Review: Keces DA-152 USB DAC / headphone amplifier - Page 2

I am looking forward to purchasing a Keces for a headphone system!

Do you think the Keces might make a good pairing with a pair of phones like the k701?

I personally have not gotten much experience with K701, but those customer who have used it with DA-152/HA-171 seem to have generally good experience with it. I'll see if I can dig up something or ask one of them to share something here. :P

just figured i'd throw in another good word about keces. i've got the da-151 and the build quality really is incredible. it's heavy and very solid feeling and everything inside looks very clean and beautifully assembled. i've been very impressed with it as my first dac, especially considering how reasonably priced it was.

oh yeah and it sounds awesome too, i guess some people here might care about that...

Most of that is the casing. I'd take a brushed aluminium case over it any day just so it matches my Lian Li pcs. The Keces line does look very clean. Don't really see that in amps and I really like it.

Find anything on how this would do with the k701? Thanks for the reply, Maniac.

Only got the HA-171 yesterday and will have a Canamp tomorrow or on Friday to compare the Keces to a known match.

So far so good. Nice improvement over my STX.

Seeing Maniac has disappeared, I'll start.

Got the Canamp today. Set up is as follows -> Asus STX -> stereo out -> Canamp/171. I could have used the 171's bypass of course but figured someone would blame that for any difference. I'm not really with the 'audio lingo' and feel that my descriptions would be better anyway.

Kaumi - Thrill Kill (ASYS Remix) 320kbps mp3. Bass wise, they are very similar. To my ears, the Canamp makes bass slighly punchier. There are parts in this song where the sound sort of revolves around your head and the 171 was much better at this than the Canamp.

Deftones - Knife Party 320kbps mp3. Listening to the cymbals in the chorus, the Canamp has better instrument separation than the 171. To me, the 171 allowed you to hear where they were but the Canamp was much more pin point. I felt like I could point to the different cymbals with more certainty on the Canamp. There is another section of the song where a female is singing [before screaming] and the decay is exaggerated. I felt that the Canamp had more a even and smooth fade out whereas the 171 did not sound as smooth.

The Black Dahlia Murder - Necropolis 320kbps mp3. I did think that the Canamp had the vocals more up front. Really couldn't split them. Quality of production comes into question.

John O'Callaghan Feat Sarah Howells - Find Yourself (Cosmic Gate Remix) 320kbps mp3. 3:47 onwards was used to compare the two amps. Decay again was nicer on the Canamp. At 5:05 is a 'dreamy' typical type of passage in vocal trance. The Canamp was definitely better as it sounded more crisp whereas the 171 blurred notes together.

Lab 4 - Neu Messiah 320kbps mp3. Now I'm beating a dead horse. There is one part where the bpm goes bonkers. 171 did not handle it as well as the Canamp. Got a bit muddy.

Pretty much splitting hairs here between the two amps. The 171 can drive the K701 almost on par with the highly praised Heed Canamp. As the 171 is based off the 152's amp circuit, I think you can say that the 152 will also perform as good. Case in point - The HA-171 is good enough to drive the K701 and is a fair bit cheaper [well on AUD ER] than the Heed Canamp. The difference really shows when listening to electronica but that said, it is only a small advantage to the Canamp.

Other things to note. Canamp runs bloody hot [characteristic of class A], has a fixed gain and is much smaller. 171 has a nicer volume pot, bypass, 2 inputs and a gain switch. Both have a acrylic and steel construction and are equally stunning.

Ah, thanks MomijiTMO, I was looking at a previous review, but that was in Chinese and I haven't got around to translate that to English yet. Have you tried it with lossless packed audio? I've been using APE and FLAC here for a while, and the result is pretty nice.

Thanks for the review.


David

Nah haven't tried it with lossless formats only because I can't regularly pick which tracks are lossless and which aren't. Maybe with my current set up would it be more apparent but I'll be ignorant and have more hdd space

Hi TopPop, great review! I'm considering an HA-171, essentially the DA-152 minus the DAC. Does the DA-152 get hot?