Feliks Euforia little Guide Impression

Hello,
Some of you have already liked the What did you buy Today threath that I bought the Feliks Euforia, thanks for that.:+1:

The pictures are also the same from the threath.
I took a closer look at it and can only say that the craftsmanship is nothing to write home about.

What I would have liked is a marking on the volume pot towards the front so that I can see where it is when I’m lazing in my armchair and enjoying music.
The look is okay for me, I can live with it.
From a distance, it also looks striking with the orange.


The tubes:
Unfortunately I can’t say exactly how good they are.
When I bought the Euforia, I could choose between no tube, just the device, Psvane Silver with an extra charge of about $100/100€ or Psvane Gold with an extra charge of $200/200€.
Of course, you always want to have the good stuff, so you bought the Psvane Gold.

The only advantage is that if you already have tubes, it is very nice of Feliks to give you the choice.
Someone who knows a lot about tubes could possibly turn down Psvane Gold for the 200$ tubes and find better tubes for the money.
In my case, I have to say I’m not that familiar with tubes.
Which dealers could certainly take advantage of.
You have to be careful not to buy tubes that are too cheap, because some of them are sold in the name of good manufacturers and actually come from China.
Especially with the 6AS7G tubes, and Ebay is also a good place to buy defective ones at a devilish price.
In my case I was lucky and found a dealer in my country who is serious and sells decent quality at an acceptable price and the service is right.I had the experience when I recently bought the Little Dot 1+,after that I had tasted blood.:grin:

The first good 20 hours are through, I let it run for 2-4 hours, let it cool down again and listen to it.
Felkis recommends not to let the amplifier run for 3 days, but always in breaks during burn-in a maximum of 8 hours, then you should let it cool down.
The first 1-4 hours you can really forget about listening to music.
Why do you let it run?
Especially at the beginning where the euphoria is still playing, you think, "old man, I’ve just left so much money over the counter, what’s the point?
And yes, it accompanies you, I’ll explain why later.

The Denon D2000 mod and the Fostex mod were the headphones that played.
Because of the burn in you could still hear the slight distortion, I’m sure I’ll check again if that disappeared after the burn in.

Both were a good step above in terms of sound, as far as I could hear.
Especially the Denon D2000 mod where I thought it would brighten up everything.
But the Denon D2000 mod is even better, with much more flesh, attack and bite.
There were also areas in the music where I never thought it was a bass.
At first I thought, what’s he going to do, it was really a bass.
So I can understand that the Sennheiser, Focal, Meze were highly praised by the testers.
Because the resolution is even better, and not just in a very short time when it’s in the middle of a burn-in.
And I think that’s where more dynamic headphones come into play.

I was most curious to see how the Audeze Lcd2c would perform.
And I have expectations of it because it’s one of the best headphones for me personally as a planar headphone. It’s simply the best I’ve heard in its price range and except for the fact that it’s not its field in the hip hop category, it does a lot right and is okay for me.

Z Rewiev told the Feliks Elise don’t do it, don’t put Planar headphones in there.
That was my thought when I tried to listen to it.
He sounded much too timid, no caressing of the guitar or harps, the piano totally pale without power and joy of playing.
The voices on the other hand oh wow right at the front of the mic.every now and then a little tickle and sign of life that the sun is rising.

Earlier I wrote that I wouldn’t listen to the first few hours because the disappointment might already be there, which was also my impression over the whole weekend. I was torn back and forth and thought that the price was a bit much for a pair of headphones that would be even better if the rest didn’t fit.

But suddenly something happened from one minute to the next.It was around 19-20 burns per hour.
I stopped the playback, opened the window and switched from 32/96 to 512 Dsd in Audirvana to see the difference.
And yes, something happened, suddenly the Lcd2c became meatier, which I had been missing all along.
My thoughts were not to say that the little Polish girl is a resolution-horny.:grin:
Blu Cantrell - Unhappy played because the bass response is extremely great.
And the voice is great and the backdrop is also a song that fits well.

