hahahigh
100+ Head-Fier
- Joined
- Oct 16, 2005
- Posts
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- 10
Hello everyone!
This month marks a very special time for me - the setup of my first non-portable and truly expensive headphone rig. The Denon D7000 came June 30th from J&R, the Audio GD DAC19 and its matching amp the C2 from Pacific Valve a week later on July 9th. Now that they have had an opportunity to settle down a bit, and now that I have gotten a chance to accustom myself with their sound, I wanted to share with you some of my initial impressions. You all have been unimaginably helpful to me on my quest to find the right equipment. It is my hopes that this write-up will be of some little use to someone out there too. Happy reading, everybody.
Background:
My journey began, as so many often do, in the world of portability. I stumbled across Head-Fi several years ago during a search for a pair of cheap, closed phones. At that time, I was using the little brother of the AKG K81DJ - a petite little thing called the K26P - driven straight from the headphone jack of the 1st generation iPod nano. After some careful browsing,I eventually ended up upgrading to a pair of K81DJ, then subsequently the Audio Technical ES7 (which, at that point, was as popular as the M50 is now).
I wandered around this bracket and price range for several years, choosing inexpensive and ultimately temporary solutions - the EP630, the KSC75, both the PK3 and PK2. Perhaps it was due to the rough nature of portable usage or, perhaps, my own admittedly careless personality, that all of them ended up breaking. I suppose most phones (the Yuin earbuds seemed particularly prone to accidents) could not accommodate being stuffed into a backpack and dragged to a number of different places every single day. Somewhere down the road, I got too caught up in the extreme hype that surrounded portable hi-fi at that time, going out of my way to pair these phones with a dedicated LOD and the PA2V2 amp, as well as ripping my music at a higher bitrate. I eventually found that it was nearly impossible to discern the difference with true on-the-go usage. After awhile, I grew disillusioned and then disinterested. When my last pair of phones broke, I did not replace them.
For awhile, I dropped the habit of having music in my ears wherever I walked. Most of my listening was relegated to a pair of Logitech speakers hooked up to my beloved computer. My bed-fi listening was done with a pair of trusty old Sony headphones that looked like they were invented with the Walkman. Fast forward nearly a year, and I have the Alessandro MS1i at my door, having finally grown tired of the Sonys. I was surprised to find that I was (and remain) unimpressed with their SQ, despite their numerous praises and accolades. With the stock comfies (even quarter-modded), I found them muffled, and the highs with the bowls were uncomfortable at best and intolerable at worst. I also shed tears over the bass (or lack thereof). True to form, they are spectacular with rock, but I unfortunately find them lacking with most other genres. To be fair, the MS1i's have improved with time, although all the "burn-in" that they have been exposed to has been done with them on my head, so whether this change is physical or psychological is difficult to determine.
Based on my experience with the MS1i, I surmised that I would be better suited to a can with more bass and less prominent highs. I chose a closed phone because 1) I believe I may be more compatible with their general sound signature, having liked both the K81DJ as well as the ES7 and 2) I will be transitioning to a dorm environment next year – my roommate is my best friend of many years, and personal experience has taught us that she cannot stand my music and I cannot tolerate hers. Thus, contracts bound with blood have been set out stipulating the mandatory use of headphones that do not leak, in order to preserve both of our sanities.
I cobbled together the money for this rig from various summer jobs, and limited myself to a $1500 budget. It was an easy journey to the D7000 – their reputation of being an excellent all-around can, a bass powerhouse, and a stellar pairing with mainstream rock and pop made them a clear frontrunner from the very beginning. The Audio GD pairing came with more deliberation. I had my heart set on a matching DAC + amp combo for aesthetic and synergistic reasons, and would have loved to have the upcoming Musical Fidelity M1 pair. Unfortunately, that was wildly beyond my price range. Of all the ones that fell within my budget, the Audio GD DAC19 and C2 were my favorite.
My Listening Preferences:
My love for music extends to most genres - I will listen to just about anything depending on what I feel and how I'm feeling, and my library does reflect that eclectic whimsicality. About half of my music is mainstream pop/rock, composing of various "Billboard Top 40" songs mostly dating from the 60s to the present. The other half covers everything else under the sun; Arabic, Asian pop, trailer music, Vietnamese, ska, easy listening, trance, reggae, oldies, Bollywood, Disney, jazz, R&B, Latin, etc etc. Thus, the question becomes less of what I do listen to and more what I don't listen to. And to answer this: of all the genres I am familiar with, I would have to guess I dabble the least in metal and country.
