Grimm Audio MU2

For several months, my wife and I had been living in a cozy studio apartment in New York's Financial District while our apartment underwent substantial renovations.'

- KALMAN RUBINSON

All the old furniture was sold or donated, and decades of accumulated stuff was subjected to triage (sell, donate, or store). All my audio equipment, parts, and tools suffered the same fate. Downtown, my listening was via pretty decent headphones (B&W Px8, Audeze LCD-XC) connected to a Mytek Brooklyn II DAC and my PC. Meanwhile, we were very busy shopping to equip the "new" apartment.

I have never really enjoyed headphone listening (and now I know it's likely I never will), so our recent return home was a relief in so many ways. We still have a "punch list" of things we're not satisfied with or that simply have not yet been done. Furniture and other appurtenances arrive on someone else's schedule. And I can't overnight resurrect a complex and evolving audio system with a new wiring arrangement; nor is it trivial for an apartment dweller to find storage space for all the now-empty cartons.

An all-in-one streamer-DAC-preamp would not have held much appeal for me if my old system was up and running. This, however, was a different time, and I was offered the Grimm MU2 for review with ideal timing. I had just unboxed two of the KEF Blade 2 speakers (the third was still stuffed in a shower stall with other paraphernalia), and I thought I knew where the Benchmark amps were in our basement storage shed. All I had to do was scramble for a few cables, and the MU2 would let me turn on the music in my home for the first time since last Thanksgiving.

What's new in the MU2?

While unpacking the MU2 and getting all my ducks in a row, I went back and read John Atkinson's favorable review of the MU1,2 a task I encourage; doing so will reward readers interested in Grimm's digital technology. Comparing that information with Grimm's documentation for the MU2, we learn that the MU2 is an MU1 streamer with an added DAC and a basic analog "preamp" controller, packaged in the same chassis as the MU1.