Description:
Why Pay More: The Critics believe the Metrum Octave is so good that its competition is not in its price range but rather in the £5000 to £10000 price range. 6Moon review. or Hifi Critic or TNT audio
NOS MINI DAC "Octave"
We wanted to design a DAC which would not be based on the regular AKM, Burr Brown, TI, Crystal and Wolfson chips, which are ubiquitous in consumer audio. Instead we wanted an ultra high-speed part such as you'd find in industrial applications. After many years of experimentation we finally identified an extremely fast chip that's useable for 16 or 24-bit audio but handles sampling rates up to 15 Megahertz. Glue logic, or a great understanding of digital audio, was required to match this chip to the standard audio formats. Due to the very low glitch energy of our resistor ladder network, no digital filter or oversampling was required.
Our machines are deliberately without frills. Paralleling four industrial DACs per channel with integral voltage outputs improves low-level information and noise floor for digital data via the receiver chip. Because our DAC chips are relatively expensive and usually only seen in fast data acquisition systems for industrial use, we kept functionality and cosmetics simple. We avoided multiple i/o ports and a hefty chassis to maintain instead an attractive price. One obvious advantage of our high-speed chips is that they exhibit excellent impulse response without pre/post ringing so common in today's oversampling converters. To avoid mutual interference between digital and analog data a six-layer printed circuit board is used.
After developing the dac we asked reviewers for feedback because they have experience with 'standard' (use run of the mill chipsets previously mentioned) audio converters across many price points. Its been reported that the Octave which sells for a little over £700 performs to a level of dacs costing £5000 and upwards.
The Octave is a 2 box system, one box contains the DAC and the other the PSU (power-supply). A separate heavy filtered 15 VA powersupply is used for both 115V AC or 230 V AC. The power from the toroidal transformer is rectified in the dac and smoothed by 26 capacitors with an equivalent capacity of 12.000uF.
The sound is natural, stress-free and communicates the musicians' intention directly to you. This is what can be achieved through a non-oversampling DAC. The feel of this sound is of an analogue reproduction.
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Specifications:
Type of dac: Non oversampling dac
Power: 14 VA external power supply
Inputs: 1x optical 1x coaxial
Outputs: 2x gold RCA connectors
Max voltage output: 2 Volt RMS max.
Slewing rate: 35 Volt/uS
Frequency range: 1Hz 0dB untill half samplingrate -3dB.
Distortion: 0,04 % THD
Noise: -130 dB / 16 bits -135 dB / 24 bits.
Output impedance: 85 Ohms
Sampling frequency: 32 tot 96 kHz sampling 16 or 24 bits.
Coaxial input is selected for max 176.4 kHz
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