Saw you got in the LP, how is it so far? Nice upgrade from the Jot?
Too early to tell if its an upgrade or sidegrade considering I did enjoy the Jot2 quite a bit. However, so far, it is definitely a better sound with my Radiance. My only issue is a slight channel imbalance when listening on balanced. Oddly enough when I push the button to SE it goes away. So Iām hoping its just a tube burn-in thing that I have read about so much.
Still, so far besides that this thing is very nice! Itās wider and just has that warm tilt to make it like sitting in front of a fire place with a drink feeling.
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Could be tube burn in, or a shoddy set of stock tubes if thatās not it. If you donāt have the problem on SE, I might guess it could be pot imbalance, as Iād assume running balanced you have the volume at a lower level correct considering the more gain balanced in brings? If so, try running balance and reducing volume on your rme so you get further up on the LP pot and see if that fixes the issue
But if itās not the pot, then Iād leave it on for a few days and see if it corrects itself
Another option could be to swap the tubes with each other and see if the imbalance changes
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Iāll try that for sure. I did decide to lower the db on the RME to -10 and that does give me more room on the pot. Definitely read about the pot issue.
Iāll be sure to report back on what I find. Thanks for the tip!
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Been real busy as of late, but no I havenāt forgotten about the list lol. Slowly chipping away at it, some small unfinished updates but Iāll get it mostly done eventually. Have a big update to it planned but will likely take some months if I even decide to do it in the capacity I want to
Some list changes going forward:
removed overall pairing section since thatās too much hassle and instead created shortlist of chains (still wip) that I think offer good value in the ranges but tilted more toward getting the most out of it so not bare minimum per se. I removed some things that I didnāt really think I ālovedā on the list, and am adding a little bit more to descriptions and adjusting some ranks a bit, and some other stuff.
May consider adding 2ch stuff if I get the time and get to try a little bit more over time.
Some personal things with my own setup since might as well document them here:
Sold the 1266, itās a great headphone for what itās good at, but what itās good at is somewhat limited in my limited collection now lol. Sorta became a one trick pony, and I rarely found myself using it for that reason, just sorta soured on the overall headphone and I think selling it off because of that reason made sense. Donāt think itās up to snuff in comparison to the other cans I have in most situations at this point and is a harder sell value wise
Sold the Angstrom Stella SHA20 MK2, awesome amp, but another thing I just wasnāt using. This one I feel a bit less confident in selling, but had a friend who really wanted it after demoing, so might as well. I think since I had it in my 2ch setup that caused me to use it less, but oh well, Iāll see if I truly regret not having it later lol. At least I donāt have to worry about the 20 something needing to be replaced down the line lol (unless I want to buy it again)
Sold the 800s, another one that really wasnāt getting much use in my collection, I still would have kept it if I still had a current drive amp in my collection, but I no longer do, so that left as well lol.
Sold or gifted some more misc stuff like spare ddc, cabling, and more budget source gear and transducers since I wasnāt using them at all and had no reason to use them.
Further tweaking my setup to optimize, I still need to get rid of a dac since I have 1 too many for the setups I have and I want to reduce the investment I have a bit, so going to figure out if a berkeley or mojo is leaving lol
This also just came out, which I really want, but going to wait and see some feedback first, but will likely upgrade from my twelve mk2 for my main setup and go from there lol, serious investment so somewhat hesitant on it but otherwise would be all over it
Also late happy holidays and new years to you guys and hope you had a nice past few weeks!
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Hey I just read your latest update and forgot to report on this issue. The LP no longer has the channel imbalance as I do believe it was simply tube burn-in time. I think I literally kept it on for one more day after my post and it was gone.
Bummer on that, but if you donāt reach for it, then totally get it. Hey you can always get another in the future in a Canary Yellow lol (those new colors offered are wild)
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Oh thatās great to hear, glad itās now working as it should
Need to reduce audio costs somehow lol. Yeah colors are neat on the diana, pair that with a viva egoista 845 and have them color match the paint and then you have too much lol (theyāll paint one in any automotive paint you want). Personally donāt really care what the headphone looks like, especially one that doesnāt leave my house, but I guess if youāre spending that much might as well get something in a color you like lol (as long as itās not a significant upcharge). I knew they were doing custom paints as a public option for the dianas now, didnāt know that carried over to the 1266 (guess it makes sense)
Oh, yeah donāt quote me on that. I was just going off of what I was seeing with the Diana. It would make sense to just do the whole lineup. They are all expensive anyway.
