Products of the Year

Joint Digital Components of the Year

Okto DAC8 Stereo streaming D/A processor (€1203; reviewed by John Atkinson, February 2021, Vol.44 No.2 Review)
Grimm MU1 music streamer ($10,000 w/o internal storage; reviewed by John Atkinson, March 2021, Vol.44 No.3 Review)

Finalists (in alphabetical order)
Accuphase Dg-68 Digital Voicing Equalizer ($24,000; reviewed by Jason Victor Serinus, August & December 2021, Vol.44 Nos.8 & 12 Review)
Antipodes K50 server ($15,000; reviewed by Jason Victor Serinus, October 2021, Vol.44 No.10 Review)
ExaSound Delta server ($3000 w/o storage; reviewed by Kal Rubinson, April 2021, Vol.44 No.4 Review)
ExaSound S88 multichannel streaming D/A processor ($6500; reviewed by Kal Rubinson, April 2021, Vol.44 No.4 Review)

Another tie, this time between a budget Czech-import DAC that measures superbly and a high-end Dutch server from a designer—Eelco Grimm—who is known as a trendsetter and for his contributions to pro audio.

With his recording engineer hat on (does that look anything like an engineer's cap?), JA heard things from his own mixes with the Okto dac8 Stereo that he had not heard when he was making the recording. "These would not be nearly so obvious to other listeners, and yet I'd still like to have a second attempt at the mix using the Okto as the monitoring DAC. In particular, with the dac8 Stereo's superb retrieval of low-level detail, such as the hall's ambience, I would make the superbly toned Steinway grand Bob [Reina] was playing a little more prominent in the mix."

The Grimm streamer/server (which can serve as a Roon Core) is at its best via its AES3 output (or, alternatively, via a proprietary connection dubbed LS1), through which data is upsampled using a "Pure Nyquist" decimation filter.

"Oh, my!" JA exclaimed (in writing) after hearing music made with data sent via the AES3 output. He had been listening to an early digital recording via the MU1's Ethernet connection and switched to AES3, upsampled to 176.4kHz. The re- cording now sounded "dramatically better." "The tonal balance was still warm, but the congestion was reduced, adding depth to the soundstage and increasing the separation between instruments and groups of instruments within that stage." "There was simply more there there with the AES/EBU outputs."

About the Vote
Trailing these two components, which tied for first, were two components tied for second, a DAC and a server from the same company: the exaSound s88 multichannel streaming D/A converter and the exaSound Delta server. The Ac- cuphase DG-68 Digital Voicing Equalizer followed close behind.