Bricasti Design, Ltd. Model M3 Digital-to-Analog Converter

The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there— L.P. Hartley

The year 2011 was only 12 years ago. Somehow though, it seems more remote than that.

In 2011: Osama Bin Laden, Clarence Clemons, Eugene Fodor, Gil-Scot Heron, Steve Jobs, Muammar Kadaffi, Kim Jung-Il, Don Kirshner, Dame Margaret Price, Phoebe Snow, and Josef Suk—all of them died.

On the other side of the Shakespearean “Tragedy vs. Comedy” ledger, Prince William and Kate Middleton got married. There were earthquakes and a tsunami in Japan, and there were riots in England and in several Arab countries. (But I doubt that the Royal Wedding caused the riots.)

2011 was a very interesting year in popular music in the United States. The Shazam song-identification smartphone app had already been launched in the US in 2006. So perhaps the “Shazam Effect” was a factor in the acceleration of “hit concentration” in the popular-music business.

If you have been unaware of the Shazam Effect, Shazam does a lot more than let its users know the name of the song that is playing on the overhead loudspeakers in a restaurant. Shazam also harvests (and then sells) data about when and where you heard the song. That two-way exchange of data (arguably) has led to an unmistakable narrowing of musical styles: Now that the music business has unprecedented information about which songs people find catchy enough to ask about (via Shazam), the music business wants to deliver more of the same.

To give one example: In 2011, Katy Perry's fifth single from her 2010 album Teenage Dream was "Last Friday Night (T.G.I.F.)." With "Last Friday Night,” Perry achieved 69 consecutive weeks with a song (any song; at least one song) in the Billboard Top 10. That’s a greater number of consecutive weeks than any other singer or musician in history. Perry also tied Michael Jackson’s record for the greatest number of hit singles from one album.

Note, Katy Perry’s achievement was to have at least one song from a succession of different single releases in the Top 10 of the singles chart, consecutively. (That Perry’s songs were all from the same album just adds to the Degree of Difficulty.) Other artists are properly celebrated for achievements that are judged by different metrics. Such as, the greatest number of weeks to have one particular single in the No. 1 position of the singles chart. Or, the greatest cumulative (non-consecutive) number of weeks to have an album, any album, in the No. 1 position. The leaders for that last category are: The Beatles (132 weeks); Elvis Presley (67 weeks), and Taylor Swift (60 weeks).

The irony is that although today's technology can deliver nearly-unlimited variety, what people ask for is increasingly—and unprecedentedly—similar. Recent research indicates that circa 77% of the total revenue from sales of recorded music goes to the top 1% of artists and bands. And if you look only at streaming revenue, the concentration factor is higher: the top 1% of artists and bands get 90% of the streaming revenue. Furthermore, today's 10 best-selling tracks have nearly twice the market share of the Top 10 singles of 10 years ago. That’s because today, once a single gets into the Top 10, it stays there longer than ever.

To give another example, in March 2022, Morgan Wallen’s album Dangerous established the all-time record for longest duration in the No. 1 spot (98 weeks) on Billboard's Country album chart. That’s one year, and ten months. By comparison, Michael Jackson’s Thriller twice topped the Pop album chart for 17 weeks each time, for a total of 34 weeks.

My point being that, in 2011, “hit concentration” was already underway. In 2011, Adele’s “Rolling in the Deep,” her first No. 1 US single, spent seven weeks in that position.

2011 was also when I first heard Bricasti Design’s M1 digital-to-analog converter, at a professional-audio trade fair outside of Boston. I had brought along a CDR of my work-in-progress for a pipe-organ recording. Brian Zolner, the “Bri” in “Bricasti,” was staffing Bricasti’s booth. Brian graciously agreed to let me listen to my own recording of work-in-progress. I was very impressed. I immediately requested a review sample.

To quote from my eventual review in Stereophile (August 2011):

Once the Nordost Silver Shadow cable arrived, I did all my listening with it and with the Vivid B-1s, except for brief comparisons for the benefit of guests. The result was among the handful of the best systems I have heard, and most likely the best sound I have heard in a private home. Breathtaking. …

Here's the short list of audio products that have floored me the way Bricasti's M1 DAC did: Wilson Benesch's original ACT One loudspeaker, darTZeel's NHB-108 stereo power amplifier, Cardas's Clear speaker cables, Vivid's B-1 loudspeaker, and Sooloos's Control:15 music server. I can't recall any others.

