DAC direct x 2. Comparing Adagio and D1 pitted €6'950 against €9'000. The fatter sum added RCA/XLR analog inputs. Some would opine that the COS remains the still sharper looker. But with Pavane/Adagio-era Metrum, that difference really has condensed to personal bias. Sonically, this was a rerun of the prior experiment, albeit with a narrower focus. Added weight no longer factored. This was all about the ultimate degree of audible space, of decays mapping recorded reflections and how that bestows higher contrast. If the COS got there to the lth degree, the Metrum bettered it to the proverbial nth. I picked a two-letter difference to suggest that the lead was narrow but real. The better the recording to have minutiae to unearth in the first place, the more there was for this difference to notice. But it required attentive ears and a willingness to care about the difference. Casual or careless listeners would merely shrug a "so what" shoulder. Others might find it properly relevant but argue—justifiably!—that it also reveals excesses on the mixing console when, for instance, one suddenly clearly counts three artificial reverb cycles behind a vocal. It's that double-edged sword. If you recall, Damokles, obsequious courtier to the king Dionysus, gushes over how fortunate the great ruler is to be surrounded by such power, authority and opulence. Dionysus responds by trading places so Damokles may experience these great fortunes for himself. Alas, the king also arranges for a huge sword to be hung above his throne, suspended by a mere horse's hair from its pommel. It's not long until the constant fear of it falling has Damokles beg to be released from the throne. To rule isn't just peaches.

The Adagio's left-most red LED blinks for IR commands and goes solid for 'no signal' which even happens in-between tracks. There is no visual confirmation for 'mute'.

For hifi, greater magnification cuts both ways. That's perennial small print; no surprise but dutifully mentioned. An aspect I rarely report because I favour lyrics which I cannot understand—the majority of English/German songs I could otherwise enjoy are utterly ruined by their trite lyrics whereas any other language eliminates my problem—is how sharper resolution equals better verbal intelligibility. Our household notices that with video, particularly Scottish or Irish actors who were asked to talk full-on native, not polish up their brogue for the tourists. If your enjoyment of music is enhanced by a complete grasp of the accompanying lyrics but often thwarted by poor diction... audibly greater clarity can make the decisive difference. Here anything on the level of the COS is already fully there. That's another pointer at what the gap between 'l' and 'n' covers. It's where many writers default to greater suchness or similar pointers: reedier reeds, twangier Blues guitars, brassier brasses and so forth. Even though it can prove vexing to put a finger on it, if one is intimate with a particular instrument, the recognition that a machine renders it more real, more like itself, is instant. What makes it so? Microscopic things which the analytical mind can't name but which our brain still synthesizes. My pet theory is superior timing. Its supporting cast includes transient fidelity and minimal phase shift so fundamentals and harmonics align with minimal to no time shift. Whatever the case may be, when it happens to a higher degree, we just know. With the Adagio, I knew just a bit more than with the COS even though from a pure enjoyment perspective, I'd rate both exactly equal. That's a vital distinction. The other day I learnt that Pavarotti's favourite meal, enjoyed in a restaurant next to his home, was black-rice risotto which his chef friend served with a 24-carat gold leaf melted atop it. I'm certain his dish would have been terrific without that indulgent extravagance. But if the Adagio could serve your risotto Pavarotti style and do so daily, would you really complain?

Forward-corrected R2R versus discrete R2R. For my Aqua Formula comparo, both converters ran through the Wyred Stage II preamp, the Adagio's reference voltage at full tilt to closely mirror the Aqua's 3.8V output. Again the signal path was fully balanced all the way up to the amp. Again the Adagio led the parade on ultimate separation and the teasing out of the most subliminal layers to suggest that its resolution eclipsed even that of the fabulous 'optologic' DAC. Again the offset was minor; an internalized game when attention is fully focused to really notice. After I'd shuttled back and forth between both silvery decks, I finally went Adagio-direct once more. Once more separation powers took another uptick and so did upper harmonic retrieval. In trade, forgoing the weighting contributions of the preamp meant slightly less gravity and somewhat less power on the low bass. What the Adagio peeled out from a very layered mix were things like the merest whiff of a flotsam of sheer string pedals whose synth nature was betrayed by the way their pitch changes started with a key not bow. This is stuff you're not necessarily even supposed to hear. It's a mixing console's secret. It completes the layering of a multi-tracked construct but doesn't stand out to be identified; unless a Adagio took a very close-up look.

