I ordered the Metrum Quad about 5 weeks ago. They said there would be an 8-10 week wait time, but I got it in 4 weeks. I listened to it last weekend and thought it was a decent enough DAC, about what I expected from digital. The bad part was that it had a slightly phasey hollow quality to it in addition to sounding somewhat hard at louder volumes. I turned it off Sunday evening and turned it back on Thursday and noticed there was a low pitched buzz in the speakers, kind of like a motorboat sound. After looking around I noticed that I had forgotten to plug the wall wart into the power strip with the rest of my equipment. I had plugged into another outlet. I plugged it into the power strip - btw, this power strip is plugged into a dedicated outlet.
The motorboat sound was now gone, but to my surprise, the sound had changed also. The phasey hollow quality and hardness were gone now. It had a nice solid sound and was actually very pleasant to listen to. This is probably the best digital I have heard to date. I don't have a lot of experience with digital since I listen to maybe 90% analog. My last CD player was a Consonance CD120 Linear, also an NOS player. The only two things I liked better with the CD120 were its slightly better sense of PRaT and tonal color. In every other way, the Metrum betters it. One area that is a total standout is the way the Metrum does voices. I think the two adjectives that come to mind first when describing the sound of this DAC are clean and smooth. On quieter material it can sound really delicate and pretty. PRaT is good, but not a standout - it does better the (unmodified) analog outs of my SB Touch in that area by a good margin though. I am using a Blue Jeans Belden 1550 cable between Touch and DAC and Blue Jeans ICs between the DAC and my integrated amp.
I paid about $460 for mine with PayPal and shipping. If you order from the States though, be aware that you must either order the matching 7VA power supply (around $110) or you have to buy your own wall wart power supply and solder on the supplied connector. That is what I did. Luckily I found someone at work to do the soldering on those tiny connectors. I am pleased with my purchase though and think it was worth the money. Having bought it without hearing it, I was somewhat worried. Of course, now I wonder what the Octave sounds like ...