I listen at a moderate volume level (about 75-90 decibels). My listening sessions tend to be short. In terms of a preferred sound signature, musicality would have to be my first and foremost priority. That is how I measure the quality of all equipment. I don't particularly care what a can or a pair of speakers sound like as long as it makes me feel like getting up and dancing. Because of this, please take my opinion with several huge grains of salt - what makes me feel like dancing may do the opposite to another person.
Setup:
Foobar/WASAPI --> Auvio Coaxial Cable --> Audio GD DAC19 --> Audio GD ACSS Cable --> Audio GD C2 --> Denon D7000
The equalizer is not enabled. There are no sound processing effects.
I picked ten different songs to comprise a test playlist before the delivery of the D7000, to ensure that I wouldn’t simply be giving my impressions with the songs that sounded best on the headphones. I tried to pick ones with different sounds from a variety of different genres. All files are in either 320kbps or FLAC format. Here is the list:
1) “Beat It”, by Michael Jackson (Pop)
2) “Dancing Jodi”, from the Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi OST (Bollywood)
3) “Nothing At All”, by Santana (Latin)
4) “Victory (Mike Batt Mix)”, by Bond (Contemporary Classical)
5) “Love Cats”, by The Cure (Rock)
6) “Sway”, by Michael Bublé (Jazz)
7) “Cherry Lips (Go Baby Go)”, by Garbage (Rock)
8) “Bombay”, by Timbaland (Hip-Hop)
9) “The Best”, by Tina Turner (Soft Rock)
10) “What Is This Feeling?", from the Wicked Soundtrack (Broadway)
Unfortunately, my audiophile vocabulary is non-existent, and I have a lot of trouble describing specific sounds, so please excuse my coarse descriptions as I try to fumble through these initial impressions.
Initial Impressions:
If there is one quality this rig does not lack for, it is impact. The D7000 hit low and hit deep, blessed and armed with a powerful punch that reaches into your chest to rattle your rib bones. Instruments are given a more frontal presentation – because of this, voices, both male and female, do tend to take a backseat to the harmony. The Denons do not breathe directly into your ear but instead sings along from a more remote location several inches away. This recession works well with some songs but does become a flaw with others – Barry Manilow in “Copacabana” and Carly Simon in “You’re So Vain”, for example, both sound vaguely distant, as do a small number of rock songs. Separation and detail is excellent, as are female vocals (Susan Boyle, Whitney Houston, Diana Krall, Alison Krauss). Sibilance is noticeable on a few tracks, and is particularly obvious with songs from the Vietnamese language, which treats the “x” sounds as a hissed “s”.
I am very pleased with the soundstage of the D7000, which is expansive enough to feel realistic and intimate enough to feel immersive. I am even more pleased with the bottom end of the Denons. It is not the type of visceral bass you would get from a full speaker system, but it is unapologetically strong, impactful, and above all satisfying. This quality manifests itself clearly with upbeat dance tracks such as “Dancing Jodi”, a bassy, picky song that can be rendered anemic with the wrong equipment. The Denons smash all the low notes out of the park and allows the song to aptly live up to its namesake. The same concept applies to Jackson’s “Beat It” – the drums become alive and jarring right inside your head – and “Smooth Criminal”, in which the heartbeats are as real as any I have ever heard. The Denons playfully show more of their home theater-esque sound on Timbaland’s “Bombay”, a hard-hitting hip-hop track with Indian-inspired female background vocalization. The sound is not such that I am able to delude myself into thinking that I am listening to headphones instead of speakers, but it is compelling enough so that I feel as if I do not mind.
At the same time, the heavy bass – while never quite climbing to an overwhelming pinnacle – does become unnecessary on some tracks (for example, Garbage’s “Cherry Lips”, Tina Turner’s “The Best”, The Weather Girls’ “It’s Raining Men”). It does not detract from my enjoyment of the songs, but I wouldn't complain if there was less. With this said, I have experienced no issues with the rumored bloating and boominess. The bass that I hear seems tight and well-controlled to my ears – it’s just that sometimes there’s just a tad too much.