At least it looks like they arenāt charging anything extra for the custom paints, although I wonder if theyāre semi recent price increase was also to factor that in lol
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Feel as though Iāve ended up hitting the limitations of most headphone amps Iāve tried, now if I wanted to progress any further I kinda need to move to higher end speaker gear, have grabbed a few speaker amps to try and replace some of my existing headphone amps and see if they give a satisfactory enough result and if they end up being worth what I paid for them for headphone use rather than speakers lol. Wonder how it will go and if it will be worth the hassle or not
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Added section about my potential biases and how they shift the list, added a bit more to the rambling section, and I do plan on adding more descriptions and slowly chip away at that, this year so far is shaping up to be a pretty busy one lol, also adjusted some ranks up and down
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Just reread a lot of it, looking for the additions. What a compendium! Donāt know how you find time for all of this. Love the straightforward style and
your openness re biases, etc. Again, Thank you!
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For this hobby/addiction it is a fantastic reference tool for sure and one I use regularly!
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Changed some rankings:
Headphones: moved utopia below 009 (009 can just pull more information and handles smaller changes with greater precision), moved d8000 pro above 1266 tc (various reasons but have too many qualms with the 1266 at this point), moved the gh50 above the ether 2 (enjoy it more and can scale more), moved hemps above verum 1 (hemps more unique and interesting to me), moved 7506 over 58x (7506 more technical and refined)
Dacs: moved mojo above lavry (mojo is a higher technical level), moved sfd below baltic (been too long since Iāve heard the sfd so moved lower to be safe), moved meitner above merason (meitner more technical in the end with greater refinement), moved crane song above yggy (crane song more technical and more refined with less drawbacks although less fun)
Cables: moved snake river ic above tara labs ic (snake river more organic while equal technicality wise and I appreciate the added warmth a bit more), moved audience power above inakustik (audience strikes better balance of organicness and directness and makes the inakustik feel mechanical in comparison), moved eletech above rhapsodio cable (mistake I didnāt catch, eletech consistently higher performer on wider range of pairings), added jps sc as holy shit top- (since it is a good cable but still unsure if it should be on there)
Added and finished estat amp section, thank god since I hate talking about stats and stat amps and was putting off doing it lol
Also fully finished the + - within top to low internal ranks to better convey difference but those will likely continue to change as I refine things. Will continue to chip away at it
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So, ended up getting a few amps in, one is an absolute success, the other not so much lol. Also got in a nice preamp for them since theyāre power amps, and also planning to do more testing there as well
Talking about the success first is the Riviera AFM 50 monoblocks, those swapped with nice NOS Brimar CV4003 have been excellent, basically a direct upgrade to the AIC-10 encompassing everything I loved about it to a higher level, and given what I paid for the AFM I actually do think for me it was worth it, but I donāt know if going any higher would have been. Havenāt had any issues with too much noise or lack of volume control or anything, itās worked surprisingly smoothly. I donāt bother with a resistor box with these, I just direct tap off the amps and it has no issues handling really low impedance high current demands and very high impedance voltage demands, handles both with ease
Now onto a miss, I was able get a Wavac EC300B for a great price, and I thought āwhy not, Iāve heard high end wavac at shows and it was fantastic back in the dayā, and this amp has proven less satisfactory when it comes to headphones. I do think with stuff like the Mysphere 3.1 direct tap itās amazing, but a lot of other headphones donāt really seem to like it as much, and itās not proving worth the investment with a lot of my other cans. Iām not exactly sure why this is, it could be because I use a resistor load box for all other headphone amps in order to ensure safety and present a load to the amp and also not have it get finicky with higher impedance direct loads, or if my preamp synergy is a miss (will get to that in a second), or if I just donāt have the right tubes in there (WE300B reissue & WE435A, & RCA 6L6GC). Not really sure, need more time with it to form an opinion on it, and not sure if I should keep it. Iām eying other tube amps as well as replacement but all of them come with other complications when it comes to preamp or size, or both lol
