Metrum Acoustics has been using an OEM USB driver implementation made by M2tech for its Octave MkII and Hex DACs up until now. But as several manufacturers have discovered the Hiface driver as it’s known is not compatible with Apple’s latest Mavericks OS (10.9). Although M2tech has undertaken the task to develop a new driver that will work with Mavericks, after several months with no news Metrum decided that it was too risky to wait even longer. So the Dutch company decided to develop a new USB interface. Cees Ruijtenberg from Metrum has made the following announcement:
Given that both the Octave MkII and Hex DACs were designed to work in conjunction with the M2tech OEM board finding a solid replacement was not an easy process. A solution was found by using Amanero technology with some additional glue logic to get all necessary data for both Octave MkII and Hex DACs. Also, the form was adapted in such a way so that the new board is directly applicable for the existing hardware.

In contrast to the existing two layer designs from both M2tech and Amanero a multilayer board is used. Two layers are assigned for data handling. The chosen approach will give lower induction due to shorter traces and gives less radiation. A third layer is used as ground plane while the fourth layer is dedicated for power. A power breakout is realized for implementing passive power filtering as used in the Octave MkII or the ability to use a separate power source instead of using USB power as used in the Hex DAC. In addition, very high quality clock oscillators are used to get jitter at the lowest possible level. Furthermore, no driver is required for both Mavericks or Linux. For Windows XP, 7 or 8 a driver is available.
The USB 2 interface is in full production now and will be available end of April/early May. More information to follow.