift) and a Metrum. If we preferred the NWO-M, why would we listen to the Metrum?

And if we prefer the Metrum, do we care about specs and claims that the NWO-M is wildly superior?

At the end of the day other listeners present to hear either system could have a different preference. The *thing* that got us was simply that to our ears these converters perform on the same level. We preferred the Metrum (in some configurations in my home I prefer the NWO-M as I did in a recent review of Nelson Pass' SIT amp), someone else might prefer the NWO-M. But I'd be quite surprised if anyone in these sessions would point at the cheapie and call it "not even close".

That's really the only point of my email to Charles. I can understand that Alex might be disappointed in such an opinion but to wave spec'ular superiority claims in the air as thought they prove we couldn't possibly be hearing what we do (or respond to it the way we do) is simply silly.

And even if engineering *could* prove it (which it can't) - there's no arguing personal taste -:)