FeedForward is very good with noise, as in, there is almost none. Makes for impressive numbers.
HOWEVER there are design guidelines from semi-conductor manufactureres that warn of the behaviour during a transient, high load or shut down.
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Actually… he didn’t review it on the THX… he reviewed it using the QES Labs HPBA-2 MKII which has something like a 164 ohm output impedance… hence why he complained about why they had too much bass. He claimed in the comments he tried it on other amps… but his description of the sound along with the output imp of the QES is the only way that review really made much sense.
I mean, I don’t really hold it against him, the guy is only human and he puts out more reviews on a regular basis than any other reviewer… I’m pretty sure… cant exactly expect a pure unadulterated scientific approach. lol
And for a while he was reviewing mainly on the Aune X7 which is similarly going to affect frequency response of a lot of headphones.
IMO the THX based reviews are probably going to be the most reliable overall… and considering those amps fall well within most people’s budget it makes sense to take most headphone reviews from that perspective.
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Yeah, very true, I just wish he had some higher end amp for some reviews. Also I think he did use the thx but not on the video, but his description was strange
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I’m sure he’ll get there eventually… just compare his setup now from 5 years ago… Pretty big difference. At one point super early on he said the Fiio E9 was the best amp he ever heard.
Pretty sure he has heard better amps, but I don’t know if he is experienced enough to really review higher end amps is the thing, they might not be very helpful reviews sound and pairing wise, although he would probably cover build and ergonomics very well
Maybe, maybe not… but even that perspective can be useful. If an amp isn’t going to make enough of a difference for most people then it’s probably not worth the price to most people. I think that is a big part of the reason I believe in slowly working your way up… because the more you rush, the less experience you have and the less you appreciate the nuances.
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Yes of course lol, didn’t mean to sound like I was discouraging him from doing so, my bad
Ultimately decided to return the SP200 now and ordered the RNHP. Will keep the SP200 until it arrives so I can compare them as well.
It’s actually very disappointing that a 100$ amp was able to sound nicer in vocals. Disappointing in terms of investment of course, it’s awesome the Atom sounds good 
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The atom is great lol.
I’m curious to see what you think of the rnhp, it’s pretty sweet as long as you don’t have something super power hungry
Have some electric tape handy to cover up the button. They are insanely bright. I had to make a little nipple cover for mine.
You are telling me you don’t enjoy having the built in flashlight?
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It legit looks like ‘B’ is the one turned on… but that is just left over from the ‘A’ light… if i took that tape off I would go blind.
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Neve went through the painstaking effort to find the brightest leds available for a consumer product, and you just cover it up? Blasphemy lol
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I’d tape up all of them ^^
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In all seriousness, I wonder why it has to be that bright? No one thought that was too much? No one spoke up? No one wanted to question Rupert Neve on his choice? Were people scared to bring it up to him?
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I think maybe for outdoor use? If your outside on a bright and sunny day… and doing a shoot and using the headphone amp attached to a mount as part of your rig, you probably want it bright enough to easily indicate which input is turned on ect. This was designed as a piece of prosumer equipment first. The manual even comes with guidelines for the type of batteries to use with it if you need to take it places.
Ehm… When I have a status LED on something, I run them at like 5mA.
A Red Gallium Arsenite (GaAs) LED at 5mA will last until the heat death of the universe. Plus it is visible but not blindingly bright.
Datasheet said 3.8V at 25mA, so that is what they get! (1/4W into a LED gets you about 1/5W of Light, in one sharp frequency spike), that is a lot of light!
Will report back as soon as I receive it! 
Would you guys say that the RNHP is objectively a better amp in terms of sound quality in its price range compared to the THX offerings? Power output aside for obvious reasons.
Well objectively I think thx might have better measurements but a surprising measurement with the rnhp is that it has an output impedance of 0.08 ohms lol
Subjectively though I think it’s a better amp
apparently the 789 has the same output impedance at 1khz… but it goes up to 1 at higher frequencies.
But yeah, IMO it’s probably an objectively better amp. It has good measurements with straight-forward simple design that doesn’t rely on feed-forward error correction… etc. tonally it’s extremely neutral, but I found the dynamics to be a noticeable step up as the most obvious improvement over the sp200.