What is your opinion on the monolith liquid spark compared to ifi zen can, asgard 3 and jds atom etc?
Works well with most dynamic headphones and sensitive planar (like an lcd x for example), but the neve does struggle with harder to drive planar (and needs higher gain input for something like an 880 600 ohm but can drive them well if it gets that)
Not exactly the right thread, but personally the liquid spark is my favorite out of the 100 buck amps because imo it’s the most impressive when it comes to timbre, spatial recreation, and dynamics, but the tuning might not be exactly for everyone or every headphone. But the asgard is a definitive step up in quality from that imo. The zen can I’m not the biggest fan of, it’s nice but imo I’d rather have a spark
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& 
The dark gray / black looks nice, but I sure love that green on my desk, table, shelf, dresser (I keep moving it to places where I spend more time).
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The monoprice 887 has much more weight and dynamics than the thx 789. Especially noticeable with my focal elex. Worth the difference in price.
Why would that be the case? Both are THX
Monoprice made 50 advancements to the 789. The most important i believe was using better op-amps.
The sound is noticeably richer in tone with better dynamics.
I believe its worth the additional cost if you are using very amp sensitive headphones.
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Thanks for the info, but those “improvements” seem to make it cleaner and more boring, not richer
The liquid spark has great body and weight but i do find the highs a bit rough and not natural. Also bass not as clean as my other amps. Can get a bit heavy sounding at times. Does do a half decent job on my elex. Its a fun amp. For mini amps i find the Gashelli 2.5 to be fantastic on my 6xx. Very clean and dynamic.
BTW the liguid spark has the best volume dial feel of all my amps and never did i ever hear any scratchy noise coming from the potentiometer. Every thx amp that i had and returned had crappy potentiometers that became unbearable after 6 months. Im talking about 3 887’s and 1 789. Also
never had slightest problem with Geshelli 2.0 and 2.5 Potentiometers. They are great amps and a great company.
Just got Rebel and will set it up today with my elex. Hoping for that magic people talk about.
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Ok just set up amp about 2 hours ago.
Initial impressions with elex… very smooth with deeper bass than my thx 887. However i was suprised how similar they sounded. I needed to lower the gain of my dac to get smoother sound. At first Rebel sounded a bit strident but that changed after 30 minutes of play and continues to get smoother.
Probably going to sell my 887 and hopefully it’s crappy pot will remain quiet.
Also suprised at the detail of the Rebel. This in my opinion is not by any means a colored amp. Very neutral. Great tonality. My setup is a bit ridiculous as shown in pics. Keeping the Rebel on a board on top of my 2 thx amps at the moment.
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I have both the Rebel and Elex…it is a solid pairing for sure. I think the Rebel is weirdly DAC dependent sometimes, but overall I like it quite a bit. Enjoy.
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1- I usually never turn my Rebel off so I can’t answer about the warm up time.
2- I do think the Elex is better than the 6xx, but on my ZMF Pendant amp the 6xx sounds great. I think the 6xx scales to the system it’s on. The Elex is a wonderful headphone for the price but it is way more amp dependent (IMHO) than the 6xx. The Rebel and the Elex seem to pair very well.
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When using the senn 650 6xx via Rebel the sound is greatly improved using highest gain. Sound was very poor on medium gain being very bass heavy and lacking sparkle.
Finding the Rebel a bit harsh in the highs on certain recordings. Still breaking in. Heard that keeping class A on for at least 3 days improves sound. Many keep it on all the time as you are doing.
I totally agree about dacs. In my case i have two dragonfly cobalt’s that sound a bit different. I use them via line level load ie directy into an amplifier. One sounds off which i was blaming the amp. When i changed to the other cobalt it vastly changed the situation for the good. No problem using both dacs on 5 different amps.
Can anyone please help me with the Rebel amp power cord?
I bought a Cable Creation 6 foot cord from amazon. They were not expensive as i paid about $16 for a pair.
Is this good enough? Can i get better sound if i buy higher end cables? Would i be waisting my money?
Rebel referred me to the company that they use. Those cost about $ 5 bucks for 1.
I have used Cable Creation in the past for usb and their cables appear to be of good quality.
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Think for most systems under 1k a good shielded cable with 1.5 - 2.5mm^2 and a decent pair of connectors should be enough und if you build it yourself it can be had form 25bucks onward depending of the quality of the materials and another plus is you can customize the cable length to your system and make it look 
Actually if we want to be apples to apples it’s 24 thousand for 6 feet! Lol