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Grimm MU1 Streamer - Really "The Best"?

I've recently become interested in the Grimm MU1.  While reviews of top end players from Innuos, Aurender and Antipodes and others are typically all very positive, the tone of the many pro reviews of the Grimm MU1 go far, far beyond, with some reviews resorting to using superlatives and gushing of positive system transformation and not being able to stop listening to material, etc..  HiFi Advice and Steve Huff (actually calls it "magic") have such reviews.

Given the delay in availability of the Innuos Pulsar which I'm told will be better than my current Zenith Mk3 + PhoenixUSB reclocker, I am interested in replacing my streaming setup with a one-box solution that includes a high-precision clock.  The new streamer will continue to feed my Gryphon Diablo 300's DAC module, which I have no interest in replacing.

I'm actually a fan of Innuos, after they improved the sound of my Zenith with firmware updates and after I added their PhoenixUSB reclocker. I appreciate this commitment to improving sound quality which is why I was so interested in the Pulsar.

The trigger for considering an upgrade is not for improved sound, but rather, to solve some issues I have with too many Audioquest power cords coiled and clumped together. I will get to lose one of them and one of my USB cords with a one-box streamer. I've noticed my sound is very sensitive to positioning of my AC cords and find I often need to re-adjust the PC feeding my amp to get proper sounding vocals at center stage.  One of my subs also seems to be picking up AC noise when the crossover is set above 60Hz. The second trigger is simply system simplification, removing one box.  All that said I don't really have any complaints regarding sound, and the PhoenixUSB reclocker truly did improve the sound of my Zenith.

While the Grimm MU1 has it's 4X upsampling up it's sleeve with reviewers absolutely glowing over this feature and it's extreme ability to separate tones to the left, right, front, and back far better than the rest, I don't see that Grimm has gone to any lengths with regard to power supply management in the way other brands do including Innuos. The MU1's ultra-simplistic interior doesn't bug me, but the lack of transformers and power management makes me wonder....

Are there any updates from folks who have directly compared the MU1 vs similarly classed streamers from the competition?  Did you find it to be as revelatory as the pro reviewers found it? And, how does it compare to other streamers with it's 4X upsampling disabled?  Does it sound like it suffers from it's lack of power management?  I do see that the clock should be very good...

 

 

nyev
nyev OP
1,020 posts
 

@ghasley ​​@metaldetektor ​​​@svenjosh , can either of you tell me if the MU1 comes with a generic AES cable as an accessory?

My MU1 is scheduled to arrive on Monday but I don’t yet have any ETA on my Shunyata cables and I have no other AES cable currently. The prior AQ Diamond cable I was testing the N20 with was a loaner.

If the MU1 doesn’t come with any generic cable I will buy a cheap one so the MU1 including the AES / 4X OS circuit can be burning in while I’m travelling for work Tues through Friday this week.

 

ghasley
2,433 posts
 

@nyev mine did not come with one when I bought last year. Do you have a rca/spdif cable? 

metaldetektor
147 posts
 

Do you have a SPDIF cable? A new Grimm will sound good with that as well. No aes included.

nyev OP
1,020 posts
 

@metaldetektor , thanks for confirming.  No SPDIF either.  I will pick up the cheapest AES cable I can find.  Don’t care if it sounds good or bad; really just to have it fully set up and burned in (mostly) by the time I’m home on the weekend.  With any luck the Shunyata cables will also have arrived by then.

davespencer's avatar
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davespencer
17 posts
 

To me it just doesn’t make sense to put a $10K streamer in front of a $4,500 DAC

That's what I thought too. So I proceeded to upgrade my DAC - Lampi, BA LABO, Linn Klimax, Weiss 501, Pasithea, Bartok, and finally the Mola Tambaqui. With the Mola and its built-in streamer I felt like I was settled for awhile.

[note: I found it confusing that the Mola distributor STRONGLY recommended adding a $6K Auralic server/streamer + a $3K USB cable! The Tambaqui is $14K!! WTF? Why?? It kept niggling at me... ]

Then I got curious about clocks and jitter. Down the rabbit hole of Master Clocks, cascading clocks, USB to AES Clocks, ad nauseum. Oh, and more cables (bnc, 110ohm AES, USB, etc. etc.).

Early mid-2022 I began noticing increasing media coverage of the MU1. Since playing with all my clocks convinced me that there was significant upside on the streamer side of things [note: Now I get it!] I decided to demo the Grimm unit. Paul, my dealer, told me to forget all my clocking paraphernalia - take it all out of the system and just play the MU1 through the Tambaqui - period.

Well I purchased the unit (anyone looking for a clock?). I won't describe the sound except to say all my streaming music sounds very "analog" and I no longer really care what the resolution of a recording is. That alone frees my mind to focus more on... The Music.

 

Adding the MU1 cleaned up bunches PC's, IC's, ancillary boxes, AND MY ROON Nucleus+, returning my system closer to that "straight wire with gain" (well, figuratively speaking).

 

That the MU1 has ROON incorporated is pretty important (and often overlooked) , as Grimm has (with Roon approval) modified the Roon hardware/software to interface and integrate seemlessly with the MU1. In addition to optimizing communication this also serves to eliminate multiple boxes & cables. Let's remember too -  the Nucleus+ with 2tb is $4K.

So now I think I'm settled for awhile. 

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