mriguy

I was wondering about my system sounding not-right for the last few days, as well. I just did a full shutdown and reboot and it's back to it's normal, full glory! Thanks to Grimm and Eelco for such a wonderful sounding product and such exemplary customer support and service! Grimm totally rocks.

Hi Everyone... Well, when austinpop speaks, I've learned to always listen closely! Such was the case with his post here. I have a pair of Emperyians that I've really loved. That said, I had noticed their warm, just slightly too warm, character, along with the midbass hump. After reading this post, I decided to give it a try. So happy I did. Here's what I discovered: As hoped, the treble became clearer and more extended. Exactly what I needed. The mid bass hump became controlled, as hoped, though an interesting thing happened. I sort of missed it. I guess, I'd gotten used to the foundation that it could bring. So I decided to try a bit of EQ. Up to this point, I had rejected this, as it seemed I could alway hear it and it bugged me. I'll come back to this in a bit. But the absolute killer in the new earpads turned out not to be frequency control or resoltion, but soundstaging! It's absolutely killer now. You don't know, until you know. It's so enjoyable. Back to EQ. So, I added acouple of db with a shelf filter arount 60 hertz, with a gentle Q factor. Maybe it was just because it was a low frequency filter, but I really can't hear it. It feels like getting your cake and eating it too. So satisfying at a ridiculously low price. Plus, you get to keep the comfort of the Emperyian. Thanks Rajiv, et all... yet again!

Audirvana on the MU-1 would be spectacular! Yes please!

Hi Dirk. Just a quick thought for your consideration. I never thought my Tambaqui lacked in soundstage at all. Soundstage is my most charrished characteristic of true high-end audio systems. That said, I found a signifiant increase in soundstage when I upgraded the Tambaqui's stock power cord to a serious high-end power cords; specifically the Sablon Audio Prince.

Hi PYP.... Yes, that's correct. I had what I believed to be a "very good" power cord on both the Tambaqui and "good" power cord on the MU1. Then I got the demo Prince from Sablon/Mark. So then I experiemented with all the combinations of my best PC and the Prince demo PC on the Tambaqui and the MU1. The Prince significantly elevated the performance of the Tambaqui. It also helped the MU1, but to a lesser degree. So I bought the Prince and doubt that it will ever leave my Tambaqui. Very highly recommended. It's end-game stuff for sure. The more I learn, the more I realize how important the source truely is.

Interesting! I'm the opposite. I've only heard the Prince PC with the Tambaqui and MU1 combo. I can say with authority that the Prince PC made a much bigger ans worthwhile difference on the Tambaqui, then it did with the MU1.

At the risk of coming off as a fan-boy and I know it's difficult to believe, but I would add that the Sablon Prince power cord takes the Tambaqui to an even higher gear. If you have a Tambaqui, you owe it to yourself to try a demo cable from Mark. You don't know, until you know.

Thanks Chris... just wanted to take a moment to express how valuable Audiophile Style has been to me. In particular, the amazing "A novel way to massively improve the SQ of computer audio streaming" thread with austinpop, nenon and all the other usual suspects (you know who you are), was so important and so valauble to my audio quest. I learned so much from that thread. Audiophile Style rocks.

I'm not sure why you ask... but no matter. Full price.

