Yes, I am running the Qutest to an ampandsound Bigger Ben. I use the M15 at work and in the car. After a year running his stock NOS KT77 tubes, I finally started tube rolling with EL34s, KT88s, and 6L6 GC STRs. I’m more likely to stick with a match I like, but I have been having fun playing with the options and getting a new phone eliminated my bluetooth interference
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For my preferences, I’d rather have a diana v2 on the pro + plus rather than the spring 2 + mini but that’s also because I can’t say I like the synergy with the diana and the gsx as bass grip control and texture is very important to me for the diana and that’s one of the places the spring + mini falls apart for the price imo
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Ah, fair enough on the synergy. I was mostly just talking about the class of the gear tbh. My real want right now is an ahb2, but a desktop setup just isn’t a possbility for me currently
Ah ok well hmmm. That’s kinda a hard thing to measure without including synergy as that’s extremely important, I mean the gsx is a higher tier amp than the bx2, but with a diana v2 for example I would find the sound more satisfactory to my ears with the dap and portable amp than the desktop setup, obs things will change depending on what headphones you use. I might rather have the desktop stack if you used an lcd 24 instead of diana for example. If you were to count the xi broadway as a portable amp I’d easily have that over the mini + spring for my personal preferences with most headphones
That’s a big big pass for me personally but there are plenty of others who like that amp
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Haha. Fair enough. I’ve a few friends that love it for susvara, but its realy the general versatility of the thing tbh. I’ve had a hard time being able to test warm vs neutral vs analytical vs tube in the portable world. I do have some warmer gear and some more analytical gear (most extreme would probabalu be micro BL to 5k) so as far as chains as a whole go, I know what kind of sound differences they can make, but I’ve not been able to stack a dac and amp up to this point to play that way tbh. I’ve got some nicer gear coming in this week (ordered over the course of a month and a half and it all arrives Wednesday, lol) so I’m hoping to be able to play with the micro BL as a pure amp but I am a bit worried about bottlenecking stuff fairly hard with it. Guess I’ll just have to wait and see for myself. I just e joy picking your brain since I feel like fairly few people have dove into the hugh end of portables and desktop (to be able to give context between the two) that readily share their experience.
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The mini and the spring 2 have pretty good synergy overall and will treat people VERY well. I would recommend it just because the DAC alone is that good. I’m personally looking at the Xi Broadway as a potential but it’s not needed for an immediate upgrade.
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It does give the susvara solid impact, slam, and dynamics, but to me it lacks organic presentation, good spatial recreation, and timbre is meh, and for my personal use case for the susvara I like to prioritize it’s naturalness more while maintaining capability at a slight bit of sacrifice of raw punching power. It is a cheaper way of powering the susvara, but the susvara can get so much better if you let it
Seems interesting lol
Edit: well I see some of it already lol
Indeed, the synergy of the spring with the gsx is very very nice.
I think that’s what’s keeping the bx2+ competitive for my headphones I feel like lol, pure dac prowess
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Just pure OT curiosity, what do you prefer for susvara?
Hahaha. Yah. I got the honey as a hold me over very beginning of jan. Then about a week ago I saw an astonishingly good deal on a source I’ve been currious about since I started, and less than 8 hours later my end game popped up on the used market under the price I had said I would buy it at… at least I’ll have a lot of toys to play with for the next couple months 
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So far I think I’ve found my most favorite chain to be a totaldac d1-direct with mono d1 drivers → grandinote demone recently, to me that’s the highest preforming I’ve ever heard the susvara, for headphone amps though they tend to stick on a viva egoista 845 or a trafomatic primavera, with various dacs and other amps from time to time. Also been using a riviera aic 10 as I got that in semi recently as well and that’s been a really good combo as well. There are cheaper ways to power the susvara but you do get rewarded for going up
Will be very interested to see how things pan out 
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So having left it on for awhile now, I can say I did notice a bit more changes so there has been a slight bit of burn in, I think the dynamics improved further, and it also felt more spatially impressive. I was slightly hoping forwardness would reduce ever so slightly but that hasn’t seemed to happen, but oh well lol. Running through some common pairings, this really is just too good for something portable, to the point where I could easily see someone tossing aside a higher end desktop setup as long as they mainly used iems and more efficient or portable headphones. I want to say amp wise, it has a bit more juice on tap but it’s hard to really single out the amp performance differences because of how drastically the dac changed, but it really is a noticeable step up, but I think the dac capability has floored me the most and is most likely what is contributing more to the upgrade than the amp tweaks are
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If only the LO was on the bottom so we could get convenient doc for it. But realy, I feel like I dont see you impressed all too often. Im curious to see how it goes even further.
As for power, do you think it will handle a more efficient planar such as LCD-X? Or do you think that will just be taxing the power supply too much to get proper bass dynamics?
Also, any noticable difference between balanced and SE out?
