The Dutch online magazine Hifi.nl has published part 1 of their MU1 review. Author René van Es is impressed:
“Now it is finally time to enjoy music with just the MU1 as an oversampling music player with storage, server and endpoint in one box, as it was intended. For example, when playing a live recording of Loreena McKennitt in the Royal Albert Hall, her “Bonny Portmore” displays the acoustics of the hall in a beautiful way, especially when the audience starts clapping. The reproduction is harmonious and pure, with an impressive separation between the instruments, partly because of the transparency, and partly because of the beautiful stereo image rendering. The depth image of the instruments is drawn so clearly that they all have their own place.
The bombastic nature of this recording is in stark contrast to the CD “Through my eyes” by Mariecke Borger and its track “Not too late”. The lady’s voice is solid, yet simple and delicate, until a band starts playing and the tenderness is replaced with dark bass and drums. The music sounds loose and broad. It is impressive how much power there is in the reproduction, especially the deep basses of the bass drum leave memories in my ears. The title track also has these dark sounds that contrast the free moving voice. She steals my heart, this lady on the MU1. Classical work by cellist Sol Gabetta floats through my space. Here, cello is portrayed as a real solo instrument, fortunately well surrounded by the Munich Philharmonic and not unnaturally detached in the mix. Whatever I play, the MU1 never disappoints and allows the DAC and the rest of the system to show their strength.
The downstream chain after the MU1 must be of high quality to fully enjoy its pleasures. Let the MU1 handle oversampling and thus relieve the DAC for an audibly better result. The DAC must be able to process 176.4 kHz and 192 kHz data streams for this. Not to mention that every owner of Grimm Audio LS1 speakers is more or less obliged to use the MU1 if he wants to pull the maximum out of the system. Except for shows and demos, I didn’t hear this combination, but believe me, the demos were impressive to say the least.
The Grimm Audio MU1 is a top product from the Netherlands, to which new functions are constantly added by a team of employees who have thrown themselves on the MU1 for more than four man years. With results! The MU1 is for people who don’t care about cables, boxes, tweaks and other things, but simply want to enjoy music at an extremely high quality level without worries.“
Read the second part of the review here >
“The MU1 is for people who don’t care about cables, boxes, tweaks and other things, but simply want to enjoy music at an extremely high quality level without worries.”
René van Es, Hifi.nl
