A Comparison between the Rupert Neve RNHP & Lake People G111

Equipment / Electronics / Gear / Accessories Headphone Amps
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There are a few ways you can generally tell. I’ve listened back to some recordings I’ve done myself for studio use, and the rnhp + clear used to be a fairly common thing I would use often, so generally I ended up using it on material that I was either there for the recording and know how it should have sounded and compare that to other experiences with amps. The other ther way is just hearing a recording though a multitude of different systems at different levels that’s well recorded, generally you can figure out how something was supposed to sound or the way space was intended to be recreated through comparing the differences in the experience with each different system, that can give you a rough estimation of what something generally should sound like but it will never be 100% accurate or anything like that (well rarely anything is 100% accurate lol, and that accuracy is only perceived by me anyways, so opinions on accuracy will naturally differ there with the material used, the gear used, and the experiences of the listener, etc)

The clear is also one of those headphones that it’s spatial recreation is impressive but not that organic at times, since I would say it’s a more spherical representation of space which is pretty engaging and holographic but it isn’t laying things out in a room and recreating an accurate space to the recording, so interesting but not lifelike, which I think the rnhp ends up causing the clear to have a more natural presentation of sound where it doesn’t exaggerate space or placement and tends to make the clear’s spatial recreation more in line with what the recording generally has to offer. To me accurate placement is something I would more use in reference to real life, as in how accurate does something place sound in space (or how well does the headphone recreate the space of a room or the sound of a room in a recording to be more accurate), and the closer it is to what something should sound like in person, the more accurate I would find that to be. For most it really is just going to come down to the simple question of “does this sound realistic or not” when it comes to discussing accurate placement.

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82

Im considering those dacs now (with optical input and inside EU):

I find the choice of dacs very odd.
Usually, the headphone has the most impact on sound quality, while the amp comes in 2nd and the dac comes in 3rd. Therefore, the order in price should be: headphone > amp > dac.
Which is not the case here.

For example:
Focal Clear 1000€, Bifrost 2 (EU) 900€, RNHP 500€.
In this case, the headphone is the most expensive audio gear, which is normal.
The DAC however, cost nearly as much as the headphone itself, while the amp is the cheapest link of the bunch.
From a beginner audiophile perspective, it doesn’t look economically right, do you know what I mean?
So when we get to the higher end of things, the prices just go wild between headphone-dac-amp?

EDIT: I corrected the price and the link of the DENAFRIPS ARES II R2R DAC

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I don’t see anything wrong with DAC, AMP and HP costing the same.

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85

Gotcha. Also just wondering wouldn’t the ares ii be more around 600 euro or is there a fair bit more added tax that I didn’t realize (mainly saying this because the price on their site is in singapore dollars)?

Yes it is pretty different isn’t it

So in the beginner space, generally the headphone greatly outweighs the importance of the source gear for sure. But as you continue to move up the brackets, the higher end headphones become more and more dependent on the quality of source gear for their performance, and will preform significant better with nicer equipment (as they were mainly designed for use with higher end source gear compared to more budget headphones). The headphone is still where you want to have the most money in your setup for sure, but generally when you get to the 1.5k ish range for headphones, you end up spending just as much on your amp and dac (so like 1.5k on headphones, 1k ish on amp + dac stack) which actually tends to be a good balance (in your case it tends to be where you will end up spending more on your dac mainly because of location and availability). The reason in this case why the dac costs are outweighing the costs of the amps, is mainly because dac’s don’t scale as linearly as headphones and amps do. Like consider how there are lots of options in each price bracket for headphones and amps, where there are noticeable upgrades after like every 300 dollar increment. But for dacs, inside that like 200-700 dollar range, there aren’t many good options imo. There are dacs in that range and they would be an upgrade to what you have, but it wouldn’t really be that big of a difference tbh, it’s a marginal upgrade, there is just a big performance hole in the market where in order to get the quality dacs, you have to end up pushing more towards that sub 1k+ range to get some of the dacs that will actually bring a large benefit to your system. It just ends up being worthwhile to spend the extra for a dac that will more greatly enhance your system for the money, and with the dacs and amps mentioned, I would personally say that it is still a balanced system and the amp will not bottleneck the dac and the headphones won’t be a bottleneck either.

If you continue to go up in high end headphones, like let’s say a focal utopia, people commonly spend around the same amount of money on an amp for them alone, and then equally as much on the dac, so people commonly spend 2-3x the cost of the headphone on their electronics in the very high end, mainly because it still continues to offer good performance and maximize the value of their headphones. I’m not saying you should do this with your clear or anything, but I’m just saying that as you continue to go up, you will see more and more people spend much more on their source gear than their headphones.

