Anyone planning to get a PA1?
I tried to pry info about the amplifiers out of Eelco Grimm at Axpona, but he was staying silent at the time.
Stereophile has a nice clip:
Thanks to @JOGA69 email. There is a new FW update for MU1 and MU2 owners. According to him, this update will improve the SQ more among a bunch of other improvements.
I plan to do it as soon as I finish golf, and will report result.
Thanks for the heads up. Started the update and will check back at the end of the first half of the Spain - Portugal football game.
No problems installing the update and the Grimm is back up and running. Liking what I’m hearing.
I updated to V1.0.4 just now. Grimm website has these change log:
V1.0.4 Improvements
1. Quantizer coefficients improved.
2. DSD filter coefficients improved.
3. Better MacOS handling of mounted internal disk.
4. WebGRUI styling matches LS1 Control software.
5. Reduced memory consumption of the webserver.
Bug fixes
1. Suppress ‘dc’ click at source mute.
2. Avoid incidental reset.
3. Prevent coefficient error at 48k to and from DSD.
4. Playback could stop with DSD playback from UPnP.
5. AES in DoP format could cause the MU1 to hang.
6. Internal FPGA clocking improvements
They also mentioned “In new firmware for the MU1 and MU2 we offer a small but worthwhile improvement of the DSD filtering sound quality in the MU2 and of the PCM and DSD filtering in the MU1.”
I briefly listened to it and there was an obvious and delightful SQ improvement. Not only there is an even lower noise floor, but more importantly, I heard a “sweeter” sound character from MU2. By that I mean I have never heard MU2 sounding so analog-like before. This more life-like analog sounding impression was only after 10 minutes of listening (then I watched the World Cup, and I will probably watch US match later). So, I maybe done listening music today.
Anyway, I am pretty sure I will hear more improvement tomorrow. The latest FW update of MU2 likely brings its SQ to a higher level than PMG streamer again. It sounded like that to me in a short listening.
Thanks to Grimm team again.
Not only SQ has improved, the Roon operation on MU2 has also improved from V1.0.4 FW. Roon is running much smoother now. I will stay with Roon for now since Maestro still has issues.
I really like this FW update on MU2 SQ. As mentioned before, MU2 sounds quieter and more analog-like. It is my preference now.
By the way, Roon has a recent FW update also and I just did it.
I am not sure what the update is for, but there is no SQ difference that I could hear.
Thanks for posting alerts when updates are available for the MU2. Nice improvement, Grimm is making our initial buys even more worthwhile!
My rig is sounding better than ever! Thank you Grimm, and Roon!
In August issue of Stereophile, there was another rave review on Grimm MU2 in Brilliant Corners. There were many reviews on how great MU2 sounding already, but this review may be the best one to illustrate on how exactly I felt about its sound.
It seems nice.
(The MU2)