Hi guys, just wanted to share some night computer writing...posted this on the WA7 forum but since it heavily involves my dearest LCD-3 I thought I'll also post it here
I think one has to post some impressions, so here goes, with a bit of background first. Sorry for the length, but I feel that in order to describe what I feel with the LCD3 on the WA7, I must highlight where I come from, sonically speaking...
I am pretty new to this hobby. I discovered the head-fi world in 2012 with the Shure SRH440 at the time, then SRH1840, then I decided to make the real jump and got the LCD-3 (original non-Fazored).
In parallel I slowly moved the ladder of sound card / amp / DAC, and got for some reason on the way interested in the electrostatic sound. All of which that leads me today to be the happy owner of one Conductor, one Soloist, one Stax SRM-323s amp and the corresponding LCD-3, LCD-XC, and SR-507 cans.
All of these are amazing products that generate exquisite music, with my special personal preference going for the LCD-3. But I was also mesmerized by the ghostly, aerial presentation of the Stax. Dreaming of a phone that could have some, if not all, of the qualities of an electrostat and a planar in one package, I was pretty excited to read about such a combination of sound being mentioned in reviews for the HE-560. A week later, while shopping for something totally unrelated in an audio store, I stumbled upon said HE-560, and impulse-bought it. My flawless logic then led me to be deeply convinced that, since I was again burning money on head-fi, I might as well finish the job properly and finally welcome tubes in my sound life.
A week of head-fi reading later, I had my sights locked on the WA7d + tp duo, mainly because of its looks. No: almost exclusively because of it looks. Sure, it had pretty good reviews, but I honestly didn't really read them. I mean: it was from Woo Audio, and it was, if not expensive in hi-fi terms, at least un-cheap. These two guarantees were the only backing I needed to cave in, given the overwhelming power of the fact that these are maybe the cutest pieces of Hi-Fi I have ever seen. Correlated bonus: extremely high WAF.
In the process of reading about the WA7 on head-fi, I learned about the concept of tube rolling, decided it was the bomb, and in utter - and a bit stupid - blindness ordered Gold Plated tubes for the amp, and those RAF Mullards for the power supply, which seemed to be - at least for several days - the endgame for the tp.
But I had to wait for the Woo for at least a week to begin my tube voyage, so I had a bit of time to play with my impulsively acquired HE-560. I still had after all some good old solid-state sound amping at my disposal. And after trying them out, I was really pleased with their sound when fed by my Conductor. They perform brilliantly, and, to my infinite satisfaction, exactly as expected. This combination is not the point of this write-up (what is?...) but the HE-560 with the Burson offers what I can describe as electrostatic-like precision and speed, coupled with the tactility of a planar. Since the phones were fed by three amps from the same source, I kept switching live between SR-507, LCD-3 and HE-560, and after some semi-serious listening, decided to sonically position Chinese as an almost perfect trade-off between Japanese and American.
So... all this long introduction to basically say that I had already dreamt about, and a probably a bit conceptualized, the sound of the HE-560 on an upgraded WA7d/tp setup. I was for me some kind of tube-lushy electroplanar heaven.
Then the Woo pair finally arrived at my place, got eagerly setup by my trembling hands, and saw the replacement tubes plugged in immediately, without the stock ones being given more than a glance. At last my dream setup was ready to bestow to my ears the truth.
One little hour proved enough to make it painfully obvious: the WA7d/tp + HE-560 combo was...OK.
Pains me to say it, but to my ears, it was OK. Of course, here, OK means already pretty incredible relative to anything other than at least "summit mid-fi". But still, given the reviews of the WA7, of the HE-560, given the raving about these British Royal Air Force tubes, given, given... It was just OK. I was under the utterly horrible and as utterly immediate impression of disappointment. It didn't live to my expectations, and I knew -
knew - that no, in time, it never will. I don't believe in burn-in anyway.
It was just a less than optimal pairing. Instead of an expected just right amount of vitality added to the spectral electrostatic-like sound in the upper medium and treble regions of the HE-560, alongside - of course - a killer bass giving both impact and depth, and all coming together magically to bring me to audio heaven, I obtained what I can describe as a fast but dry, analytical and even at times aggressive sound. The HE-560 kicks and beats and transients and sparkles in all the right spots, but it all seems a bit too digitalized. The sound was still enjoyable, just not at the level I had imaged it would reside. Maybe it was the tube combination, but it just didn't feel right to my ears.
My glorious but useless plan having been, in the course of one listening hour, thrown out of the window, I had to improvise. Preferably fast: buyer's remorse could strike me at any moment. Luckily, the thought process didn't take long: I got up and went for my LCD-3.
Utterly ignorant of what to expect, I plugged the Audeze in the Woo, fired up the Very Best of Supertramp in FLAC, and listened.
Three hours from this moment I can now safely say that I wasn't prepared for this.
I must have heard the Supertramp compilation at least 40 times, and tend to think I know the songs by heart. This, given the relative musical richness of Supertramp, makes for a good comparison point.
But in all honesty I don't think there is much comparison. As much as I love the rest of my gear, I seriously am at a loss of words to describe the increase in overall realism offered by the Woo setup to the LCD-3. As I said I didn't try the stock tubes (both for the amp and the power supply) but I will certainly at some point, in order to determine the impact of the EH / Mullard tubes, i.e. how much do they bring compared to the "basic" WA7d + WA7tp setup. However, in their upgraded state, the Woo boxes send to the LCD what I can only describe as a fuller, more coherent, more natural version of basically every song of Supertramp I ever heard, and probably every other musical piece that I know of.
Incidentally, detail retrieval its stepped up a notch, which in all honesty I find strange, given what I thought I knew about tube amps in general and the DAC part of the WA7 in particular. I
do get more detail when using my LCD-3 with this setup than with the Conductor as DAC / amp. It's a run-down cliché but in these really, really familiar songs of Supertramp, I heard details I never knew were there. However, as much as this comment is to be expected when moving from say a Macbook jack port to a any successful $300 DAC / amp, I was truly astonished to realize it with a highly regarded $2000 setup as reference.
I said the sound was more natural, this is also a cliché but again - cannot find another word. Everything is just more defined, precise, has its place, its natural space. Soundstage is not only wide but seems also "realistically populated". Voice sing, I mean
sing, there do not seem like signals trying, even if with great skill, to pass as voices. The general consistency of the sound was a shock to me. The crazily accurate mids, the intricately detailed highs, and the simply unreal bass...everything has just gone up a notch in terms of realism. A big, big notch. The sound coming from the LCD-3 was for the first time not the result of some really, really good digital-then-analogue reproduction of music, but just music. This step is for me enormous.
I seriously don't know what happens with this particular setup. For the sake of it, I tried the LCD-XC on the WA7 and it wasn't really the same. It was still excellent, but not quite the same. Unfortunately, don't have the X or the 3F to try them out too...
All in all, this long story closes to an end, with what I see as an unexplainable yet dramatically obvious conclusion: there is magic going on with a WA7tp with some Mullard tubes in it connected to a WA7d with some EH Gold tubes in it connected to a LCD-3 classic. I seriously cannot stress that point enough.
And I would be more than delighted to hear others' impressions with this setup, because I think it might be losing it a bit here...