I absolutely love the smoothness of the D7000. The Denons do very well at instrumental reproduction. Pianos sound soft and real, I have never heard guitar plucking sound so very crisp and crystal clear as Santana’s introduction of “Nothing At All.” It is here the impact of the Denons truly makes itself felt, as it reproduces the illusion that the instrument being played is before your eyes, behind your head, by your ears. This same phenomenon applies to other acoustic tracks not on the list – off the top of my head, Clapton’s unplugged version of “Layla”, and even more recent popish tracks such as Enrique Iglesias’s “Tired Of Being Sorry” and Mariah Carey’s “My All”. Similarly, the Denons also do well with bass guitar (Jet’s “Cold Hearted Bitch”), kick drums, and cymbals, but lack the rawness needed to emulate grittier rock (Alice Cooper’s “Poison”).
The D7000 is not a particularly revealing or fussy phone – even most 128kbps tracks will sound good, even if the occasional snap, crackle, and pop is considerably more noticeable than with a more forgiving can. They do show glimpses of their bright nature on some tracks, but the treble can be safely characterized as prominent and not particularly bothersome (unlike that of the MS1). The reviews have spoken true – the Denons are indeed versatile and adaptable, but beyond that are an outstanding match for all types of pop and hip-hop, due to their bassy nature and fun presentation. With jazz (Michael Bublé, Sade) and classical they cease to be excellent and become merely a competent match – I was pleased but not overwhelmed by their prowess with violin (see the Bond quartet’s “Victory”) and saxophone-heavy passages (“Sing Sing Sing (With A Swing)” by Louis Prima).
I am certain that a solid part of this performance can be attributed to the Audio GD equipment. Although I have focused on and referred exclusively to the D7000 up until this point in the review, please consider this more as a comprehensive look at the entire rig rather than just the headphone component. At this time, I have no other sources that can accommodate the ¼ jack of the D7000 and thus have no basis of comparison – perhaps an adapter is in order for the near future. I will say, however, that the Audio GD gear is well constructed (I have a soft spot for components with solid heft and build – miniaturization is overrated), that even my sub-par Logitech speakers sound considerably better when sourced from the DAC19 versus my onboard sound, and that the C2 is a good preamp and makes switching between speakers and headphones an absolute breeze.
Conclusion:
All hobbies suffer from the scale of diminishing returns, and hi-fi is no different. The DAC19 + C2 + D7000 combo costs nearly 15 times as much as my MS1, delivered. Does it sound nearly 15 times better? I am listening to them now as I am finishing this review (Chris De Burgh's "Lady In Red"), and I am adoring what I am hearing. But as brilliant as they are, and as much as I enjoy them, I would argue for an absolute no. In fact, I would be hesitant to say they sound half again as good. For all their strengths, the Denons also clearly present their weaknesses. At the end of the day, is this enough to justify the price?
In making this decision, I agonized for months over the perfect setup at the perfect price. Would I have been better off choosing a reasonably-sized speaker setup, dorm contract be damned? Should I have opted instead for an expensive pair of custom IEMs? Was the entire ordeal worth it? Perhaps. But maybe not. All I can say is that my mother, who has never held any ounce of interest for headphones or sound reproduction throughout her life, and who was horrified upon hearing the price I paid for this rig, now consistently sets aside time nearly every night to listen to my setup. If nothing else, this makes no regrets.
Picture, taken from my iPhone:
This month marks a very special time for me - the setup of my first non-portable and truly expensive headphone rig. The Denon D7000 came June 30th from J&R, the Audio GD DAC19 and its matching amp the C2 from Pacific Valve a week later on July 9th. Now that they have had an opportunity to settle down a bit, and now that I have gotten a chance to accustom myself with their sound, I wanted to share with you some of my initial impressions. You all have been unimaginably helpful to me on my quest to find the right equipment. It is my hopes that this write-up will be of some little use to someone out there too. Happy reading, everybody.
Background:
My journey began, as so many often do, in the world of portability. I stumbled across Head-Fi several years ago during a search for a pair of cheap, closed phones. At that time, I was using the little brother of the AKG K81DJ - a petite little thing called the K26P - driven straight from the headphone jack of the 1st generation iPod nano. After some careful browsing,I eventually ended up upgrading to a pair of K81DJ, then subsequently the Audio Technical ES7 (which, at that point, was as popular as the M50 is now).
I wandered around this bracket and price range for several years, choosing inexpensive and ultimately temporary solutions - the EP630, the KSC75, both the PK3 and PK2. Perhaps it was due to the rough nature of portable usage or, perhaps, my own admittedly careless personality, that all of them ended up breaking. I suppose most phones (the Yuin earbuds seemed particularly prone to accidents) could not accommodate being stuffed into a backpack and dragged to a number of different places every single day. Somewhere down the road, I got too caught up in the extreme hype that surrounded portable hi-fi at that time, going out of my way to pair these phones with a dedicated LOD and the PA2V2 amp, as well as ripping my music at a higher bitrate. I eventually found that it was nearly impossible to discern the difference with true on-the-go usage. After awhile, I grew disillusioned and then disinterested. When my last pair of phones broke, I did not replace them.