For a change to a lower-rez transducer, I was curious. What might the Adagio's micro-detail extraction plus that of Bakoon's notoriously efficient AMP-12R do for the Rethm Bhaava, a clever €3'000/pr widebander with active isobaric bass system? 15wpc are sadly insufficient for our posher speakers. Akira Nagai's Satri tech remains out of their reach until his flagship 100wpc AMP-51R starts to ship later this year. Well, it was certainly inspiring what the simple whizzer in Jacob George's low-rent if modified Boston Acoustics public-address driver could do when fronted by two overtone revealers of this magnitude. As an ex violinist, it's long been Jacob's contention that what he calls the breath of life relies on fully elucidated upper harmonics. It's an observation which applies to the Metrum as well. Whilst its tonal weightiness isn't extreme, the 'spark' or 'charge' I refer to as musical energy steps forward instead. It's how Cees' temporary amplification of the less/least significant bits during the D/A conversion process manifests, here maximized by parallel processing and higher voltages. That attribute overlaps with premium widebanders from Voxativ. They too can sculpt sonic scenarios in high maximally articulated relief. They too must be matched strategically to express properly counterweighted low-end power and heft. What the Bhaava session demonstrated as well was the inevitable filtering effect a speaker of lesser lens strength applies to inbound data. Compared to the thrice-priced Aptica, certain bits got sifted out of the stream. Whatever stage of a hifi chain is of lowest resolution becomes a minor bottle neck for the microscopic bits.

For the final round, I set up the Zu Druid V with Crayon's CFA-1.2. This shifted brownie points into the rhythmically feisty and texturally meaty. As a crossover-less widebander with a minimalist 12kHz high-pass to a mega compression tweeter, this speaker acts as a phase-coherent point source across the lion's share of the bandwidth. It's very responsive to sources which ace the time domain to then respond with noticeable vigor, punch and elan. 'In the pocket' is how musicians call such tautness. The Druids reiterated how a core strength of Metrum's digital know-how has always been snappy timing. The Adagio naturally wore the same gestalt which the Druid with its meatpacking muscle made the very most of. It had me automatically veer into rhythmically complex fare and pulsating grooves. Borrowing from Burson's naming of their amp, the Adagio is a timekeeper extraordinaire. Even in this 98dB high-efficiency context, a full left turn on the volume was just right for low background drizzle. For true barely-there levels, I additionally flicked the low-gain rear toggles. Easy. Only true 'mute' was a pinch peculiar. To undo it, you don't re-enter 'mute'. You change the volume instead. That means you can't 'mute' then 'unmute' on exactly the same level. It's the only m(in)ute interface inelegance I could spot.

Stop. Hitting the brakes to take stock, by March 2017 Metrum's Adagio had reshuffled this writer's DAC index as new king of the hill. Not only was its unique conversion technique the most resolved, the implementation of its volume control meant that with an ideally balanced amp/speaker pairing, the minor losses incurred by premium standalone preamps could be avoided entirely. The Adagio thus packs a super DAC and passive preamp's attenuator under one shiny black glass hood. It saves the right shopper a separate component, shelf, power cord and interconnect. Holland isn't a very large country but seems disproportionately populated by engineering-centric hifi companies. From Mola-Mola/Hypex to Crystal/Siltech and Æquo, from Grimm to Dutch & Dutch and Kharma, none of them follow the crowd. Firmly belonging are Metrum. Their Adagio not only does it differently. It's their finest work yet. It shows how advances to our fringe art aren't exclusive to well-funded big firms with sprawling engineering departments. They can be pushed by far smaller outfits if and when a truly gifted designer is allowed to pursue his muse without restraints. With the Adagio, Cees Ruijtenberg clearly put his foot on the gas. Huzzah & vroom!

Metrum Acoustics website