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NOS the fourth: After penning a second opinion to Joël's TotalDAC feature review, I had a very clear picture. Vincent Brien's €3.850 TotalDAC accomplishes with fully discrete resistor banks what Cees does with ICs. The Octave is a nano version of the exploded French. It absorbs all the latter's external working bits into the puny paralleled chips proper. With two zero-sampling R/2R and two Delta-Sigma machines in-house, I concluded that NOS can also stand for No Obnoxious Sibilance. Whilst admittedly caricaturizing and thus aggrandizing, it points straight at what perhaps is the core virtue or difference. I'll describe it first indirectly via so-called time-coherent or minimum-phase loudspeakers. They're in the distinct minority. So are listeners who wouldn't listen to any other speaker designs.


Far more people declare themselves immune or insensitive to the time-domain effects of no-order or at most first-order designs. Even so nearly the first thing high-power speaker correction via DSP is asked to do is address time and phase nonlinearities. People then suddenly claim to hear the improvements easily. In this context it's relevant only that the key NOS DAC difference is similar in magnitude and subtlety. Some folks will hear it right away and pronounce it significant while others could well wonder what all the fuss is about. Mind you, this is distinct from the perhaps more obvious handling of the treble. That too is different but obviously part of the overall effect. Different observers might key into one or the other element first or predominantly.


To talk of the difference directly can happen on multiple levels. On the earthy/illuminated axis, the TotalDAC was the earthiest followed by the Octave. My Esoteric/APL Hifi UX1/NWO-M with 20 paralleled AKM 4399EQ chips and Lundahl amorphous-core E182CC no NFB output stage came next while the Antelope Audio Zodiac Gold/Voltikus represented the most illuminated aerated polarity. The wowie/excitement axis which tends to rule short-term auditions reversed that sequence. Here the Zodiac Gold came first and the TotalDAC last. This makes perfect sense when you think on how edgier sheen/shinier edge relative to transient incision will translate into higher adrenaline, forward propulsion and projection. Higher treble energy will also sharpen performer outlines, highlight/localize small detail and enhance recorded venue reflections.


NWO-M, TotalDAC, Octave without signal lock (red light extinguishes under signal)
  Listeners foremost triggered by visual soundstage and energetic attack elements could thus relate to the NOS presentation initially or permanently as duller, darker and thicker. Listeners who'd prefer a Zu Soul Superfly to a small Kharma or a 300B SET to a Krell will enter the equation from the other end.


They'd relate to the greater grittiness, gumption, material substance, darker tones and fleshiness of the Octave as kin folk. They'd hear in the other sound a subliminal but pervasive undercurrent that's metallic, sharp and always needles just a bit.

In ways that would seem to verbally collide, both Octave and TotalDAC managed to combine mellifluousness and substance into mellow gravitas. Where language would qualify 'gravitas' by the 'mellow' prefix to become less, sonically these aspects simply coexisted. One didn't take away from the other. This arrives at a mix where gutsy doesn't equate to raunchy—shrill, in your face, aggressive—and mellow not to boring or emasculated. Saying it differently yet again, this is more of a they-are-here perspective. Bodies taking up space and blocking light are teleported into your digs. It's not the you-are-there trick which transports the listener into a reality elsewhere.


As such Dan's tie-in with the 45 didn't translate for me further than standing in for his favorite triode. Relative to actual neighboring sound, I'd peg the Octave's material heaviness being closer to a good 300B but certainly minus the slowness and minor fuzziness which often accompany such circuits. The Octave is heavy, dense and slightly dark but neither slow nor fuzzy by any stretch.


Adding the 1s + 0s: Cees' NOS DAC is unique by offering such an astonishingly mature take on the R/2R sound for so little money. It's not unique by being the only one in the genre. Core Audio Technology's Ryan Mintz has announced "a discrete 24-bit R/2R DAC (no DAC chip) with 96 laser-matched .01% resistors for high-resolution playback. It contains roughly 55 separate power supplies and a 48-channel bit-matched attenuator that's micro controlled to match the voltage perfectly. This not only allows us to move the controller to the output, but creates a truly digital amplifier with only one stage of conversion and a bit-perfect, line level output right before the speakers. No separate amplifier and a truly high-resolution NOS DAC." Vincent Brien's TotalDAC already accomplishes discrete resistor-ladder conversion and arguably goes a fraction deeper into this flavor. But it costs five times as much and the core flavor or virtues are a complete overlay with the Metrum. And the latter is the only one—or so we have to quite safely assume at this time—which employs these particular non-audio industrial converter chips to incorporate I/V conversion and output buffering on the actual silicon.


On the Delta-Sigma front one could spend upward of €30.000 like the NWO-M and not get this extent of timbre saturation and gumption. Admittedly the treble will be just as refined but more developed than the Octave and with it micro-level ambient retrieval will be superior. I'm not an analogue man. That's primarily because my musical tastes find far more recordings in other delivery formats. I've heard numerous vinyl setups of course and am familiar with how the black licorice lovers on our team feel about digital. I'm reasonably sure then that it's fair to describe the Octave as a very analog-type of DAC. It also revels in 'midrange glory' but without invoking 2nd-order octave-doubling THD. And like super subwoofers which don't betray their presence until and only when there's subterranean stuff to mine, the Octave doesn't include any permanent treble sheen but does track proper triangle and cymbal decay and fire flies when those are struck.


Finally the Octave is very nicely put together (externally better in fact than the TotalDAC in whose already smaller than standard casing one could squeeze nearly eight octaves). For these attention-grabbing times that must dazzle noisily for 15 minutes of fame, it's also a nice antidote for 'digital' nervousness with all its constituents. Forget flightiness, paleness, tizz, sharpness, unnatural detail fixation and choppiness. Embrace more luxurious leisure and more voluptuous tone instead. Slow tone, relax.


Doing very basic math arrives at only one possible conclusion. Award time. Given the sub €1.000 sticker, our Realsization Award would seem tailor-made were it not for its cheap 'n' cheerful undertones. As various comparisons showed, those would sell the Octave short. A full-blown Blue Moon is thus in order, invisibly accompanied as it were by our usual realsization ethics of monster value and punching way above its class.
Quality of packing: Good.
Reusability of packing: Plenty of times.
Ease of unpacking/repacking: A cinch.
Condition of component received: Flawless.
Completeness of delivery: Perfect.
Human interactions: Very informative and forthcoming.
Pricing: Stupid-good value.
Final comments & suggestions: Repackage in bigger heavier box, add i/o ports, sell for five times the price. Just kidding!
NOS Mini DAC website
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