For awhile, I dropped the habit of having music in my ears wherever I walked. Most of my listening was relegated to a pair of Logitech speakers hooked up to my beloved computer. My bed-fi listening was done with a pair of trusty old Sony headphones that looked like they were invented with the Walkman. Fast forward nearly a year, and I have the Alessandro MS1i at my door, having finally grown tired of the Sonys. I was surprised to find that I was (and remain) unimpressed with their SQ, despite their numerous praises and accolades. With the stock comfies (even quarter-modded), I found them muffled, and the highs with the bowls were uncomfortable at best and intolerable at worst. I also shed tears over the bass (or lack thereof). True to form, they are spectacular with rock, but I unfortunately find them lacking with most other genres. To be fair, the MS1i's have improved with time, although all the "burn-in" that they have been exposed to has been done with them on my head, so whether this change is physical or psychological is difficult to determine.
Based on my experience with the MS1i, I surmised that I would be better suited to a can with more bass and less prominent highs. I chose a closed phone because 1) I believe I may be more compatible with their general sound signature, having liked both the K81DJ as well as the ES7 and 2) I will be transitioning to a dorm environment next year – my roommate is my best friend of many years, and personal experience has taught us that she cannot stand my music and I cannot tolerate hers. Thus, contracts bound with blood have been set out stipulating the mandatory use of headphones that do not leak, in order to preserve both of our sanities.
I cobbled together the money for this rig from various summer jobs, and limited myself to a $1500 budget. It was an easy journey to the D7000 – their reputation of being an excellent all-around can, a bass powerhouse, and a stellar pairing with mainstream rock and pop made them a clear frontrunner from the very beginning. The Audio GD pairing came with more deliberation. I had my heart set on a matching DAC + amp combo for aesthetic and synergistic reasons, and would have loved to have the upcoming Musical Fidelity M1 pair. Unfortunately, that was wildly beyond my price range. Of all the ones that fell within my budget, the Audio GD DAC19 and C2 were my favorite.
My Listening Preferences:
My love for music extends to most genres - I will listen to just about anything depending on what I feel and how I'm feeling, and my library does reflect that eclectic whimsicality. About half of my music is mainstream pop/rock, composing of various "Billboard Top 40" songs mostly dating from the 60s to the present. The other half covers everything else under the sun; Arabic, Asian pop, trailer music, Vietnamese, ska, easy listening, trance, reggae, oldies, Bollywood, Disney, jazz, R&B, Latin, etc etc. Thus, the question becomes less of what I do listen to and more what I don't listen to. And to answer this: of all the genres I am familiar with, I would have to guess I dabble the least in metal and country.
I listen at a moderate volume level (about 75-90 decibels). My listening sessions tend to be short. In terms of a preferred sound signature, musicality would have to be my first and foremost priority. That is how I measure the quality of all equipment. I don't particularly care what a can or a pair of speakers sound like as long as it makes me feel like getting up and dancing. Because of this, please take my opinion with several huge grains of salt - what makes me feel like dancing may do the opposite to another person.
Setup:
Foobar/WASAPI --> Auvio Coaxial Cable --> Audio GD DAC19 --> Audio GD ACSS Cable --> Audio GD C2 --> Denon D7000
The equalizer is not enabled. There are no sound processing effects.
I picked ten different songs to comprise a test playlist before the delivery of the D7000, to ensure that I wouldn’t simply be giving my impressions with the songs that sounded best on the headphones. I tried to pick ones with different sounds from a variety of different genres. All files are in either 320kbps or FLAC format. Here is the list:
1) “Beat It”, by Michael Jackson (Pop)
2) “Dancing Jodi”, from the Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi OST (Bollywood)
3) “Nothing At All”, by Santana (Latin)
4) “Victory (Mike Batt Mix)”, by Bond (Contemporary Classical)
5) “Love Cats”, by The Cure (Rock)
6) “Sway”, by Michael Bublé (Jazz)
7) “Cherry Lips (Go Baby Go)”, by Garbage (Rock)
8) “Bombay”, by Timbaland (Hip-Hop)
9) “The Best”, by Tina Turner (Soft Rock)
10) “What Is This Feeling?", from the Wicked Soundtrack (Broadway)
Unfortunately, my audiophile vocabulary is non-existent, and I have a lot of trouble describing specific sounds, so please excuse my coarse descriptions as I try to fumble through these initial impressions.
