I purchased a Matrix Mini I 3 Pro when it first came out. I have been using as a Roon Endpoint with a Rotel RA 1570 integrated amp and I have been pleased with it. Lately, it has been sounding bright to me as a streamer. The headphone amp, which I do not use much, sounds OK. I upgraded interconnect cables going to the amp and that improved the brightness quite a bit.
In the past few days, I have tried out the Matrix Mini with two different systems. I swapped out the Orchard Audio Pecan Pi streamer/DAC from my Yamaha AV system with the Mini, and the sound was so bright that it was irritating. I then borrowed a NAD C399 Integrated and using the Matrix Mini I 3 as a source for the NAD, I was able to easily do side by side comparisons. The Matrix Mini sounded very bright compared to the NAD C399. In both cases, the sound differences were not even close.
Is it possible that something has happened to change the sound of the the Matrix Mini or is something else happening? I am already crazy so that is always a possibility.
I re-set the Matrix Mini and it seemed sound better. After a while, however, Roon had problems keeping a stream going on device that is connected via Ethernet cable. Roon gave me a message stating that there might be a hardware issue. I connected my Orchard Audio PecanPi to my main system and it sounds great.
It looks like I might be getting either a new DAC streamer or WIIM Pro Plus and a new DAC.
According to my experiences, if the DAC has hardware issues, the sound may not be changed when by swiping the cables or reset. Could the sound change be recorded in a video?
I have a Mini-i Pro 3 (I don’t think they have had an update on a while) and a Mini-i 4 both of which I use as a pre amplifier into power amplifier. In my usage the WIIM pro plus is a shadow of both of them in terms of output quality.
I moved the WIIM into a headphone amplifier over Toslink where it sounded absolutely fine.
Is it possible the problem with your MA is in the pre amp part, as I don’t see anywhere else that there’s an impact and it would still work
After a morning of listening after setting the device back to factory settings, the Mini is working fine with no issues. The reset appears to have helped the SQ issues.
I’m not sure why I experienced network/streaming issues yesterday. That’s the joy of technology.
That’s very strange, makes you Wonder if some settings got corrupted.
Thankfully I have never had an issue with the 3 or 4 and with the 4 supporting HDMI I have been very happy with it.
I have had the pro 3 since about 2 days after they announced Roon Ready and I think it has probably been my favourite long term device as it is as solid as a Rock and has so much flexibility.