In terms of let’s say the rnhp + bifrost 2 setup, if you decide to go past that point, the cost for an amplifier that will be a substantial improvement over the rnhp will end up being around 1.5k for the amp alone, and an upgrade from the bifrost would most likely end up costing similar or more, so while the cost of the rnhp + bifrost 2 would end up being somewhat similar to the headphones (more in your current case unless you find a deal or buy used), it will be a very good balance for the money to maximize what the clear has to offer you

The headphone is still the most important part, but investing in higher end source gear for higher end headphones will allow those headphones to preform at a higher level than they were before

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86

What M0n said about steps is pretty true. I am on the bf2 and rnhp with some audeze X and 24. The cost of the 4s used was very close to the 24 but the amp needed for those would of been another 1k.

Listening to my X on my old asus combo vs the bf2>rnhp chain reveals a lot. The headphones are at a level where they are more than capable but the stuff feeding it needs to keep up.

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That’s a pretty great way to put it, the headphones will only be as good as what they are given, so ideally you want to find balance to where the components in your system are equally matched and don’t end up handicapping the rest of the system, but you maintain good value throughout your system

Also to further clarify in terms of scaling, you do want to keep things somewhat evenly matched, you don’t want to go overboard on spending for your components and neglect your headphone, or vice versa

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88

I updated the link now. It’s 900€ :frowning:

The price to performance ratio of the DACs always was a mystery to me, you explained it now perfectly for me, thank you!

How much potential would the RNHP+Bifrost2 combo unlock for the Focal Clear?
For example does it unlock 80% of the Focal Clear?
And how much potential would the RNHP+SMSL Sanskrit 10th MK2 combo unlock?
What kind of dac+amp is needed to unlock 100%?

89

I also want to push a little here that price isnt a sole indicator. The rnhp probably hits above its price, i mean neve does have a much higher priced unit that is basically just an rnhp.

I have an hd6xx i got off their first run for $200. It sounds sooo much better with good sources. I have a BH Crack in progress that cost me $300+ just for the kit but is a proven pairing. Those $200 headphones can be much more once provided the goods.

I want an upgraded HD6xx but to be honest that doesnt exist, and the closest thing may be a $1500 ZMF.

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I couldn’t agree more with this entire post. Another thing I’ll say is that although I preferred the G111 over the RNHP, the Focal Clears sounded best on the RNHP. That is just one example of synergy being more important than individual chain components.

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91

So it’s really hard to assign any percentages to anything, since their meaning can vary so much from person, some might see a 5% difference as very significant while others see it as unsubstantial. What I will say here is that the rnhp + bf2 combo brings the clear to enough potential to where if you decide to upgrade amps in the future, you will be spending a lot more in order to get the clear preform significantly better. So basically I think this setup has the best balance for price to potential of performance, getting higher is going to get unreasonable in cost quick.

So I think that there is a fair bit of room for improvement, you might find that it sounds good but somewhat restricted when it comes to spatial recreation, dynamics, and presentation to where that might make the experience somewhat underwhelming. Again this is one where it’s really hard to give a rating on potential or anything, but I would classify the sound of this combo as good enough, but not really showcasing what the headphones can do as much as swapping for the bifrost 2 will. I think swapping to that higher end dac will make a similarly big difference as upgrading your amp will.

Truly maxing out a headphone like the clear is really just super unreasonable to do. I would say that personally on my setups, I think that using something like my dual mass kobo 394 ii with my nagra hd dac + mps reasonably squeezed all I could get out of the clear, but that’s a really unreasonable and very poor value setup to where you would be much better off spending that money on higher end headphones and getting more reasonable electronics for those lol.

I would semi agree, I do think generally you get what you pay for, but that being said, that doesn’t mean that an amp that is a bit more expensive is going to be any upgrade from the neve. Let’s take an an amp like the flux labs fa10, which is a pretty solid amp, and in the us is around 750. That is about 250 more than the neve, but with the focal clear, I would still prefer the neve over the flux, mainly because I think it’s a better pairing. If you change the headphone to like a hifiman arya, I would greatly prefer the flux over the neve, so in the end it will come down to pairings. You really have to factor in synergy, which as you mention, the bottlehead crack + speedball is a really good pairing with the 6xx, and I would actually take a bottlehead over the rnhp with the hd6xx when it comes to listening enjoyment, but for a clear, the rnhp is a much much better match. There aren’t many amps that are under 1k that I would say have much better synergy with the clear than the rnhp, so that’s why I would say the cost of upgrading it is so high as you really have to make that jump to the 1.5k+ amp range to get a substantial upgrade to the neve that still has good synergy with the clear

I mean, that’s more a fancier looking but overpriced rnhp lol, so I don’t know if I would really celebrate that existing, the rnhp was the first product, and then they just decided to make a fancier looking one with a few minimal tweaks and charge more lol, def not worth the added cost

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92

Thanks man, I can finally see and understand(!) what my upgrade path would be in the future.
What headphone would you consider as a noticeable upgrade to the Focal Clear?
And would I still be able to use the Bifrost2+RNHP with the new headphone?

