In their March 2021 issue, Stereophile’s John Atkinson checks out the MU1 and is so intrigued that he postpones dinner… We felt very honored that John loved to do this review himself. He writes:
“I started playing a CD-resolution file, and the MBL’s display confirmed that it was receiving a 24-bit/176.4kHz stream.
Oh my!
I had been playing one of my favorite performances of Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No.2, with Vladimir Ashkenazy accompanied by Bernard Haitink conducting the Concertgebouw Orchestra (…) the congestion was reduced, adding depth to the soundstage and increasing the separation between instruments and groups of instruments within that stage. Even lossy-compressed audio, like the 128kbps stream of BBC Radio 3’s Night Tracks program, to which I have become addicted, benefited from the MU1’s upsampling.
(…)
I continued my auditioning with upsampled CD-resolution files and found that there was an engaging quality to the presentation. “Just one more track,” I found myself muttering to myself when dinnertime loomed.
(…)
I selected Daft Punk’s “Lose Yourself to Dance” (24/88.2 ALAC file from Random Access Memories, Columbia/HDtracks) and pressed Play. I never had any difficulty losing myself with this track, but with the data upsampled to 176.4kHz, I had to dance.
(…)
The Grimm MU1 is a highly recommended digital audio solution.”
“The Grimm MU1 is a highly recommended digital audio solution.”
John Atkinson, Stereophile