To sum up Bricasti Design's M1 Dual-Mono D/A Converter:

Cons: Expensive.

[Note: All but one of my other vintage-2011 “Con” issues with Bricasti’s M1 were completely addressed by Bricasti, in their laudable plan of continuous improvements. Current M1 production has: remote control; volume control; phase inversion; and USB input. Current M1 production can handle 352.8 and 384kHz PCM, and DSD up to DSD 256. Bricasti later began offering an optional fully-balanced headphone-amplifier option, but only on their M3 DAC].

Pros: Fast, detailed, effortlessly powerful, musically revealing. Fatigue-free listening. The best digital playback I have heard. (As of 2011.)

Verdict: Class A+. If you're shopping in this price tier, you should hear it.

In due course, John Atkinson gave a listen and made his customary measurements, and then a photo of the M1 ended up on Stereophile’s cover. The M1 remains in production, but the cumulative effect of more than ten years of continuous improvements means that there is little carry-over from the original product of 2011. Today’s “Classic” M1 has a Manufacturer’s Suggested Retail “Base” Price of $9,000. Given the 2011 price of $7,995, that means that the M1’s price has gone up far more slowly than price inflation in general. Bravo.

A Brief History of Bricasti

If, like Zarathustra, you have been living in a cave, I probably should tell you that Bricasti started out as a professional-audio equipment company specializing in reverberation hardware. Bricasti’s principals formerly worked at Lexicon, a Harmon-Kardon subsidiary.

I have often cracked the witticism that they had to call their new company “Bricasti” because “Vendetta” was already taken. After achieving remarkable success in dethroning Lexicon, the Bricastians took note that they already had the makings of a consumer DAC in the playthrough section of their reverb box, and they set to work.

Brian Zolner said that the design brief for the M1 was that it should sound "fast," "revealing," "open," and "spacious." In order to get those virtues, Bricasti opted for fully-balanced dual-differential architecture (both digital and analog); dual-mono architecture from the IEC power inlet on; and software-based selectable digital-reconstruction filters.

Perhaps most importantly (and, somewhere in Heaven, I think W. Edwards Deming is looking down and smiling), Bricasti committed to the path of Continuous Improvement, which has been followed by many running improvements to the original M1, and the widening of Bricasti’s consumer offerings to be more than just one DAC.

These days, Bricasti offers the M1 DAC in both a physically larger and even more upgraded (Series II) version, and the “Classic” version. The Series II version is stuffed full of beefier electronic parts, so it has grown out of the original/Classic M1’s (pro-audio) “One Rack Space” enclosure height. The “base” price of the M1 Classic is $9,000, which includes a remote control but not a network card for streaming. The base price of the M1 Series II is $12,000. Again, remote control yes, network card no.

Given the price difference of $3000, and the fact that both versions of the M1 have been upgraded to the MDX series motherboard, I asked Brian Zolner:

Q.: What was the thinking behind keeping the Classic version of the M1 available?

 A.: The M1 Classic is just that, our classic DAC. The current M1 Classic is an evolved version of our original M1, but it costs 25% less than the larger M1 Series II variant. As they are both based on the same design, it is easy for us to continue to manufacture the Classic M1. Doing so shows support for our wide user base. It still offers a great value when compared to the M1 Series II or the M21, or even going up from the M3.

JM AGAIN: Going up Bricasti’s product stairsteps for DACs: above both M1 versions there are the M12 “Source Controller,” and the M21 Digital-to-Analog Converter. (Bricasti also makes power amplifiers, as well as one all-analog preamplifier; but those are not relevant to this review.)

Q.: What is the Elevator Pitch for the M12? ($16,000 in Classic finish; an optional Platinum finish is available by special order.)

