drewfus420
500+ Head-Fier
- Joined
- Jul 1, 2009
- Posts
- 519
- Likes
- 17
Hi all, first off I want to thank Kboe for giving me this great little amp! The only condition of the deal was that I write up a review of it and pass it on gratis when/if I ever want to part with it. I have had a little bit of time over the holidays to really get to know this cool little piece of gear and I will be putting the final touches on my portable use review and posting them soon. As far as testing it's DAC/USB section, that will have to wait till I have the time to spend a little more time listening to it with my laptop.
In prep for this review I loaded up my Ipod Nano with all lossless files and got myself intimately familiar with the recordings by listening to nothing but these files for about a month. My baseline was established using the Nano and a LOD to RCA I made feeding my Little Dot 1+ and my Ultrasone 650 or ReO's. I probably listened to this set up 2+ hours a day for about a month.
Here are just some of the recordings I used:
Bauhaus- 1979-1983
Cowboy Junkies- Black Eyed Man, Radio One sessions and Trinity Sesions
Frank Zappa- Joe's Garage acts 1-3
Grateful Dead- Mars Hotel, Blues for Allah, some Dicks Picks
The Hold Steady-Almost Killed Me, Heaven Is Whenever
Jethro Tull- Best Of Acoustic, 20 Years of Jethro Tull
Judas Priest- Sad Wings of Destiny
Massive Attack- Blue Lines, Mezzanine, Heligoland
Miles Davis- Kind Of Blue 50th Anniversary
Steely Dan- Aja, Gaucho
Tool- Lateralus, 10,000 Days
And various tracks from some Reference/Audiophile recordings I have
Portable test rig:
Ipod Nano filled with ALAC
ALO Bling Bling LOD
HiFi Man ReO
Portable Impressions:
Coming soon!
USB test rig:
ThinkPad T43 running Windows XP
foobar 2000 playing FLAC files
Ultrasone Pro 650
USB/DAC Impressions:
Initial impressions:
First thing I noticed with this set up was I needed very little volume on the BitHead to achieve a good listening volume, somewhere around 1/8 turn ot the volume wheel, and it sounded a little darker than it did with my Ipod. Detail was a little lower as well. All in all using it as an external sound card it was a great improvement over the on-board sound but it fell short of my desktop set up (Xonar stx digital out to Moodlab Concept DAC to Little Dot MKII) but it does retail for about 20% of that set up. Value per dollar is great, and it only falls a little shy of being competitive with my desktop while having the advantage of being portable as well. The sound signature is quite pleasant and it is not fatiguing at all especially with the crossfeed engaged. It lacks some of the "sizzle" in the higher frequencies I get from both of my Little Dots but otherwise it is fairly balanced. For giggles I tried using it with my Sony MDR 7506 instead of the more bass oriented Ultrasones because Kboe mentioned good synergy with his Sonys and was very pleasantly surprised! The high end sparkle was there and the whole presentation was a lot more balanced. Dare I say it is the best my 7506's have ever sounded? (I have used 7506's for like 15-20 years for mixing live and studio monitoring and have used them with MANY different amps and sources) So my bassey cans sound bassey and my flat-ish cans sound nicely balanced... Could this be a fairly transparent DAC/AMP? Probably not, but what it adds or lacks is not missed as the sound is quite pleasant.
To be continued...
In prep for this review I loaded up my Ipod Nano with all lossless files and got myself intimately familiar with the recordings by listening to nothing but these files for about a month. My baseline was established using the Nano and a LOD to RCA I made feeding my Little Dot 1+ and my Ultrasone 650 or ReO's. I probably listened to this set up 2+ hours a day for about a month.
Here are just some of the recordings I used:
Bauhaus- 1979-1983
Cowboy Junkies- Black Eyed Man, Radio One sessions and Trinity Sesions
Frank Zappa- Joe's Garage acts 1-3
Grateful Dead- Mars Hotel, Blues for Allah, some Dicks Picks
The Hold Steady-Almost Killed Me, Heaven Is Whenever
Jethro Tull- Best Of Acoustic, 20 Years of Jethro Tull
Judas Priest- Sad Wings of Destiny
Massive Attack- Blue Lines, Mezzanine, Heligoland
Miles Davis- Kind Of Blue 50th Anniversary
Steely Dan- Aja, Gaucho
Tool- Lateralus, 10,000 Days
And various tracks from some Reference/Audiophile recordings I have
Portable test rig:
Ipod Nano filled with ALAC
ALO Bling Bling LOD
HiFi Man ReO
Portable Impressions:
Coming soon!
USB test rig:
ThinkPad T43 running Windows XP
foobar 2000 playing FLAC files
Ultrasone Pro 650
USB/DAC Impressions:
Initial impressions:
First thing I noticed with this set up was I needed very little volume on the BitHead to achieve a good listening volume, somewhere around 1/8 turn ot the volume wheel, and it sounded a little darker than it did with my Ipod. Detail was a little lower as well. All in all using it as an external sound card it was a great improvement over the on-board sound but it fell short of my desktop set up (Xonar stx digital out to Moodlab Concept DAC to Little Dot MKII) but it does retail for about 20% of that set up. Value per dollar is great, and it only falls a little shy of being competitive with my desktop while having the advantage of being portable as well. The sound signature is quite pleasant and it is not fatiguing at all especially with the crossfeed engaged. It lacks some of the "sizzle" in the higher frequencies I get from both of my Little Dots but otherwise it is fairly balanced. For giggles I tried using it with my Sony MDR 7506 instead of the more bass oriented Ultrasones because Kboe mentioned good synergy with his Sonys and was very pleasantly surprised! The high end sparkle was there and the whole presentation was a lot more balanced. Dare I say it is the best my 7506's have ever sounded? (I have used 7506's for like 15-20 years for mixing live and studio monitoring and have used them with MANY different amps and sources) So my bassey cans sound bassey and my flat-ish cans sound nicely balanced... Could this be a fairly transparent DAC/AMP? Probably not, but what it adds or lacks is not missed as the sound is quite pleasant.
To be continued...