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Will dm since we are getting a bit too off topic of this thread now lol

94

Lets move to Focal Clear topic, so other people can see as well!

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This is actually a lot of common sense that until I read it here I hadn’t thought about it in that way. I can bring a personal anecdote to this; when I finally moved to a 1K + priced DAC it made every one of my daily headphone which at the time was an LCD2 2.2 F sound remarkably better. It was as if I was listening to it for the first time. So much more clarity and detail from the same headphone. Not something I’d experienced before first hand.

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96

It also just happened to me… with a smsl sk10v2, versus shitty, inexpensive, 20$ DACs (or motherboard sound, etc).

Just with ~100$ headphones and a 100$ amp, if you don’t have a ~100$ DAC, the DAC is your bottleneck. Night and day difference, seriously.

By the way @nhatlam96, if you ever go that route, thomann.de sells Lake People amps.

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Hi all,

My chain currently consists of a FiiO M15 -> LO into Qed Graphite to RCA -> RNHP -> via Forza Audioworks Noir HPC MK2 into Denon AH-D9200 … I am somewhat satisfied with this combination but have the feeling I could get more out of this. The sound is nice and precise, but seems a bit liveless/sterile … Would swapping the RNHP for the G111 make sense?

Cheers Willem

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I have an rnhp and just received a g111 today so I’ve doing some comparisons today. It’s tough and probably to early to tell for me personally but I can say that while listening to both so far, @Hazi59 comparison has been pretty damn spot on.

Honestly the overall frequency of these two is so close that it’s tough to find differences there. Sometimes I think the bass is more powerful on one then switch back and forth to only find it’s just closer.

The biggest thing I’ve noticed, again as hazi has mentioned is that the g111 is a tad wider and I feel more space overall on it compared to the rnhp. This can make it feel like a more relaxed or laid back amp but the details are all there and clear.

With the staging, I’ve noticed that with some songs I’ve heard, when a lot of things are going on, the rnhp felt a little more crowded to me. Like all the different sounds are overwhelming to an extent and the extra space on the g111 pulls things out and gives more room to breathe.

I would say that that is more subtle than it sounds.

I’m going to listen to both more and gather more thoughts but I don’t know if it’s different enough to have both. Like both are great on their own and both worth their price but I’m not sure if you’ll get enough by having both. I’m keeping both still but I rarely get rid of stuff. I almost want to say, if you didn’t own one and were choosing which one, I’d say the g111 just based off of the added width, more power, and more forgiving dac and headphone pairings.

Of course, the rnhp images better but I need to listen to do more stuff to make that comparison still.

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99

Ditto, have the G111 since yesterday.

Hearing the same here and agree with everything although I think imaging is very similar on both.
The perceived “warmth” on the G111 from the wide soundstage leads you to believe imaging isn’t as good, but honestly it is.

Even though both are studio (mix/master) amps and have neutral sound I would personally prefer the RNHP for work with the G111 as an additional reference.

The extra tightness of soundstage on the RNHP is just better to mix with IMO.

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Yeah I meant I was hearing others say that the rnhp imaging was better so I needed to test that more. I think the narrow stage does help perceive the imaging more accurately on the rnhp but honestly they do seem about equally capable.

For overall enjoyment so far I’m enjoying the g111 more I think. I’m noticing my aeon 2 open is performing better on the g111 like my 650. Staging just feels more spread out, more space for instruments to breath and more perceived separation. I think is is due to both extra power and increased stage width of the g111 for my aeons.

I think the tonal differences make it harder to justify having both but I do enjoy both and don’t regret having both. I think if I was asked one over the other, I’d say g111, but already if you already own the rnhp it’s harder to justify the g111 over it as a improvement because the difference is super different. Unless you consider that bit of extra stage worth it lol. Or you think that extra power may really benefit any of your cans.

I haven’t change the gain on it either so I’m on middle gain and still never pass 11-noon on it.

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What headphones were you guys each using? What headphones favored which amp