A.: The idea behind the M12 was to take the M1 and add an analog preamp section to it, offering a DAC/Pre product so one could integrate the low level signals in the front end of a system. It has balanced analog inputs, and all the digital inputs that the M1 has. We added the network streamer, which by design, later became optional on all other products. The M12 level control is designed using a discreet-resistor ladder attenuator. For the M12 we designed an analog 1-bit converter for true DSD conversion. The analog attenuator is necessary to match DSD and PCM levels, and minimize transient noise issues to preserve the DSD 1-bit stream. The M12 is not only a DAC, but an integrated front-end product.

Q.: What is the Elevator Pitch for the M21? ($16,000 in Classic finish; an optional Platinum finish is available by special order.)

A.: After the M12, came the M21. The reason for this variation is that the M12 is not a stand-alone DAC. We thought to make a variation of it that would have the Native DSD converter, no analog inputs, and be able to bypass its analog attenuator for use as a DAC. Like the M12, the analog attenuator is necessary to manage the DSD converter; that is the primary reason why it was designed into the M21. But the M21’s level control is implemented with a Burr-Brown IC (not the discreet ladder attenuator, as in the M12). That is because its main task was DSD management. This feature allows the M21 to be used direct to power amplifiers with analog attenuation; or to be used as a DAC with a preamp. At the time, as an experiment, we added a Resistive-Ladder DAC to the M21, to see how its performance was. Because many users preferred the Ladder DAC as such, the M21 has 3 selectable types of conversion: Sigma-Delta; Native DSD; and Resistive-Ladder DAC.

Lastly, the M3 grew out of our M21 work. It has the analog-attenuator level control from the M21, the Sigma-Delta DAC from the M1, and the Native DSD converter from the M21 and M12, all engineered to fit in a more cost-effective design.

JM AGAIN: I think it very praiseworthy that, at the same time that Bricasti was maxing things out and exploring higher heights (both in terms of performance, and in terms of retail prices) they also decided to offer a smaller-form-factor, more-affordable DAC. The base price for Bricasti’s M3 DAC is $6,000, but that includes neither remote control nor network card. Furthermore, the M3 is not available in the extra-cost-option Platinum casework.

Although it might lack a couple of features that are common to their more expensive offerings, the M3 retains nearly all the hallmarks of a Bricasti DAC design. Those being, fully-balanced, dual-channel design, and software-based digital reconstruction filters. (The M3, however, for space and cost reasons, has a power supply shared by both channels.)

Q.: I am sure the delivering a Bricasti DAC that costs 33% less than the Classic M1 and 50% less than the M1 Series II was an engineering challenge. But isn’t it also a marketing challenge, or a business challenge? Some people might say that you are shooting yourself in the foot, by offering a more-affordable option.

A.: The M3 has a different sound, which is due to the use of lower-cost opamps, and some other differences. Some of the key elements of the M1’s performance are its use of high slew rate video opamps for the I-V section, and its discreet output-buffer stage. The M3 uses less-costly, audio-type opamps. There are many of those needed, so the cost and space considerations will not allow for using the same components as the M1. And there are power supply differences too. Nonetheless, we feel the M3 is great performer; its sound is unique.

Q.: How have your dealers, distributors, and customers responded to the M3?

A.: The M3 has been a success for us in the market. For many years we were asked for a lower cost product; as such it was welcomed by the distribution.

Q.: A dear friend of mine owns a Bricasti M1 Special Edition (the gold one) that I recently upgraded to the MDX motherboard. I’m not about to ask him to borrow it; but, I know his system very well, and I don’t at all hear a “Night and Day” difference between his DAC and the review-loan M3. Your thoughts?

A.: I think you need to have them side by side to hear the differences. As you know in this business, even small changes can be “big.” We have many users who have upgraded from M3 to M1 or M21.

But when we compare the way you just did, just by memory, and in a different system and room, you almost certainly will conclude the M3 to be of great value and offer a lot of what the M1 does.

But I live with these products, and I have to say that they both have their position, and their intended use. And also, there’s no free lunch.

The M1 is really designed as a DAC to be used with a preamp, while the M3 presumes you will be relying upon its analog attenuator. With the M3 you also have the option of a true balanced headphone driver, so the M3 is designed as a multi-role processor.

JM AGAIN: By the way, I should point out that if today’s M3 looks a bit different from what you remember Bricasti’s gear’s looking like, that’s because Bricasti’s (my term, not theirs) “Dot Matrix” display, which is no longer available from the supplier, has been replaced by a much more modern TFT color-graphic display.