I too want to share my experience of adding the Sablon AES-EBU cable to my MU1 / Tambaqui combo. But first, some foundational context is in order, or my opinion would arguably be rather meaningless for you. I’ve been chasing the audio dream for about 4 decades now. I’m seriously closing in at long last, with most of the actual progress coming in the last few years. Suffice it to say mistakes have been made. The biggest one was mistaking brightness for detail. Don’t do it! Since you’re reading this topic in this forum, I’m pretty sure you’re a audiophile and we share many things in common. That said, I’ve come to what I believe are some pretty important guidelines for the hobby. One of the most important is that when reading reviews, forums and researching what people are saying about any audiophile product, you often must consider them to be what I call, “uncalibrated.” You don’t know what they have heard, the conditions they heard it, and the surrounding combination of equipment. You don’t know what is, and isn’t, sonically important to them. How do they know good is, if they have never heard it (and heard it frequently). That’s what I mean by uncalibrated. Add that all up, and most opinions are actually quite meaningless. Unless you can change one component being evaluated for its sonic merit at a time, you have no idea of what the component under test is contributing (or failing to contribute). So how can anything anyone writes have much credibility? It occasionally can, but it’s a hard fought for and rare situation. The only hope is to read a person’s writings over time, hopefully with a few components here and there that you’ve heard and know. Did they agree with what you thought? I know, even then, it’s is pretty weak proof statement. I say this because you should be applying this logic and critical thinking to what I’m going to say! I’ve pretty much stopped dissecting and evaluating bass, midrange, treble line of thinking. Music isn’t about frequency bands. To me it’s become a thing about emotion, nuance, tamber and truth of the musical performance. The talent of the musicians. The fabric of the music, it’s texture. When it’s really right, it gives me goosebumps. Frequently occurring goosebumps mean it’s really, really good. Equally indicative… can you listen for hours on end, and yet still be ticked-off and disappointed when you have to stop? If so, that’s really, really good. When a system is really at the top of the heap, the music gains an amazing direct connection with you that is simply stunning. I have a theory… it goes like this. When a song starts, your brain spends about 2-10 seconds analyzing it to determine what’s going on. What right and what wrong with all the timing nuances, reverberation, frequencies, etc. It knows what’s real, what’s natural, is it naturally occuring. It knows when it hears things that don’t make sense or are unnatural. It’s like how do you know when you’re walking along the bars in Nashville, which bars have real music spilling out of them and which are being reproduced? Your brain just knows. Anything that assessed to be wrong, requires mental fixing. The more wrong, the more fixing is needed. When everything is right, there’s less to fix. When there no fixing required, you get that direct connection to the music, to the musician. Your brain accepts the music, with no pre-processing required. You can listen for hours without any fatigue. Your brain wants more! The other, not-so-frequently discussed reality of our hobby, is that no matter how wonderfully musical and engaging your system is, it can be brought to its knees by a poor recording. It’s should be a crime that so much incredible music has been handicapped by poor recordings. I know, some would say, that the music supersedes the recording, perhaps for some. But for me, not so much. I wish it were different. No matter, it is what it is and there are a lot of wonderful recordings. Roon has been a godsend. So now, with all that said, I can report with 100% certainty that the Sablon AES-EBU cable is an absolute winner, at least for the MU-1 / Tambaqui combination. It’s simply pure magic. I already had a very good AES-EBU cable, that cost a few hundred dollars less. I kind of thought I was out of my mind for taking the gamble with the Sablon. But several of the forum posters that I had qualified as being fully “calibrated” were all using Sablon cables. So, you don’t know until you know. I went for it. It turns out to have been a wonderful decision. The Sablon cable delivered considerable gains in nuance, musicality and that direct connection to the music that we all crave. I’ve now had the cable for over a month. In that time, I’ve tried going back-and-forth repeatedly on a given song, and listening to one cable for several days, then the other for several days. In every case, the Sablon won hands down. Not just different; but way better. You can tell immediately. So here's my bottom line (finally), IMHO. If you are lucky (smart?) enough to own the Grimm MU-1 and the Tambaqui, I would go out on a limb and suggest that you may have likely not heard just how good they are. That’s how good Mark’s cable really and truly is. Very, very highly recommended. You don’t know, until you know. Perhaps it’s time for a new high-water mark in your audio “calibration” journey, just as it was for me.

Yep.... even before checking in on this thread, I too had a sense of just a touch more musicality following Grimm's 1.5 firmware upgrade. The great thing about the MU-1/Tambaqui combination is that I keep getting "recalibrated" on what is possible. What a blessing.

Greetings... perhaps you allready know this, but just for the record, the Grimm has an absolute world-class internal clock. Such is the world of Grimm. Per the AES-EBU spec, that ultra-high quality clock is at the heart of the MU-1's ABS-EBU output(s). Which is also why the AES-EBU cable is of extra importance in a system using the MU-1.

Good Question.... I don't know the answer. Ask Grimm perhaps?

The MU1 does support an internal, dedicated music SSD. It's an option. Not all MU1 have it installed.

Very interesting... was this with AT&T by chance? Thx!