Deciding on the best ancillaries to pinch the Pavane's chops led to the balanced COS Engineering D1 as volume control; the Pass Labs XA30.8 stereo amp via its XLR inputs; and the Mythology 1 monitors from EnigmAcoustics. This gave me the sharpest microscope yet more colour saturation than the also available Goldmund Telos 360 monos. Though my new iMac (Yosemite OS) had at first try recognized the new USB device, by the next session it had disappeared for good no matter what I tried. Did I finally need a driver for an Apple machine? That'd be news. Inserting the Metrum CD into the external SuperDrive revealed a surprise Apple folder, alas no Yosemite driver. I installed Mavericks instead. Joy. The Pavane showed up again as hiFaceTWO UAC2 Output. All hail the fickle computer audio gods?

The next order of business was deciding whether my default PureMusic or rarer Audirvana alternate software player would control this USB transmission. Ownership of the Metrum Hex had long ago determined that it sounded best with PureMusic set to NOS-style 176.4kHz upsampling. With the Pavane and newer Audirvana 2, the tables turned. PureMusic was drier and spatially less filigreed. Audirvana was more spacious, glossier and tonally wetter, with the latter two aspects quite similar to how AURALiC's Vega had always differed from the Hex. Compatible with 'integer' mode, I also set A+ to full-bore extreme priority, its upsampler to max power of two as shown above. Having super-affordable sonically influential options is great cheap fun!


Whilst chasing promises of enhanced resolution, it's the tertiary lesser stuff which gains in equality to obvious foreground data. That's intuitive. Albums with more recorded venue information offer chewier substance to sink one's teeth into. To do higher magnification power ultimate justice relies on providing it with quality tracks for the full toothy tell. Sure, everything benefits from more light. What you end up seeing simply depends on what you started with. I deliberately selected stuff with plenty of recorded ambiance. "Noah's Ark" from Swiss harpist Asita Hamidi's Blue Ark became one of those serious things. It's a densely layered instrumental groove with very low bass, intricate drums and exotic vocalizing snippets thrown in for good measure. All of it is laid out in deep space. It's a stacked aural buffet from which your attention can draw at will. The comparator became the COS Engineering deck now as combined DAC/pre. Acquired late last year, this machine dethroned the Hex. It offers a very similar timing-taut yet 'easy' presentation but even less grain, more suavity and full preamp functionality with analog precision volume. In many systems, it will eliminate a separate pre from the usual box, cable and cord count. Sharp finishing and a uniquely incorporated multi-purpose controller wheel plus low-volume production also mean a €9'000 sticker. Some of it clearly goes toward city slicker cred.


At €4'090—add 10-20% VAT for most European countries where Norway will hit you with 27%— and in snazzier threads than earlier Metrum kit, the Pavane was essentially half for half the functionality. On pure converterage, I looked at it as even Steven. Which is exactly how it turned out sonically. The D1 might as well have had a 'Pavane inside' sticker stuck to it. If there were differences, they were too minor to lock on to. Both decks aced the very sharp percussive transients which on this track often crack so mightily that your body reacts involuntarily as though something actually shattered in front of it like a dropped glass. Both staged identically deep and wide. I detected no tonal balance offsets, no textural differences; nothing. This continued with Symphonic Klezmer which embeds the David Orlowsky Trio in the Potsdam Kammerakademie orchestra on a terrific Sony Classics release. Alas, a few converter swaps into this album, the Pavane disappeared again. It was no longer selectable as an output device. Meanwhile the COS Engineering kept showing up bomb-proof whenever the USB cable hit its port. I was beginning to think the M2Tech module fussy. Various Amanero Combo384 decks on hand didn't go AWOL either. Off went the obligatory email. Were these known issues with Yosemite? Was I enjoying a reviewer's special? Why a Mac driver in the first place?


Cees confirmed that I didn't need a driver and should uninstall it. Seemingly, short-term joy hadn't really been down to it. He dispatched another XMOS USB3 module plus an Amanero USB2 with identical headers. "I only know that the XMOS is more critical when more devices are installed. Here we have a brand-new MacMini using a DAC with the hiFace XMOS version. We lost it only once during a Yosemite update but it's been stable for several days. We've used the XMOS for 5 months and sell hundreds with no complaints. So I think there's something wrong with your board." I wasn't sure what Cees meant by 'installed'. I only had one converter at a time connected to the iMac. None had a driver to be formally installed as they might be on a Windows machine. When the replacements arrived, I was good with either. I left the Amanero in. That's because in the interim, I'd checked out my entire DAC inventory. Two April Music machines with older XMOS modules—the Stello HP100Mk2 and Eximus DP1—were a no show too. They'd always worked fine on my previous iMac with its pre-Yosemite OS. Now they were useless without a firmware update. With a concealed stiffie at the computer audio gods, I placed my bets on Amanero and resumed my auditions.
XMOS modules in foreground, Amanero installed.
This brief interlude is mentioned only to avoid painting computer audio as a rare thornless rose. The occasional pin prick drawing blood or just curses is how this cookie crumbles. Claiming otherwise is dishonest. But Cees was happy to hear that this had just been a bum board. Swapping it out took a few seconds. If you can sneeze, you can do this. It was right at this sneezing juncture that news hit of Yggy's release from pending prison. The long-announced Schiit statement DAC Yggdrasil was finally in production. In happily swaggering fashion, its web blurb kicked off with "forget everything you know about DACs. Yggdrasil is the world’s only closed-form multi-bit DAC, delivering 21 bits of resolution with no guessing anywhere in the digital or analog path. We’ve thrown out delta-sigma D/As, traditional digital filters and sample rate conversion to preserve the original samples all the way through from input to output. To do this, we had to rethink everything about a modern DAC." A bit further in, "when doctors are trying to diagnose whether you have gas or cancer from MRI results; or when the military is trying to ensure a missile hits an ammo dump and not a nunnery next door - they don’t use '24-bit' or '32-bit' delta-sigma D/A converters. Instead they rely on precision 20-bit ladder DACs like the Analog Devices AD5791. This allows them the bit-perfect precision they need for critical applications rather than the guesswork of a delta-sigma. We chose this same critical technology for Yggdrasil in a balanced configuration that increases effective resolution to 21 bits."


Such marketing speak drives home just how desperate DACs have gotten at setting themselves apart. In a world of sameness where even the pending Merging Technologies NADAC would run plain Sabre chips with engaged on-chip attenuation, op-amp outputs and SMPS, differentiation is key. If so many use the same ingredients, how to promise punters different results? As we already know from the above, even completely different bits can arrive at perfectly indistinguishable ends. Shopping on parts really is a completely lost cause. Only critical listening cuts through that illusion. Where marketeers and uniqueness are concerned, tight tabs on the competition are mandatory to not make false claims. Now back to the Pavane.