Then I switched back to 32/96, closed the window, played and then it started and I thought what is it now?
I don’t know, have I exorcised the witch or is the Polish bitchy went through my head.:grin:
Suddenly it was no longer so bloodless in the bass and banged what went to the Lcd 2 c borders, in the details it still works to improve.
The voices became more powerful and voluminous, the piano suddenly came to life, the delicate caress of the Audeze came to the fore.
Unfortunately I didn’t have the time to describe and remember the setting, because I have school this week and had to catch the train.
So in the end it really seems to have something to do with the burn-in, I thought on the train.
And the tubes probably need to burn in a bit more.
The instructions said something about 30-50 hours of voodoo, so it probably won’t be any.

I’m curious and of course looking forward to Friday again logically, because I want to hear more from the Audeze.

What is my interim balance?
At first glance there is nothing bad to say, of course the burn in is annoying.
The only thing that would be good is if Feliks would burn it in beforehand.
Questyle does it before he leaves the company, for example.
The whole weekend was really growing through, and torn.
And I thought maybe the tubes are too flat from the tuning?
Sure you look again for 6as7g tubes, where the market is a bit strange in that respect.
And makes you doubt if I made the right purchase?
My mind tells me to give the Pollish-girl a little more time, maybe she’s just shy before she casts her spell on you.:blush:

That’s all I can say for now.I’m not disappointed but not exactly full of joy either.And follow your mind.Even if 30-50h or more can be really long.

Stay tuned.

The photo was taken by chance when taking the picture with the light switched off and the light from the keyboard shining over to the side.

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Hello,
Let’s move on to the continuation of Euforia’s part.
There are a lot of things I have learned in the burn in phase.
I am still burning in the tubes but I am nearing the end.

Let’s start with the tubes that came with the Gold Edition, the 6sn7.
I have burned them in for 30 hours so far and there are a few things I don’t like about them at the moment.
The set of tubes is extremely focused on the voice for my taste at least that was my impression and the music is only playing by the way.
That I then looked for more tubes.
Rca 6AS7G and 6080 Mullards from 1950 were recommended to me.
Both sets were not cheap but more about that later.
But because I really wanted to know what they were like I took the 6sn7 out after 30 hours of burning in, for the time being.
Optimal are between 25-50 h burn-in time.
What I did with the Rca and just in the middle of it with Mullards.

When the Rca were in, the difference was clear relatively quickly, even at the first few cycles.
The voices are much less forward.The music flows much better and accents are there,the space is right,everything is better.

But something kept bothering me.
Mainly I feel that with driver headphones the bass is always right, I never have the feeling that something is wrong, too little or too thick.
But when I plug in the Audeze Lcd2c you really notice how thin they are.
The Lcd2c is really unbeatable in the mid and high range.
And on the Euforia it’s even clearer, plus the Lcd2c has even more space, everything is a bit bigger and wider.

And on the Singxer Sda 2 it works really well, especially in the bass.
But on the Euforia it has become thinner again.
My guess was that it was the tubes, so I thought I’d replace the 6sn7 with the Rca 6as7g. Yes, it was a little better, but not as I expected.
There is bass but not with the punch.
In crossfeed mode it works better for the Lcd2c and I thought I’d make friends with it.
And so far I’ve only had hybrid amps where there are nominal differences directly after changing the tubes.
With the Euforia too, but not quite so obviously.

Since I’m still pretty much at the beginning with tube amplifiers, I’ll take one with me.
Although I don’t know it like that, I feel that the Euforia’s tuning is much more tuned to driver headphones than to planar.
At least that is my impression.
I continued to think about this and thought that 250 mw was simply too little power to drive the Lcd2c.
Which again didn’t let me go because so far I can’t even reach 12 o’clock position with the potentiometer. It will end with all 3 headphones at 11 o’clock at the most, more likely even 10 o’clock for a comfortable volume.
This is the case even with a Sennheiser Hd 600, which visited my house at short notice and left again.
The short story is simply that the Lcd2 is a bit more relaxed and has more bass power than the Hd 600, otherwise the mids and highs are pretty much at the same level on the Euforia.
And because I didn’t like the Hd 600 at all on the Singxer and it sounded more muddy there, I decided that way.
To come back to the subject of tube amplifiers and planar headphones.
Yes, the Lcd2c is a bit flat on the Euforia.
This curve that you see on various pages of the input measurement definitely applies to the Euforia.
And honestly, you don’t want to hear that when you know it can do more.
That’s why I unpacked the Schiit Loki, plugged it in and boosted the areas where I thought that was too much and that was too little.
I had to add a good 1/4 to the bass and 1/3 to the midbass, I left the mids untouched and took the treble back a touch.
But afterwards I really enjoyed listening with the Lcd2c.Everything was in harmony.The details,the voice,the bass,the whole stage and the room imaging.The separation of individual instruments.The drums on the drumset.
That will be something when comparing the tubes.

