General Information
First, this news about the Warranty question: I just received one from Shenzhen (at the MD price, thanks, Shenzhen) and it includes a "credit card" Warranty Card with the S.N. on the card. The warranty is for TWO (2) years. Not bad, overall.
Here are my first quick impressions:
1. This is fresh outta the box and it is NOT burned in.
2. Whoa, this thing sounds refined. Liquid Gold isn't an unfair analogy. Woo-boy. NICE. I'm driving my newest pair Senn 650's (tied for my all-around favorite 'phone, and probably one of the harder to drive flavors in my collection.)
3. It's not playing nice with my FiiO K5/E17K DAC. Power it has in plentitude but I'm having to pre-amplify it with my K5's (NOT the E17k's) HP out. It sounds lovely with the balanced 3.5mm to XLR ins and virtually identical through the unbalanced RCA inputs but you can open the (very cool) level control all the way to get the exact same (underwhelming, to be plain) level, which is not what I've come to expect using my Lyr 2 as an arbitrary reference. (The Lyr 2 is nothing if not, er, Ballsy.) If you push it hard enough from the rear, it outputs like crazy and has seemingly inexhaustible headroom. (It'll play louder than I will tolerate for any length of time and it'll do it absolutely cleanly.) But my PC/FiiO K5/E17K line outs won't get it done by themselves. Maybe there's an internal gain setting nobody's talked about yet. (There are three on the front panel, and it never comes off of the highest one.) I'm going to contact Shenzhen about it. I'd suspect the FiiO (gains on high through the HP out) except it drives the 600's pretty well on its own. It doesn't sound as luxuriant as the H20 (using that or any other input pathway) but even at the Massdrop price, that was not something I expected. When the K5's in USB DAC mode, No line level gain (or tone/balance) adjustments work unless I'm reading/doing something wrong. (I ran the DAC flat, but again, it shouldn't have mattered.) I think it almost has to be the FiiO's fault. The 650's aren't featherweights to drive, but they're not Staxes either. It takes voltage in to get voltage out. (But boy, WHEN you do...) Either a bunch of people have it and are sitting on their experiences or I'm the first to "eat" the aforementioned bullet. I have a D50 (and a Lynx Hilo for the AD side) on the way and that's likely going to be my very likely stopping point for personal/PC audio, at least for a pretty good while. Those will tell the story, but I think the Lynx will take longer to integrate into my PC setup. Update 3/23/18: I've pulled my entire rack of upper-end cans out (not the same as some folks here I know) and there seems to be something that acts like "current limiting" going on. I pulled the input level back thinking it might be overloading the preamp. That might've been part of it. I'm not sure yet. Might be the FiiO, might be the H20. I did fix part of the gain problem, as I'd forgotten about an equalizer app that had its gain level down about 20%. I was checking the Bottom Octave response using the Reference Recording "Organ Polychrome" HD Tracks demo. Something odd went on. The higher octaves recess a bit on sustained dynamic peaks. It sounds unsettlingly like a Compressor/Limiter in the mids and above. So I started trying other HP's. It's pretty consistently worse with the 650's. the TH-x00's didn't tax it. The Beyer 770-32's (unsurprisingly) did fine. The Beyerlux 330's didn't seem to want to sing like others did (especially in the bottom octave), but they're open cans and I guess that's to be expected. The Pro 900's did "okay" also. I was really surprised by the 650's. I haven't tried my 600's or V-Moda M100's yet. I've gone back to the 3.5mm coax inputs and that helped some. More in-depth review forthcoming.
Here are my first quick impressions:
1. This is fresh outta the box and it is NOT burned in.
2. Whoa, this thing sounds refined. Liquid Gold isn't an unfair analogy. Woo-boy. NICE. I'm driving my newest pair Senn 650's (tied for my all-around favorite 'phone, and probably one of the harder to drive flavors in my collection.)
3. It's not playing nice with my FiiO K5/E17K DAC. Power it has in plentitude but I'm having to pre-amplify it with my K5's (NOT the E17k's) HP out. It sounds lovely with the balanced 3.5mm to XLR ins and virtually identical through the unbalanced RCA inputs but you can open the (very cool) level control all the way to get the exact same (underwhelming, to be plain) level, which is not what I've come to expect using my Lyr 2 as an arbitrary reference. (The Lyr 2 is nothing if not, er, Ballsy.) If you push it hard enough from the rear, it outputs like crazy and has seemingly inexhaustible headroom. (It'll play louder than I will tolerate for any length of time and it'll do it absolutely cleanly.) But my PC/FiiO K5/E17K line outs won't get it done by themselves. Maybe there's an internal gain setting nobody's talked about yet. (There are three on the front panel, and it never comes off of the highest one.) I'm going to contact Shenzhen about it. I'd suspect the FiiO (gains on high through the HP out) except it drives the 600's pretty well on its own. It doesn't sound as luxuriant as the H20 (using that or any other input pathway) but even at the Massdrop price, that was not something I expected. When the K5's in USB DAC mode, No line level gain (or tone/balance) adjustments work unless I'm reading/doing something wrong. (I ran the DAC flat, but again, it shouldn't have mattered.) I think it almost has to be the FiiO's fault. The 650's aren't featherweights to drive, but they're not Staxes either. It takes voltage in to get voltage out. (But boy, WHEN you do...) Either a bunch of people have it and are sitting on their experiences or I'm the first to "eat" the aforementioned bullet. I have a D50 (and a Lynx Hilo for the AD side) on the way and that's likely going to be my very likely stopping point for personal/PC audio, at least for a pretty good while. Those will tell the story, but I think the Lynx will take longer to integrate into my PC setup. Update 3/23/18: I've pulled my entire rack of upper-end cans out (not the same as some folks here I know) and there seems to be something that acts like "current limiting" going on. I pulled the input level back thinking it might be overloading the preamp. That might've been part of it. I'm not sure yet. Might be the FiiO, might be the H20. I did fix part of the gain problem, as I'd forgotten about an equalizer app that had its gain level down about 20%. I was checking the Bottom Octave response using the Reference Recording "Organ Polychrome" HD Tracks demo. Something odd went on. The higher octaves recess a bit on sustained dynamic peaks. It sounds unsettlingly like a Compressor/Limiter in the mids and above. So I started trying other HP's. It's pretty consistently worse with the 650's. the TH-x00's didn't tax it. The Beyer 770-32's (unsurprisingly) did fine. The Beyerlux 330's didn't seem to want to sing like others did (especially in the bottom octave), but they're open cans and I guess that's to be expected. The Pro 900's did "okay" also. I was really surprised by the 650's. I haven't tried my 600's or V-Moda M100's yet. I've gone back to the 3.5mm coax inputs and that helped some. More in-depth review forthcoming.
