Metronome are a brand I have admired at distance for some time now, I’ve come across them a few times on my travels and they have always left me very impressed. Their products offer superb design, solid build and most importantly exquisite performance so I am absolutely thrilled to announce that I am now a Metronome dealer and my first batch of demonstration products are here and sounding superb!
Metronome are a highly regarded French brand who were established in 1987. They have a superb reputation within the industry and they manufacture a stunning range of DACs, CD players and Streamers, all proudly designed and built in Montans in the south of France (they are relatively close to Toulouse).
Their entry level Classica range is where we are starting with Metronome with the new brand Le DAC 2 and Le Player 4+.
Le DAC 2 is Metronome’s entry level DAC and is priced at £6700, it is literally just a DAC, no streaming option, no remote control, it simply has been designed to be the very best DAC it can be for the money and it more than delivers on this promise, no frills from a functions perspective, but sonically it is rather special!
With 10 independent power supplies fed by no less than 3 toroidal transformers Metronome have left no stone unturned in ensuring Le DAC 2 delivers the best possible performance for them money, it weighs in at 14kg which is quite substantial for a DAC. They’ve mastered the difficult tasking of making a digital product sound like an analogue one without making it sound too dark, heavy and rounded. It has a wonderful presentation and it is incredibly alluring and seductive, when I was initially listening and evaluating the brand I used Le DAC 2 with a Melco N50 and it was a brilliant pairing, if you value being engaged and emotionally connected to your music it was an incredibly strong combination.
Le PLAYER4+ is their entry level CD player, but one which features external digital inputs so if spinning discs is still important but you want to be able to connect a USB device like a Melco or suchlike you can easily get the best of both worlds.
Priced at £8900 Le PLAYER 4+ is wonderful sounding CD player and DAC, it offers both RCA and XLR analogue outputs, DSD512 upsampling, USB-B and SPDIF Coax inputs and an optional streaming board (£2000) which turns Le PLAYER 4+ into a serious one box source component that covers all bases including Roon.
We’ll be putting both Le DAC 2 and Le Player 4+ through their paces fully over the next few weeks and a much more detailed blog post will follow due course.
Both products certainly have the ability and musical precision to ruffle a few feather in some other well known brands and I’m sure given a bit of time some of Metronome’s more exotic offerings may make an appearance as well.
