I’m going to be in the minority here, but here goes. I never really cared for the RNHP. I never really cared for topping stuff either. I generally prefer tubes. The Hagerman Tuba amp ( around 700 when I got it) works great for both ZMFs and my Focal. YMMV.
I would agree with the hagerman for the zmf, although personally never liked the clear on any of the sub 1k tube amps tbh, at least from my experience. Also yes topping is not great lol
Do you like the Clear on the Pendant? I like it a lot (and yes its better than the Tuba) but weirdly I think the Tuba is really close to the Pendant for the ZMFs and its a big price jump.
It’s fine, personally wouldn’t be my first choice in that price range for an amp for the clear, but I think that it sounds pretty nice
I can see that in some senses, although I would still think of it as a higher tier amp in most regards imo
I agree. Thanks for the thoughts.
although personally never liked the clear on any of the sub 1k tube amps tbh
I’ve heard that a few times now from a few pretty smart folks.
Any particular reason that sub $1k tube amps don’t seem to get much out of high(er) end cans? The circuit designs in the sub 1k range just don’t get along with more resolving headphones, the tubes you get out of the box at that level are just way above and beyond tube rolling a CTH or MLP, etc?
The Auteurs are the first headphones i’ve really been able to notice a huge change on different amps with. They seem to take a lot of tonality/“flavor” from the chain itself, even more so than other high-er impedance headphones (DT1990s in my case).
With my 1990s I found only a bit of difference between my Matrix mini 3 and my CTH (w/gold lion), but the Auteurs are wildly different between the two.
I really like the Clear + Burson soloist pairing…anyone share the same thought?
Thank you for all the responses! I won’t go with the A90. Might be a small thing, but the RNHP to me is not at all a visually appealing amp. Like I am okay with a relatively generic looking box with a knob, but the colors on the RNHP really don’t do it for me. I know performance is important, but I am not a fan of the way it looks lol.
Let’s say I were to increase my budget a bit to around 1100 or so USD. Is there a good solid state option (paired with RME) for the Auteur? My main thing is I am an IEM person and generally tube amps don’t do well with low impedance IEMs so I generally look for solid state amps. I could just use the RME, but RME is kind of boring to me.
I’m a fan of the Burson Soloist… it has 3 gain levels for flexibility w/ iems and I really like the synergy w/ my Aeolus/VC.
Just my 2 cents…
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Generally my guess is component quality (generally with tubes being more simple circuits, they tend to be more dependent on the quality of materials like caps, transformers, etc for their performance which is why some of the cheap tube amps really suck imo), choice of voicing (generally in the sub 1k market people are looking for that warmer, richer, overly dense, and more sloppy transients and that ends up causing things to loose some technical performance. I think this because people misunderstand what a good tube amp actually sounds like so they tend to have biases of what it would be, and manufacturers just end up catering to those biases since it brings in sales), and what headphones they are typically designed for (most of the time the tube amps sub 1k are designed for the more classic headphones like senns, beyers, grados, zmf, etc and not really made in mind for things like a clear or modern planar imo). I have found that the majority of the sub 1k headphone tube amps tend to be lackluster with planars, and also with really picky low impedance cans. I think it’s more a synergy thing with the clear and a lot of the sub 1k tube amps I have tried, the clear can sound pretty fantastic on some tube amps, just tend to find myself gravitating towards other solid state options instead under 1k. I think some tube amps that start to get good with the clear would be things like the lta mz2 + lps, dragon iha-1 (with lundahl), quicksilver headphone amp, and a few others. Things really start to get good tube wise with the clear in the 2k+ range imo.
I mean it’s prob moreso just having to do with them being more capable than other things you have from a technicality perspective. The more capable something is, typically the more demanding on the source gear it is, as if the source gear can’t convey something well, neither can the headphone. That’s also why higher end headphones typically benefit from nicer and nicer source gear and can “scale” higher, since they can take further advantage of what the source gear can offer and are more reliant on the source gear for their performance
I personally like something like a violectric v280 if you can swing it, the soloist 3xp @hifiDJ is also likely nice pairing wise
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