 Zolner tells me that a few longtime distributors are a little bummed out. They think the red-dot display was very “pro” looking, or some such reason. I don’t spend a lot of time looking at front panels, but the new one does seem slightly more restful.

Das Ding an sich.

Not to get all Kantian on you.

The Bricasti M3 arrives in the familiar Bricasti black-anodized-and-silver enclosure, but with a smaller form factor. It is 14" W x 11.25" D x 2.5" H, and weighs 10 pounds. The M3 has AES, S/PDIF, Toslink (Optical), and USB digital inputs as standard. An RJ45 Ethernet connection is optional.

Furthermore, you can specify that your S/PDIF connector will be a BNC jack, rather than an RCA jack. I highly recommend the BNC, even though my review sample did not have it. I know this from previous experience, because the Parasound Halo CD-1 transport has that rare and special thing, a BNC S/PDIF output jack.

Compared to Bricasti’s other offerings, the M3 is actually kind of cuddly looking. If you have a moderately spacious desk (and some extra cabbage in your bankroll), I am sure that the balanced-headphone-optioned M3 would make for an amazing computer-stereo headphone-listening setup.

There’s a saying that, in terms of controls, if you have driven one German car, you have driven them all. That may be debatable. But the M3 behaved exactly as one would expect a Bricasti product to—faultlessly and rewardingly. The M3’s USB 2 type interface is based on the latest generation of asynchronous design. The M3 supports sample rates up to 384k/24 bit PCM, and up to DSD 256 in Native format. (DSD conversion has two selectable options: DoP for the S/PDIF and AES inputs, and DoP or Native for the USB input.) There is an optional beautiful, small, all-metal remote control, but my setup did not need it.

The M3 has a much smaller menu of options in digital reconstruction filters than the M1. But one might be tempted to say that 20% of the possible filter choices in Bricasti’s larger DACs are the ones that get chosen 80% of the time. The prospective buyer has to weigh the deletions against the price savings. I used the Minimum-Phase No. 1 filter option.

One thing that makes the M3 rare (in a good way) is that it is fully balanced in the analog domain, and therefore has XLR balanced analog outputs, as well as the ubiquitous RCA single-ended analog output jacks. BTW, the M3’s fully-balanced design extends to the analog level or volume control. If your main source of music is streaming or digital downloads or CDs (and you don’t have a phono setup), the M3’s volume control can take the place of a preamplifier. (Setting the level control of 0dB takes the level control out of the signal path.)

If you own a Bricasti power amplifier and you are not driving it with a fully-balanced analog source, you are not getting the performance you paid for. And, the same is true for many other amplifier brands that have real complementary dual-differential balanced audio inputs, and not just “convenience” XLR jacks. I recently raved (in a different publication) about pro-audio company Grace Design’s very affordable (less than $700) desktop m900 DAC/HPA/Pre. The only holdback was that its form factor and target price only allowed for RCA analog outputs.

Listening

I wanted to use a balanced power amp with the M3. Happily, not long after the M3 arrived, an audio-industry friend was kind enough to lend me his VTV Audio 1ET400A stereo amplifier, which is based on a State-of-the-Art digital-switching amplifier module from Purifi Audio, of Denmark. I was hugely impressed with the VTV, especially at its price ($1,700 as configured).

Soon after that, the Audio Bargain of this Century—so far (the SB Acoustics x Solen Sasandu Tx Finales) arrived. The listening was so very gratifying. I never once felt that I was missing out on anything by listening to the M3 rather than to an M1. (Even though, Brian Zolner tells me that I would hear differences in a direct comparison—an honorable chap, Brian is.)

Let me mention again a Qobuz test-tracks playlist I put up, that is distinctive in that there is a related article that gives capsule summaries about why I chose those particular tracks, and what you might want to listen for. That article can be found HERE.

Over the past couple of years, I have increasingly been including the first two tracks from Kate St. John’s (1995) first album Indescribable Night among the first tracks I play when listening to new equipment to review. Of course, the very first tracks I always play are the “Channel ID” and “Phasing” tracks from Stereophile’s Test CD 2; and Ella Fitzgerald’s “Easy to Love.”

