I've been using the HD800s for a little while now with a Dacmagic (or ancient Micromega T-DAC) and an old Earmax amp, but then on an impulse I bought the Focusrite VRM box and was surprised at how good it was. Given the Focusrite is only £79 that could just as easily mean my existing system is past its best, so I've had a look at some alternatives.
The Lehmann BCL I borrowed suffered rather badly from transformer hum and I crave silence, so that wouldn't do. The Violectrics don't appear to have a UK dealer, so demoing one of those is going to require me buying it on a sale or return basis from Germany, which is a lot of hassle. None of my local dealers had any decent headphone amps, apart from the Lehmann, but one of them said they could get the MF M1 HPA in, so that's what I've been demoing.
This is not a scientific review, nor was it a blind listening test, but the end results match up with my extended listening tests, give or take, so its enough to help me move forwards. I'm just posting it here in case anyone is curious.
The system is a silent PC feeding the dacs via spdif, using the on-board sound card from a decent Asus motherboard. I may try a separate sound card in future. The spdif cable was some no-name thing, I think originally used for video - I needed something long enough to reach all the dacs. The dacs in turn were connected to the amps with Nordost Red Dawn (a flashback to when I was spending more on my hi-fi...)
I played five pieces of music and rated every combination for the following:
Air - How open and transparent the soundstage was. The opposite would be claustrophobic. I wasn't checking for detail so much as presentation.
3D - How easy it was to make out the instruments; whether they stood out distinctly from the rest of the music and could be placed in space.
PRaT - which I'm assuming stands for Pace, Rhythm and Timing. If it doesn't normally then it does for this review :-)
I also tried to measure what I called Slam and Vibrancy but found it very difficult to differentiate on those and my scoring was so close to guesswork that I just scrapped the results.
The tracks I listened to were as follows, and were just what I fancied trying at the time:
All About Eve - Blind Lemon Sam
Epica - In the Hall of the Mountain King
Gotthard - El Traidor
Shinedown - Diamond Eyes
Locatelli - Concerto No 11 In A Major
Each song was measured on a score of 1 to 5, with 1 being pants and 5 being excellent. The scores are for comparative purposes only; if I scored something as excellent it was just better than everything else I was trying at the time. I then summed up the results for all songs, so the table below is scored from 5 to 25.
Air 3D PRaT Total
Micromega / Earmax 24 10 19 53
Dacmagic / Earmax 25 12 16 53
MF M1 DAC / Earmax 18 16 16 50
MF M1 DAC / MF M1 HPA 18 21 17 56
Micromega / MF M1 HPA 20 11 14 45
Dacmagic / MF M1 HPA 20 19 17 56
Focusrite 23 12 20 55
Power amps with HD650s 18 20 18 56
The power amps were tried out of curiosity, with the Dacmagic connecting to an Audio Synthesis ProPassion, Jeff Rowland Model 3 monoblocks and my knackered old HD650s with the headphone cable stripped and wired directly to the speaker outputs. The Passion is a passive pre and the max volume I could take was only about 8 o'clock, but it worked. It wasn't a fair comparison to pit the 650s against the 800s as they're nowhere near as good, but I'm not stripping a £200 cable for an experiment!
The totals are misleadingly close, as the presentation was very different between the combinations. The real conclusions I drew were that my old Micromega has been seriously surpassed in terms of soundstage and realism, with the Focusrite being just as good or better than it in almost all regards. Sadly the Focusrite was equally unable to separate the instruments from the music and although it scores very well for pace and the openness of its presentation, the homogeneity gets a little fatiguing after a while.
The MF boxes were exceptional, in this company, at defining and presenting instruments. However they also dull the treble slightly and produce a rather rich and warm feeling. I couldn't identify any missing detail, and they suppess a lot of the HD800s tendency to shout in the treble, but there was a pervading sense of claustrophobia that caused the Air scores to be rather low.
The HD650s really sang on the power amps and the drive behind them was tangible, but I couldn't tell if the recessed mids were normal for the 650s (I know they're nowhere near as open as the 800s, but I think it was more pronounced than normal). It could well be a product of the amps driving an unusual load and not behaving as expected. To test this properly I'd have to rewire the 800s, but a replacement cable is ten times the cost of the 650 cable. The results would almost certainly eclipse the other options though, so I'm still mulling it over. And the electricity bill those amps would generate...
The Dacmagic acquitted itself very well, and gave the MF amp a touch more Air at the cost of a little 3-dimensionality. Given I already own it I see no reason to buy the MF Dac; they're pretty much as good as each other. The MF HPA on the other hand is significantly better than my old Earmax in all respects except airiness, so it's currently doing service in my system. It was brand new when I got it on loan, and I only had a chance to run it for 24 hours (continuously) before testing. The sound changed a fair bit in that time iirc, but it still has that slight sense of claustrophobia. I suspect on the HD650s I wouldn't notice it, but one of the reasons I bought the 800s was for their open window like presentation. I'll keep running it for a few more days and see if it opens up any more. Its currently my best option, and it gives the 800s some kick-ass bass if the volume is cranked up, but I can't ignore that clautrophobia.
Does anyone have any other suggestions for amps available in the UK?
