burson new soloist headphone amp - Page 49

Your ears won't be able to take the volume at clipping to hear it ;)

Dear Mike,

 

Clipping is one of the most exasperating types of sound distortion to hear, so it's pretty audible - no doubt about it (Hot Chocolate).

 

Burson didn't answer to the same question as Solude did when he told you about clipping, so they are both right in saying what they each say.

 

And finally (CeCe Peniston), as Solude said, with such a powerful amp as the Soloist and with the LCD2, at a certain volume your ears will be severely damaged (if your headphones are on your ears of course ;) ) - then at a higher volume your Soloist will clip (and your LCD2 will probably be damaged).

 

I hope this answers your questions in a nutshell.

And thus, since it's impossible to endure the volumes at which we could actually hear clipping, we are free to use any combination of gain and attenuation, without concern for the fact that clipping can occur with input voltages as low as 1.2V rms, even on Medium gain, not to mention High gain?

 

What concern is there then, for avoiding medium gain and high gain?

 

I'm not trying to take a stand - just trying to understand.

 

All I really care about is audible differences at various combinations of gain and attenuation that deliver the same, desired SPL.   Are there none, despite all the talk of capping out, hitting the ceiling, the Soloist being only theoretically capable of 1500mW when realistically it runs out of juice at 500mW, etc. ?    Is all of that moot?

Once more with feeling...

 

All gain settings have the same sound, power, noise.

 

Higher gains reduce the sweep available, the fine tuning available on the pot.

 

Use the lowest gain possible to have the most fine tuning of the volume available.

 

Thank you Solude... most sincerely.      And you, too, CoolBurn.

 

The bolded portion of your response in the quote, above, contains the answer to the question I had e-mailed to Burson support, and it does indeed agree with the response they gave me.

 

Though very valuable to my understanding of how it all works, I had somehow concluded that everything you had shared with me equated to audible differences in gain settings.   I had never departed from seeking an answer to my original question.

 

Again, my thanks to both of you for your patience.

 

I don't know about you guys, but I'm glad we are finally on the same page(s).  

 

Mike

Edited by zilch0md - 2/20/13 at 5:04am

Hello,

 

As Solude said:

 

 

 

That's the best reason !  Wouldn't it be ridiculous to already reach an unbearable (for your ears) volume at only 10 O'Clock instead of having a bigger sweep available to fine-tune the volume, especially when some are telling bad things about the stepped attenuator by saying the volume changes too much from one step to another ?

 

And besides, by raising the gain you increase the noise generated by the amp, whatever the position of the volume knob.  But this is not the reason in your case, because with the LCD2 and the Soloist you won't be able to hear any hiss from the amp: the amp is just too good and has got an excellent Signal/Noise ratio, I remind you that's the main thing which made me buy it by the way !

 

Except for those reasons, don't hope to find anything else: you'd probably like there is some "magic", some "hidden truth" behind the choice of the gain that would make you choose the "best sound quality" by choosing the "best gain setting", but sorry: no conspiracy here ...

 

:-)

No kidding.  My previous KGSS has huge gain and with a DACT stepped only the first 2 clicks were usable /facepalm  I had to use RCA and attenuators to make the amp usable, ie up into the 9 o'clock region.

The KGSS is for electrostatic headphones (only I presume) if I'm not mistaken, what headphones did you use with it Solude ? :)

 

If it was electrodynamic headphones, the result you are describing was easily predictable I must say ;-)

Stax SR-007MkI :O  Ya the 'hard to drive' estat.  I had to take 14dB off the top to make it usable.

THANK YOU.  Why the freak are we still talking about GAIN SETTINGS?????

Terrible pun aborted.

 

In other news... Still think the Soloist is the best solid state amp in production.  I reserve to change my mind when my B22 and GS-X arrive.  Though having had a balanced B22 and single ended GS-1 before... I expect them to lose.

 

Joy of being an audiophile /facepalm

I spent some time comparing the Soloist with the Schiit Mjolnir and Auralic Taurus, and really preferred the Soloist to the 2 others :-)

If I hadn't landed on getting the SR-009 I probably would be listening to a Soloist with my HD800's right now :-)

On a side note I also spent some time with the Conductor, which is supposedly just a Soloist with a built-in DAC.
I really think they messed up with the DAC, didn't like the Conductor at all :-(

That's how I've read it too.  The DAC portion is ok, $500-$1000 level, but the amp is 1st class.

 

Or to quote the reviewer.  The DAC isn't up to Metrum levels but the amp/pre is incredible value.  Which for me, given the PWD2 smashed the Metrum, meant no Conductor.  The Tenor is apparently not ready driver wise either.

Yeah had a lot of issues getting the USB part to work on the Conductor, especially with stuff over 16/44.1
Optical worked fine tho.

 

Have you evaluated the Bryston BHA-1 as a comparison? I still have not seen any comparative reviews of the Soloist and BHA-1 which I think would be very interesting particularly with headphones like the LCD-2/3 which support XLR balanced connections.