Kate St. John’s “There is Sweet Music Here that Softly Falls” is the polar opposite to much of today’s dumbed-down pop music. It is her chamber-music-ish setting of verses from Tennyson’s poem that was itself based on the “Lotos Eaters” story from Book 9 of the Odyssey.

I hope that that doesn’t sound too fey, or too twee. It’s a compelling setting of thought-provoking lyrics, such as:

In Lotus land we'll live and die reclined

Like Gods together, careless of mankind

Weary the sea, weary the oar

We will not wander, wander no more

Track 2 of Indescribable Night, “Paris Nights,” is a very cool (in the original “hip” sense) “answer song” to the famous 1951 French chanson “Sous le ciel de Paris.” (“Under Paris Skies.”) Great orchestration, with vibes and accordion.

If Kate St. John is a bit too much of a very smart Conservatory graduate for you, then here’s a very smart CPA/Business Advisor, who every now and then cuts a record when she feels like it: Susan Wong.
I owe Qobuz for introducing me to Susan Wong, via their “Continue Play” function, which, these days, functions as a radio station. My use of the term “cut a record” was intentional, because if you go looking on eBay, you will see that many of Miss Wong’s releases have been on LP as well as CD.

The “Genius Hack” of Susan Wong’s 2009 album 511 is her re-imagining Swedish pop/disco group ABBA’s hit “The Winner Takes It All” (and other somewhat-familiar pop songs) as Bossa Nova songs.

Genius. And, I don’t think I have ever heard a technically better recording job in pop music. Artistically, the engineering production of the title track of Famous Blue Raincoat still reigns supreme… but, if you want to knock peoples’ socks off… trying dialing up Susan Wong’s “The Winner Takes It All.”

There was one critical-listening session that I had been putting off. Finally, one of my Golden Ear friends stopped by, and I enlisted him as a sanity check. Last year, the label IMPEX put out a special artist-signed, numbered, limited edition of Arturo Delmoni’s début album Songs My Mother Taught Me, wherein the spinning disc was not made from polycarbonate plastic, but rather optical-quality glass. Gold-spluttered, of course. That small limited edition sold out, despite having an US MSRP of $1200.

This year, IMPEX has released a much larger limited edition (2,500 units), not autographed, and not made from optical glass; but it is a 24K Gold CD. If you want to acquire one, the usual sources have it, at $35 plus shipping.

I was a bit diffident about doing a comparison. I was at the recording sessions. The memories remain, even though the recording sessions were in 1982. But I grasped the nettle, and put the JMR aluminum CD into the Parasound Halo CD-1, and pressed Play. I played the first minute of Track one, Kreisler’s “Tempo di Menuetto (in the style of Pugnani).” I then re-started the track, and played the first 15 seconds or so. I then played the IMPEX polycarbonate/gold and glass/gold discs.

Interesting. Going from JMR aluminum disc to the IMPEX polycarbonate/gold disc, the entire spectrum of timbres seemed slightly richer overall, while the midrange was slightly more substantial, or weighty. Not a “Night and Day” difference, but something you would notice if you were listening critically.

Going from the IMPEX polycarbonate/gold disc to the IMPEX glass/gold disc, the differences to the JMR aluminum disc were more apparent. We heard more of the ambiance of the church, while at the same time the violin seemed slightly forward in the soundstage from its previous positions. Did the IMPEX CDs “blow the JMR out of the water”? No. But the IMPEX disc that is available for non-crazy money made the listening more rewarding.

 

Summing Up

Bricasti's "affordable" M3 really fulfills the M1's original list of required virtues, those being: fast, revealing, open, and spacious. It is also very true to musical timbres, but most of all, it is fatigue-free, and listenable.

Almost 20 years ago, I had a two-piece dCS digital-playback system on loan. It was luscious. I know that today some people spend $20,000 to $114,900 on a digital playback solution. That’s OK if you have the cabbage. But most of us don’t have that kind of cabbage.

Therefore, for the rest of us, given the practicalities and the realities (and also given Bricasti’s M1 DAC’s 10-years+ track record of credibility and reliability), the Bricasti M3 DAC seems almost too good to be true, at $6000 US MSRP.

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