M1

The Bricasti M1 is a high-end, dual-mono DAC with a twin-DAC design, intended to provide precise performance in a home audio system or studio. Several filter options are provided to suit a range of digital sources.

The Sound

The M1 is designed as a high-quality digital-to-analogue converter, using carefully selected designs and materials. As a critical part of the digital audio chain, the D/A converter must reconstruct the original signal as accurately as possible for analogue playback.

The M1 is designed to sound transparent, revealing and fully dynamic. This is supported by extremely low jitter, a pure digital signal chain without SRCs (sample rate converters) or digital volume controllers, advanced digital filter design, and a fast, transparent analogue signal path. The discrete analogue output section is supported by clean linear power supplies for analogue performance. The M1 was tuned through extensive listening with a wide range of music, alongside testing in studio and home systems. It is intended for home listening or as a precision reference-monitoring tool for professional use.

Review

‘It isn’t often that a new name enters the audiophile arena with a product of such outstanding quality. However you look at it, construction, engineering, test bench performance, sound quality, the M1 hits the spot’ (Hi-Fi News magazine June 2011)

Technical Design

The M1 uses a dual-mono design with 2 completely isolated channels, left and right. Each channel has its own dedicated linear power supply, D/A converter, clocking and analogue circuitry. This minimises analogue crosstalk, while ensuring that each channel’s power requirements are met and isolated from the other channel and from the digital processing, which has its own power supply.

Its twin-DAC design optimises the dynamic range of each channel by using a stereo ADI 1955 D/A converter in a mono configuration. Each channel is clocked directly at the DAC using DDS (direct digital synthesis), reducing clock-induced jitter to immeasurable levels.

Build Quality

The M1 is constructed from milled and CNC-machined aluminium sections. Instead of a conventional bent-metal chassis and top cover, the front and rear panels, sides, bottom and top plates begin as solid aluminium blocks. Each section is precision machined to shape and exact tolerances, then anodised. The text and markings are laser etched for a clean, durable finish.