REVIEW: ALO Audio Amphora SS headphone amp - Page 7

Can you or Vinnie run some benchmarks on battery life while driving a 600 ohm load at reasonably full listening levels? That would be very much appreciated...

Has anyone compared this to RSA HR-2 ?

Maybe we are not giving the CMOY enough credit?

I don't think that Skylab has anything to gain from posting that he likes this amp. And I do want one because they are pretty, and with the $150 or so per pair input caps on this, expensive jacks, casework, and volume knob, I can see where the money goes, it's a luxury product.

That being said, I feel the same way about having difficulty trusting RWA and a teeny circuit board for a headphone amp being called as good as full blown amp designs - a huge home amp from Singlepower being in the same league as this is hard to believe. That freaked me out a bit when I heard it. But Skylab and Headphoneaddict have mountains of gear and experience under their belt and I want to trust them. I know that Vinnie can design some really good circuits, but with audio guts it's like being at a restaurant, you are more likely to want to go for the big portion, in the US bigger is often perceived as better for everything. Sure, taking stuff out of the signal path gives a purer sound, that's why lots of people say simplicity is good and why lots of people like the Grado RA-1. That being said, this amp with its 9V battery probably is based off an op amp design, so I fail to see how it will sound greatly different from a CMOY although the high quality pot, jacks, and input caps are going to help and hard wiring it to an iMod like that is a good call. I still want one of these, because it's sexy. I just have trust issues.

I think it is a thing that had to be told !

That the Amphora is not dissimilar to a portable amp makes me wonder what it is that gives it the ability to drive full-size headphones so well, considering there's a strong body of opinion that portable amps are insufficient for the job. I wonder if it's something to do with the large caps, as well as the circuit making the difference, storing enough energy to give big voltage swings, for example.

It must boil down to the secret not-an-opamp opamp that's in it. A lot of NOS parts have preternaturally good sound. The TDA1541 chip that was in my old Moodlab DAC was awesome, that little $250 DAC doesn't sound much worse than my $900 Havana. I feel a little ripped by the Havana but it's still breaking in and it does sound damn good, but as the Moodlab is gone I've sort of forgotten whether the Moodlab is much worse, just that when I first made the swap it wasn't a huge different.

Whatever the Amphora has in it, it's clever enough to where multiple respected reviewers are saying that it does really well with fullsize cans.

Great post...

My primary dynamic home amp is the Yamamoto HA-02 which if you look inside looks very minimal as well. But if you search further into the design you will find things that people suggest such as a transformer of special design and such. The designer's personal ability to shape the sound to a particular flair is especially relevant as well. So I would suggest that one never take one of these boutique designs as simple even when minimal.

Comparing how much they charge for their products compared to the cost of parts would be one good starting point to understand the animosity.

To be honest, I have no idea how much the parts cost in the Amphora, but their docks and cables seem way overpriced to me. Parts to build an iPod line-out dock are less than 10$, add "exotic" cables and connectors for a total of 50-60$, yet he sells the whole thing for 150-200$ if not more. And some of his cables have been known to oxidize over time and he doesn't provide customer service for that.

Every company out there wants to make profit, I have no problem with that if there's some R&D and special manufacturing involved, but most of what ALO produces can be done by anyone with a soldering iron and some free time. Still, if people like ALO products, good for them, but I personally find their markups unreasonable and will never buy from them for that reason.

The Amphora is horribly expensive to make, I don't think they're ripping anyone off for sure. And now that I know a little more about its circuit I think I can trust it, although the next $1400 that comes my way is probably going to HD800s. I can't help but feel that with that gorilla headphone out there, that my M3 + Havana is bottlenecked now by headphones (although a Beta22 wouldn't hurt). There's no way it's quick to put one together by hand, dealing with wood enclosures and all that hand wiring is serious business.

I don't think they charge too much for cables, if you do some DIY and do it right it's very very time consuming even with experience it gets even slower as you really want to make no mistakes. If you think what a professional like a plumber or electrician charges per hour, and add it to the cost of parts, the prices aren't bad at all. If you know how to do it yourself, do it yourself. Otherwise, pay up. The SXC wire really does sound damn good and I high five Ken for commissioning it, you'd think SPC is going to be bright but it's actually the best wire for K702s that I know of. I know their stuff is made in a similar way to other people's DIY'd stuff on head-fi, but again - these premade cables are a service that is second nature to some and foreign to others - just like some people can repair their own furnace with a few minutes work while other people don't even know what a furnace does. And it seems that ALO is the company that sort of originated the whole big bling naked wire with braiding and big bling connectors look that everyone copies, unless I"m mistaken and someone was doing that sort of thing before then, as well as the whole get crazy with your iPod cables thing...I wouldn't say they don't innovate.

Skylab, I admire your openmindedness with amps and keeping objective with it (in that you review exactly what you hear) while being subjective (personal preference for certain amps even if it doesn't "make sense" to some people). A lot of people, myself included, hold Audio-GD as the gold standard for value, design and performance (even though all I've done is drool over their DACs) because when you look inside it, it has more parts than a space shuttle. Kingwa likes to filter the hell out of everything with like 10 resistors per square inch. I don't own their stuff but just looking at it makes you believe it can perform...seeing their stuff can make you distrust stuff with simpler designs. It really does hurt my ability to be open minded. Still, I learned my lesson by assuming the Havana would be 4 times better than my puny Moodlab, whereas it really is an incremental upgrade and my hearing and other gear is probably not good enough to appreciate it as much as some people can. I think I can hear cables better than different DACs which is sad.