REVIEW: Ray Samuels Audio Dark Star solid state headphone amplifier - Page 2

Thanks for the review Rob! It was very well written, entretaning and educational.

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Love Skylab's reviews. Many thanks.

Doesn't seem like a no brainer, hmm.

More audition time needed for me.
Look forward to hearing from Warp08.

Skylab, great review and very informative!!

Do you have any plans to review the Liquid Fire? I would be most interested in your review of another amp in a similar price point and considerable power. It would also be most interesting on how the Liquid Fire stacks up against the WA22 on the LCD-2's.

I think icenine2 is close to your place..maybe you (^) need to go make a visit. 

Excellent review and comparisons. That  DS reminds me of amps from ML & Krell's caseworks.

Great review Rob, thank you. As you were describing it to be the ideal headphone amplifier for the HE-6, I couldn't help but wonder how it would sound with the K1000; do you have access to a pair? I find the K1000 and HE-6 to have similar driving requirements. Also did you compare any sources with the balanced vs. SE inputs?

As always, great reviews.

Thanks for taking the time to put your time with the Dark Star into the excellent review. 

Have you by chance talked with Steve about modifying the Mini Tori to be compatible with the HE-6?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Skylab 

Thanks Steve. Actually the Mini Torri is the one of the dedicated headphone amps i own that DOES drive the HE-6 well. It does a very nice job with them - no problem hitting clean 100 dB plus peaks (I have measured).

I need to get in the car and drive over to see Steve as he is only about 50 miles away and take my HE-6 along and spend some time with the Mini Tori II.  I would most likely try the speaker terminals as I had a custom cable made to go with my Whiplash Audio HE-6 cable.

Quote:

Originally Posted by grokit 

Great review Rob, thank you. As you were describing it to be the ideal headphone amplifier for the HE-6, I couldn't help but wonder how it would sound with the K1000; do you have access to a pair? I find the K1000 and HE-6 to have similar driving requirements. Also did you compare any sources with the balanced vs. SE inputs?

We listened to that same Dark Star at the Detroit meet before it had the silkscreening job done. We had available a pair of K1000 (bass heavy) at the meet and the sound was incredible! You just need to be careful with the volume.

When Ray was listening to a CD of the 1812 Overture out of his Boulder CD player wit the volume really high at the moment of the cannons the K1000 were bottoming out. After the volume was adjusted to normal volumes for other people (Ray likes to listen at high volumes) everything sounded spectacular.

Yes the K1K will do that, "even" with my pedestrian RA150. I wonder if the bass-heavy version would handle those explosions any better?

Rob, with your preference for tube amps I was also wondering if you tried any sources with a tube output or a tube stage like your Transcription, Hybrid Vision or Havana, or just used the Oppo. I find that when feeding solid state I like to use a tubed source or a tube stage in the chain, and conversely when feeding my Woo I like to keep the tubes out of the chain. Maybe that would affect your perception of the Dark Star in comparison to your favorite tube amps.