Hello my fellow audio community. I have come to the point where my audio hobby has become stale. I don’t seem to wanna listen to music as much as i used to so I’m thinking about upgrading some of my audio gear.
Up until now I’ve been obsessed with my RME ADI2 FS DAC paired with my Topping A90. I know the RME has a lot of great features but for me I’m obsessed with the Spectrum analyzer display. Call me old fashion but there was a time when that feature disappeared from audio equipment until I found the RME DAC. That being said I’ve always wanted to pair my Topping A90 with the D90 DAC but just couldn’t give up my RME. I still plan on keeping it but I just noticed that now topping offers that feature with there A&D 70 line. My question is do you think the D70 would be a good choice for replacing my RME ADI2 FS? Or should I just stick with the RME?
if you need to sell the RME to travel further on your audio adventure, I would say do so as you can always buy one again if you find yourself wanting / missing / yearning it’s sound.
that said, the hardware your next step involves does lean heavily onto the headphones / speakers you have, the music genre’s you like and the different audio sources you feed to your sound chain.
So as far as headphones & speaker’s. My near field speakers are Adam Audio T8V’s and the headphones I own from lowest to highest are sennheiser HD8DJ, Mezze 99 classics, sennheiser HD6XX, Hifiman Sundara’s & Sennheiser HD700. All are hooked up with XLR periapt cables into the Topping A90 with the RME ADI2 FS as the DAC and smsl sd-9 for my music player with the fiber optic line coming from my TV for my movie, TV & gaming audio.
Definitely find a fun headphone or iem, everything you have seems to lean neutral except for the meze. Or you could go in a direction with your amp and DAC like a nietch pietus or singxer SA1 paired with a schitt bifrost or gustard R26.
I am leaning more to what @Etroze86 mentions, since your gear seems to be leaning more neutral, to try a different flavor for the amp portion of your chain. So, you could keep your current setup but maybe try adding a tube setup to introduce a bit of warmth for a different listening perspective. I am actually working on this very thing in my SS and neutral setup.
Schitt has a good deal at a decent price point to give it a try, with some “Last Call” sales going on such as:
The VALI 3 & LYR are newer and also could be an option, if you want to stick with Schiit. Of course, there are other tube amps out there. Was just thinking this could help add some variety in your system to change things up when you want to.
Good luck with which ever path you end up going down!
I forgot to mention I do have a tube amp. I have the little dot MK2 and I rolled the tubes with Russian NOS 6N6P Tube’s. I love the setup cause I can just flip the switch on the Topping A90 from XLR to RCA to hear the difference between the Amp to the tube without stopping the music.
What about upgrading to the Topping A90 Discrete amp? That amp looks amazing. I also am wondering about an R2R amp. Those look nice too. I’m just really itching to have my music listening experience to feel fresh again. Perhaps I just haven’t been in the right head space lately. I just feel that the shine has wore off.
Hmm, yeah I dunno…I was going to list some other DACs but honestly, the RME is kinda hard to beat albeit a neutral/resolving one since it’s RME and that’s how they do things. One thing I didn’t see you mention is IEMs, do you have any? For me, my simple setup works right now (Motu M4, Schiit Magni Heretic) and I tend to focus more on headphones (recently got and love my Senn HD 400 Pro’s) and IEM’s to “pull” the listening experience out of my music, focusing on their tuning ranges to keep things interesting.
I used to have a pair of fiio iem’s but I gave em to my friend for his birthday. I’ve never been a big fan of iem’s. I don’t like the feeling of anything inside my ears.
I hear ya, I nowadays seldom listen to my remaining IEM since it still bothers my right inner ear after a while (sensitivity). Mostly find myself reaching for my over or on-ear headphones.
I’m just really itching to have my music listening experience to feel fresh again. Perhaps I just haven’t been in the right head space lately. I just feel that the shine has wore off.