This Innuos link tells you all you need to do with the Purple fuse. It won’t blow. No worries.
https://innuos.com/kb/replacing-the-fuse-on-innuos-products/
Grimm MU1 Streamer - Really "The Best"?
I've recently become interested in the Grimm MU1. While reviews of top end players from Innuos, Aurender and Antipodes and others are typically all very positive, the tone of the many pro reviews of the Grimm MU1 go far, far beyond, with some reviews resorting to using superlatives and gushing of positive system transformation and not being able to stop listening to material, etc.. HiFi Advice and Steve Huff (actually calls it "magic") have such reviews.
Given the delay in availability of the Innuos Pulsar which I'm told will be better than my current Zenith Mk3 + PhoenixUSB reclocker, I am interested in replacing my streaming setup with a one-box solution that includes a high-precision clock. The new streamer will continue to feed my Gryphon Diablo 300's DAC module, which I have no interest in replacing.
I'm actually a fan of Innuos, after they improved the sound of my Zenith with firmware updates and after I added their PhoenixUSB reclocker. I appreciate this commitment to improving sound quality which is why I was so interested in the Pulsar.
The trigger for considering an upgrade is not for improved sound, but rather, to solve some issues I have with too many Audioquest power cords coiled and clumped together. I will get to lose one of them and one of my USB cords with a one-box streamer. I've noticed my sound is very sensitive to positioning of my AC cords and find I often need to re-adjust the PC feeding my amp to get proper sounding vocals at center stage. One of my subs also seems to be picking up AC noise when the crossover is set above 60Hz. The second trigger is simply system simplification, removing one box. All that said I don't really have any complaints regarding sound, and the PhoenixUSB reclocker truly did improve the sound of my Zenith.
While the Grimm MU1 has it's 4X upsampling up it's sleeve with reviewers absolutely glowing over this feature and it's extreme ability to separate tones to the left, right, front, and back far better than the rest, I don't see that Grimm has gone to any lengths with regard to power supply management in the way other brands do including Innuos. The MU1's ultra-simplistic interior doesn't bug me, but the lack of transformers and power management makes me wonder....
Are there any updates from folks who have directly compared the MU1 vs similarly classed streamers from the competition? Did you find it to be as revelatory as the pro reviewers found it? And, how does it compare to other streamers with it's 4X upsampling disabled? Does it sound like it suffers from it's lack of power management? I do see that the clock should be very good...
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@grannyring , thanks, I’ve seen that link from Innuos and am clear what to get; I’m more wondering what to try for my other stuff (one at a time though). I can guess it may be hard to get Gryphon to provide a recommendation of a aftermarket fuse for my Diablo amp, as I’m fairly certain they will just say not to do that. Could be the same with Mola Mola and Grimm too. Great to see this thread generating some awareness of the MU1 and also now the Muon filter too! I’m planning to switch back to my Innuos gear this weekend, for the sake of comparing and contrasting. I have to say that even if I end up preferring the MU1, which I expect will be the case (pending the expected positive impact of the Purple Fuse on my Zenith which may change things?), my overall opinion of Innuos has only increased, as I now have an understanding of what the three Innuos boxes do very well together. Before, I had no perspective other than the Mac Mini I was using earlier than 2019. I have a soft spot for Innuos now that I didn’t have before. The sound is wide open, super-relaxed, highly dimensional with upper mids and high frequencies “popping out” holographically, with an emphasis on lower end fullness and upper mids and high frequencies. Altogether it’s a very welcoming and easy to listen to sound. In many ways the MU1 is a bit of the inverse - pace seems faster, more snap and solidity to the sound, more texture, more detail, more clarity, more precision, more focus, and absolutely no bloom. The MU1 is far more “to the point”. Ultimately through cabling, the Muon filter, and a bit of other tweakery I am aiming to get a bit of the Innuos’ fullness and enveloping dimensionality in the MU1 along side all of its excellent qualities. But we’ll see what that Purple Fuse does with the Innuos Zenith!l Mk3! As an aside, it occurred to me that how I have described the Innuos sound is similar to how I’ve seen others describe the Antipodes K50. That makes me very curious as to how the K50 would compare. But unfortunately I don’t think I’ll get to go that far with this particular journey, as much as I’d like to! If I had a trusted friend with a K50 I’d offer to swap with the MU1 for a a few weeks. Sadly I have no such friend with a K50! In comparison I found the Aurender N20 to be “closed in” sounding on the top end - ultimately I was a bit disappointed in the N20 but that is probably just my system/room/ears. I know a lot of people love the N20. I do recall it had an insane degree of tonal density and saturation which made the sound very tangible, as well as this inky blackness effect which I would compare to the effect of conditioners. So it definitely had some great qualities. I know I may have loved it with the addition of a master clock, as it’s one of the few streamers that have a clock input. But for me it was hard to go down that path when I couldn’t figure out a way to be happy with its “base” sound.
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@grannyring I currently have the Eno AG filter in my system. I think you also owned one before. In your opinion, is the Muon Pro a noticeable upgrade over the original Eno? Nyev, sorry I hope I'm not hijacking your thread :) |
I am curious about the digital inputs on the MU1. I have a Cambridge, audio cd transport, which is not a high ranking transport by any means. In my fantasy… If I feed the MU1 digital input from the CD transport, it would be as good as any transport, and I would not need to buy a high end transport. is there any reason to believe that the MU1would be agnostic about CD transports and they would all sound the same? |
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