There is a simple reason why I am telling you this.
You have to understand the amplifier first.
It’s not just something you put on the table, I don’t like it, just roll the tubes.
The Euforia is more.
I mentioned that the built quality is impeccable.
It needs a reasonable burn in time and then most of it is done, which definitely shows.

After that, the sound is worth experiencing with the Singxer Sda 2 which has the Akm 4490 chip.
But I have to hold back a bit.
Because I want to finish burning in the other two tube sets first.
My plan is to give all 3 sets the same burn-in time.
And then compare them later to see which is better where and if there are any nominal differences.
I also bought a used analogue equalizer to fine tune the whole thing.
In conclusion, the name Euforia does it justice if you know how to use it.

As a small note: You can certainly use Pc equalizers, but I can’t judge how good they are in practice.
I have personally failed with Apo and everything else that is available.
Either it worked but the sound was so bad that I uninstalled it and when I reinstalled it something went wrong again.
That’s why I prefer an analogue Eq.
The Eq will most likely only be needed for planar headphones.
Fostex tr xx,th series,Denon D5200,7200,9200 or Beyerdynamic,Meze Noire are certainly not an issue.Nevertheless it can happen that if the dynamic headphones are tuned too flat like the Hd600 or Neuman would be necessary.
The Loki is passable, but for me it causes a small humming noise when you leave the music quiet and turn it up.
And it’s not because of the tubes or the amplifier.
If I move the Loki a bit, it’s gone.
The second thing is that the Loki is a bit limited with the 4 band, I think you can go a bit lower with a 10-15 band Eq and fine tune it for enjoyment.

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Just an FYI on those PSVane tubes, they take upwards of 100 hours to settle down and sound like what they are going to sound like. They are good tubes, but they tend to sound good, then sound bad, then sound good again over that period.
All the new production Chinese tubes seem to be like that.

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Yes, I heard, but only after I bought the Euforia.
Otherwise I would probably have looked around for a suitable tube set that was more suitable.
I have also seen various things with adapters that you can then use other tubes, such as Kt 88 tubes, which are supposed to be more stable and also better.
Apart from that, they are also a bit cheaper than the Kt88 tubes.
Let’s see what time will bring.
At the moment I don’t hear that the Psvane sound bad and then good again.
But supposedly the Psvane are no longer made in China but in Canada.
Somehow there were internal problems with the company in China and there was a lot of back and forth.
You can read a bit more about that on Head-fi.
I only skimmed it roughly.

Really?
When did that change, last I heard they were manufactured in Shuguang, and every pair I’ve ordered have shipped from China.
They are good tubes, and I much prefer the Chinese new tubes over the current production Russian tubes.
The only issue is the cost of some of these higher quality new tubes is more than good NOS tubes cost, but in some cases they are comparable quality at this point, especially if the NOS tubes are getting rares as is the case with 6SN7’s.
Personally I’m in the camp of not using adapters or radically different tubes when rolling, tube amps are designed for specific tubes, and in many cases while you can roll something different, it often changes the character of the amp.

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Yes, me too, actually.
I just think that because the Euforia’s basic tuning is quite neutral, it doesn’t matter.
At the moment I’m leaving the Ps vane in, but it could be that I don’t like the Kt88 at all.

About Ps Vane, I heard that the founders have started a new company in another country like Canada, and that the old company and the new company are supposedly passing the buck to each other and so on.
Seems to be a bit of an internal war.
Well, as long as there are good tubes, it’s all good.
But the new company is supposed to be better, or already is.

Here are the sources:
https://premiumvacuumtubes.com/

https://linlaiglobal.com/
And here