superjohny
500+ Head-Fier
- Joined
- Jun 4, 2005
- Posts
- 510
- Likes
- 42
having received ref1 for about two weeks and managed to have about 10 hours listening. I just had about 2hrs of serious listening and wanting to drop some impressions.guess to me, there is this absolute aspect that stands out is the bass and mid bass.the bass has such rich body with texture and hits so so hard. it doesn't hit overly deep (i am just saying not the deepest but still deep overall) but once it hits its bottom, it kinda rebounds back a bit making it feels like its very flexible (or 'controlled' to put it in another word)
ref1 is extremely musical to me that it brings the overall involvement by bring overall one step towards you compared to 1plus2. soundstage is smaller than 1plus2 but there is some midbass hump that creates some airyness and space. again, these bring musical further towards you and make you more involved.
I am having this feeling if Gavin specifically tuned ref1 so that it makes people enjoy the high quality music rather than analysing the good and bad. if this is his intention then he's made such success. i several times tried to analyst the music but end up just purely enjoy the music after a while.
but the for-going is tha ref1 loses some transparency and detail compared to 1plus2. high doesn't extend too much and mid is on the thick side. There is nothing bad but it's just different tuning i guess. using audio-gd's description, 1plus2 would be analytically and ref1 is musical.
btw, i am using dx100->uber->ref1
one thing i wished a bit more is that if vocal could be brought more forward that would be fantastic.
overall i recon there is plenty of musical involvement out of ref1 and you can purely enjoy the music...
havent read other head-fiers comment, are we similar?
by by the way, anyone in melbourne has ak240? just wanted to grab a feel if it is worth upgrading dx100 to ak240....maybe we can have a mini one on one meet....
ref1 is extremely musical to me that it brings the overall involvement by bring overall one step towards you compared to 1plus2. soundstage is smaller than 1plus2 but there is some midbass hump that creates some airyness and space. again, these bring musical further towards you and make you more involved.
I am having this feeling if Gavin specifically tuned ref1 so that it makes people enjoy the high quality music rather than analysing the good and bad. if this is his intention then he's made such success. i several times tried to analyst the music but end up just purely enjoy the music after a while.
but the for-going is tha ref1 loses some transparency and detail compared to 1plus2. high doesn't extend too much and mid is on the thick side. There is nothing bad but it's just different tuning i guess. using audio-gd's description, 1plus2 would be analytically and ref1 is musical.
btw, i am using dx100->uber->ref1
one thing i wished a bit more is that if vocal could be brought more forward that would be fantastic.
overall i recon there is plenty of musical involvement out of ref1 and you can purely enjoy the music...
havent read other head-fiers comment, are we similar?
by by the way, anyone in melbourne has ak240? just wanted to grab a feel if it is worth upgrading dx100 to ak240....maybe we can have a mini one on one meet....