On the preamp side of things, it was an impulse buy, but I got the opportunity to pick up a Robert Koda K15EX which has been absolutely fantastic, to the point where it has me questioning why I havenāt invested in a nice preamp at this point outside of my current Lamm (which I think it actually bests outside of being paired with the ML3), so thatās kinda made me curious to revisit preamps which I had liked, but never spent as much time with and had them gimped in setups so I can actually hear them at their potential. Also to check to make sure I canāt get super close to the koda for most less, so a bit of a sanity check there too lol. So far the preamp clearly pairs extremely well with the AFM chain, but I donāt know if it does as well with the wavac as I expected (but again unsure if thatās a fault of the amp or if itās a synergy problem, either way itās not up to expectations right now)
I think in order to replace the wavac I want to consider some of the bigger 845/211 amps as I love the way those sound and getting a direct upgrade to something like the Viva Egoista 845 (like the Solista mk3) or Aries Cerat Genus 845 (like the Concero 25 or Diana Forte), but going AC hurts a little bit considering Iād want an AC preamp to go along with that to get the most out of it, and that Iāve already owned and sold my AC setup so feel bad about that and regretting doing that lol. I donāt think I could justify going any higher up their product range especially for headphones. Still looking for other optional options to fill the role, but I donāt want to immediately ditch the wavac, will spend more time with it and see if anything changes as I continue to mess with it and figure it out (and hopefully try on another preamp)
I was also thinking of trying other solid state speaker power amps specifically for headphones, but honestly Iām happy enough with the Rivieras that I donāt want to mess around with that, and I should focus instead getting the other aspects of that setup where I want them. Do think that the entire endeavor has been both worthwhile but also a questionable value even for myself, I donāt know about diminishing returns as I do think that while this is noticeably better, but I also think that going this high was unnecessary in the end as I could have stuck with the respective normal/traditional top headphone amps I had and not really felt like I was a lot less happy, but I think for now for what it brought I can still narrowly justify it, but I donāt think Iāll be going any higher on the headphone front any time soon for the sake of value and also not having to deal with more hassle as well lol (for speakers, depending on the speakers, worth going this high or even higher though if budget, time, and dedication allows)
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Oh yeah, working on a kinda 2ch section as well @SandboxGeneral, although still no vinyl since I still genuinely have 0 clue when it comes to that lol
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And finally the core aspect of the list is done. Updated the link to be the public one it will use from now on.
Including mostly everything (headphones, iems, dacs, digital sources, headphone amps, aio/combo units, portables, cables, some 2ch stuff, and more), only thing I havenāt finished is the 2ch section, the shortlisted pairings, and some of the ramblings, but really itās mostly done now and to a point where I like it
Added some, removed some, reranked some more
Updated new link at top post, old link is now dead
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Glad to see this list continue to progress though sad to lose a few of my favorites in the list. But I aināt mine.
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I was debating on keeping more in there, but I think I really wanted to trim down on what I put for things that I truly really like in their range, or at least options that offer something distinctly different in their range that others donāt, so sort of cutting down on potentially redundant or similar options (although the lower end ranges of this suffered more than the higher end, but thatās sort of normal since most lower end stuff ends up being more similar than not vs higher end offerings which typically differentiate themselves more)
Want to add a bit more and work on the things I havenāt finished, but just trying to think what else would be worthwhile to add lol
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The pairing section is now mostly done (aside from the hd600), and added some more stuff, reranked some more (especially in the oh shit headphones and holy shit dac range), and added a bit more clarity to some of the disclaimers and personal biases section. Still likely going to edit it over the coming weeks to refine it and make sure itās where I want it to be, but so far pretty happy with it.
Donāt know how itās gotten so long lol, but I do plan to keep adding to it in all sections (like 200k char 40k words lol)
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