The stuff I tend to get impressed about I don’t often talk about on the forum since it’s not really the right audience lol, the pro is already pushing it lol as I can’t see many caring about a dap like this let alone cosidering one. But yes this really has impressed me because of how far ahead it feels compared to other modern daps I’ve tried
I actually really like the lcd 24 on there, it was way more enjoyable than I thought, it has plenty of punch and impact, still digs really deep, good dynamics and staging as well, doesn’t really feel lacking given it’s being run off a portable, so personally I would make the assumption that it can pretty easily drive the lcd x to a very high level of quality
Yes, se is a noticeable downgrade in comparison to balanced, still good but I would really want to run balanced here
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Fwiw, I quite like reading discussions on the higher end here. Just like the balance of thus forum compaired to most others.
You know, LCD 24 are something I’ve been pretty currious about for a while (and those like 1000 ohm LCDs they did way back). Its good to hear that this runs them well. I’ve heard quite a bit that 1W is around where you want to be to be confidant for X, but lower than taht can work with good power delivery, so I want sure if it would work or not.
Thats a shame, but noted.
Also, I’m currious how you think this dap would pair with a warmer amp. You talk about it being quite smooth and I was wondering if adding a warmer amp (assuming it isn’t crazy good quality cause I’m not sure we even have a fantastic warm portable amp as an option) would take it too far in most cases for you. I find i like a bit a warmth throw on clears is realy what makes me ask
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Yes, although you don’t want to find yourself going too far in either direction lol (as in people discussing 100k+ systems and people trying to find the best sounding 1 dollar iem)
I mean I think the lcd x + rnhp synergy is really really high despite it’s lower power output, it drives them very well imo (unless your main goal is impact/slam). The LCD 24 is so far my favorite audeze as it’s almost a mixture of the tuning of the 2 pre fazor with the technicalities of the 4z and mx4, and strikes a really good balance between fun and performance. It’s also not all that amp picky either and actually is something I would say can be portable as well given you have a decent portable
Unfortunately an inherent downside to any true balanced design, se performance will suffer one way or another
Still pretty well imo
Hm apologies if I come off that way, but it is smoother leaning, but only a bit past neutral, I would say when using as a line out that smoothness typically isn’t enough to push even warmer amps over the edge past too smooth. Also that smoothness does not come at the cost of technical performance and capability (when you get to higher end dacs you can have something very smooth and liquid like without having a drop in sound quality, to me something like a nagra hd dac + mps is a good example of one that is warmer very liquid and smooth sounding but doesn’t sacrifice technical performance nor does upset the balance of most warmer amps connected to it)
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Ah also something I forgot to mention but I noticed the volume on the unit seems improved from the stock p6, it feels higher quality at lower levels than did the normal p6, and is a bit less irritating to dial in the right volume
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Hahaha. That is very true. It is quite easy to fall into either extreme at absolute terminal velocity.
Never heard the rnhp myself, but I think i at least have a solid idea of the way it leans from reviews. Thats good to hear. I mostly want to keep that good shimmer that the X can give to electronica.
Huh. I wonder why you just dont see people talking about it much. That and I have a few friends that have owned basicaly teh entire LCD main line and they all love the 3 the best dispite it also just not seemingly being talked about. Guess there is just too much out there to keep track of it all. Ive been having a hard time finding info on the D8000P, Snorry NM-1, Horn/thror, and even just TH909s and RAD-0s.
Yup! Just means new cables. Not a huge deal.
The smoothness without loosing detail is actualy exactly what draws me to this. I like the smoothness and the imaging of the micro BL but honestly the lack of detail is a bit stark vs even just an R6 (got a chance to demo one a week or two ago).
Sounds super interesting. I havent heard of it before, so ill look into it.
The rep in wechat apecificaly called out the volumepot as an improvement actualy! I think hifigo has a slide on what they did to ot. Ill see if I can find it.
Edit: here it is
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I’ve mentioned it on the forum a fair amount of times, among other people, but idk where
Personally I really dislike the lcd 3 fazor, but I do like the pre fazor 3, the fazor version to me basically lost every reason I would want to like the lcd 3. Adding the fazor to the lcd 2 kinda changed it into a different headphone, whereas the fazor to the 3 just kinda ruined the headphone for my preferences at least lol. My favorite audeze for my preferences would most likely be the 24 > 2 pre fazor > mx4/4z > 4 > 3 pre fazor > lcd xc > x > lcd 2 closed > lcd 2 classic > lcd 3 fazor
Never heard of the NM-1, and I didn’t find the rad-0 that impressive at all, but the horn, d8kp, and th909 are pretty sweet
The micro bl is very smooth indeed, although from my experiences the micro bl is about equally detailed as the r6 but it is alot smoother than the r6 for sure
Ah would you look at that lol, didn’t see that
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@eskamobob1, just curious, did you happen order one of these lol? Was just browsing headfi and saw some things… if so congrats and would be very curious on your thoughts lol
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Haha. Yes I did. I was going to wait till tomorrow when it arrives to drop the bomb here.
I had some real good luck jumping from the lower end of midfi straight to X and Clears, so I figured i would take a jump on sources too
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Ah, well shit sorry about that lol
You should find it very very worthwhile
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