New LSA headphones priced to compete w/Kennerton?

As far as I know, Resolve only heard the hp-1 not the hp-2? Where did you see that he has heard the hp-2?

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Yes since it’s exclusively through underwood you are basically ordering through a more old school dealer

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It’s so hard. It’s way easier to get people new to headphones to buy in on these than it is to get an audiophile to actually pay attention to them. The problem with that is the new people have no idea what kind of gem they started with.

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I don’t mind though. I have bought a few things from them and now I can just email them and they just shoot me a PayPal invoice.

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I do have one problem with underwood hi-fi though, and i will contact them soon about it.

They market the LSA HP-2 like this: " Our HP-2 Ultra is the same as the $1350.00 Gjallarhorn with our cosmetic changes. Sonics are exactly the same."

This could not be further from the truth, the difference between the GH50 and the HP-2’s sound is immense!

I don’t think they are doing that intentionally though, LSA probably gave them this line, but anyone who A/B these two models will tell you otherwise. The difference is not subtle, at all!

I am not saying the HP-2 is not great, i love it and i would recommend it to anyone interested in this type of sound presentation, but the bass presentation alone invalidates that sentence completely . The GH50 has so much more bass quantity compared to the HP-2 it is ridiculous to even suggest they have the same sonics…

I will post a more complete comparison soon, but i can say in advance that i did not expect the differences to be so big.

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There’s been multiple people that I’ve talked to on here and elsewhere that have wondered the same thing, I’ve still not heard the hp2 and only the gh50, but from what I gather they are fairly different from what I’ve heard. Also this isn’t the only claim on underwoods site that is questionable, there’s some weird marketing there

Also some discussion about this on the GH50 thread

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I am not at all surprised that the Gjallorhorns are a better headphone. They should be for the money.

I really like my HP-2’s (have them on right now as I await my Elegia’s) and I sure that the Clears and Gjallorhorns are better. But for $799.00, these are Really impressive, IMO.

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I honestly don’t think the GH50 is straight up better than the HP-2 though, they are very different. As for the Focal Clear, i think the HP-2 wipes the floor with the Clears, lol

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I think they are pretty different headphones so different goals overall, they trade blows, but a bigger advantage the gh50 had was being less amp picky than the clear, both scale pretty well but the clear could be lackluster on some more midrange amps or the wrong pairings. But I think similar tier headphones, but different focuses overall

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Hard for me to say anything about the Clear as I have never heard them. I do LOVE my Elex and I have the Elegia coming in today. I like the Focal sound.

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I guess you are right, i should say “for my preference” the HP-2 wipes the floor with the Clear :slight_smile:

I just feel like everyone praises the Clear’s dynamics and i was underwhelmed by that aspect of its sound for one. That + a small soundstage and that sort of “metallic” tonality… meh…

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That sounds more like an amp problem than anything imo, what source gear were you using at the time when you had/demoed them? Because they def can be like that on some pairings

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Totally possible and that is something i am trying to figure out myself since the Clears are so popular. I had a Schiit Modi 3+ and a Schiit Magni Heresy back then, even though the Heresy is a decent little amp it is no Soloist.

That friend of mine who is selling his Clear has not yet sold his, i have already asked him to try the Clears in my new setup before he sells it just so i can get that final conclusion.

From what i heard though the Clears are easy to drive so a Heresy should do the trick? Not sure, i really want to try them with the Soloist to be sure…

Ah that’s absolutely why, I would not enjoy a clear either on that setup

That would be very sweet to do, you might be surprised what it can do on the soloist

In terms of efficiency yes, but for actual quality and synergy aspects it’s more demanding than some others. For example I recall you talking about the lcdx and how that changed on the soloist, and that’s also actually a pretty efficient/easy to drive headphone spec wise, but with nicer source gear can become pretty transformative, clear is the same way (actually technically based off pure specs, the lcdx would be classified as easier to drive than the clear, but again that really means nothing when it comes to real world amp demand and doesn’t give any indication of what something needs to achieve good quality of sound, only quantity)

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Schiit makes some great little economy amps with lots of power at a great price. But I doubt that they would flatter any headphone. I find the Schiit amps powerful, but neutral.

As an example, my Liquid Platinum can get my HE6se V2’s to ear splitting levels, but does not make them sound special. On my iFi amp they sing like you wouldn’t believe.

Also, I LOVE my Elex’s on the Liquid Platinum!

I don’t think anyone “needs” to spend $1,000, $1,500, $2,000 or up on an amp to get the best best out of their headphones.
But you do, IMO, need to spend $500.00 to $1,000.00 to get a very capable amp. Especially to get the best out of the Clears which are, to me, a high end set of headphones.

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I do, but that doesn’t mean it’s always worthwhile to do that depending on the headphone. Getting the “best” out of a headphone is something that’s way too hard to do depending on the headphone, sometimes not worth the cost, sometimes is. Nobody needs to get into this hobby overall, but we sure might want to lol

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There can be an upside to going high end as you well know. I dipped my toes in that with the Pro iCAN and love it.
But I am still very impressed with my V220 and LP. All of my cheap amps were a disappointment on my way to getting this far, along with many headphones. But I think the higher end of mid-fi is a pretty nice place to hang out. :grin:

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I still have not had the experience that spending this kind of money on a stack is in any way worthwhile. Now, I do not have the experience to make a generalization on that. Only that in the dozen or so stacks ranging from cheap to $1,500ish, I have found the gain to be negligible at best. I am, however, fairly partial to easy to drive headphones and valuing portability and functionality.

But, that brings me to my question: Anyone here have experience with the singxer sa-1 and the hp-2?

Open to dac suggestions as well. But I can say I didn’t care about the bifrost/jot combo with the hp-2. Fell into the “meh” category for me. My dunu zen got more benefit out of that combo than the hp-2 did.

The singxer is targeted specifically because it seems like a reasonable general purpose amp that will be fine with sensitive IEMs all the way to moderately hard to drive planars.

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I’ve tried the gh50 with the singxer and it was meh and kinda dull from my experience, but could be different with the hp-2. If you found the jot 2 meh then I have a feeling the singxer will fall in a similar category. Personally with the gh50 I thought the little labs monotor or rnhp were pretty solid pairings with the headphone in that price point, but those are a bit more specialized amps and not really all rounders for a wider range of headphones

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In my main system there is only one DAC driving everything, BF2.

With the HP-2’s I enjoyed them on my Violectric V220, which I bought used.

For more fun I like them on my iFi with a little bit of bass boost. I am betting that a medium priced iFi amp would be a great fit with these as they are so easy to drive.

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