Initial Impressions:
If there is one quality this rig does not lack for, it is impact. The D7000 hit low and hit deep, blessed and armed with a powerful punch that reaches into your chest to rattle your rib bones. Instruments are given a more frontal presentation – because of this, voices, both male and female, do tend to take a backseat to the harmony. The Denons do not breathe directly into your ear but instead sings along from a more remote location several inches away. This recession works well with some songs but does become a flaw with others – Barry Manilow in “Copacabana” and Carly Simon in “You’re So Vain”, for example, both sound vaguely distant, as do a small number of rock songs. Separation and detail is excellent, as are female vocals (Susan Boyle, Whitney Houston, Diana Krall, Alison Krauss). Sibilance is noticeable on a few tracks, and is particularly obvious with songs from the Vietnamese language, which treats the “x” sounds as a hissed “s”.
I am very pleased with the soundstage of the D7000, which is expansive enough to feel realistic and intimate enough to feel immersive. I am even more pleased with the bottom end of the Denons. It is not the type of visceral bass you would get from a full speaker system, but it is unapologetically strong, impactful, and above all satisfying. This quality manifests itself clearly with upbeat dance tracks such as “Dancing Jodi”, a bassy, picky song that can be rendered anemic with the wrong equipment. The Denons smash all the low notes out of the park and allows the song to aptly live up to its namesake. The same concept applies to Jackson’s “Beat It” – the drums become alive and jarring right inside your head – and “Smooth Criminal”, in which the heartbeats are as real as any I have ever heard. The Denons playfully show more of their home theater-esque sound on Timbaland’s “Bombay”, a hard-hitting hip-hop track with Indian-inspired female background vocalization. The sound is not such that I am able to delude myself into thinking that I am listening to headphones instead of speakers, but it is compelling enough so that I feel as if I do not mind.
At the same time, the heavy bass – while never quite climbing to an overwhelming pinnacle – does become unnecessary on some tracks (for example, Garbage’s “Cherry Lips”, Tina Turner’s “The Best”, The Weather Girls’ “It’s Raining Men”). It does not detract from my enjoyment of the songs, but I wouldn't complain if there was less. With this said, I have experienced no issues with the rumored bloating and boominess. The bass that I hear seems tight and well-controlled to my ears – it’s just that sometimes there’s just a tad too much.
I absolutely love the smoothness of the D7000. The Denons do very well at instrumental reproduction. Pianos sound soft and real, I have never heard guitar plucking sound so very crisp and crystal clear as Santana’s introduction of “Nothing At All.” It is here the impact of the Denons truly makes itself felt, as it reproduces the illusion that the instrument being played is before your eyes, behind your head, by your ears. This same phenomenon applies to other acoustic tracks not on the list – off the top of my head, Clapton’s unplugged version of “Layla”, and even more recent popish tracks such as Enrique Iglesias’s “Tired Of Being Sorry” and Mariah Carey’s “My All”. Similarly, the Denons also do well with bass guitar (Jet’s “Cold Hearted Bitch”), kick drums, and cymbals, but lack the rawness needed to emulate grittier rock (Alice Cooper’s “Poison”).
The D7000 is not a particularly revealing or fussy phone – even most 128kbps tracks will sound good, even if the occasional snap, crackle, and pop is considerably more noticeable than with a more forgiving can. They do show glimpses of their bright nature on some tracks, but the treble can be safely characterized as prominent and not particularly bothersome (unlike that of the MS1). The reviews have spoken true – the Denons are indeed versatile and adaptable, but beyond that are an outstanding match for all types of pop and hip-hop, due to their bassy nature and fun presentation. With jazz (Michael Bublé, Sade) and classical they cease to be excellent and become merely a competent match – I was pleased but not overwhelmed by their prowess with violin (see the Bond quartet’s “Victory”) and saxophone-heavy passages (“Sing Sing Sing (With A Swing)” by Louis Prima).
I am certain that a solid part of this performance can be attributed to the Audio GD equipment. Although I have focused on and referred exclusively to the D7000 up until this point in the review, please consider this more as a comprehensive look at the entire rig rather than just the headphone component. At this time, I have no other sources that can accommodate the ¼ jack of the D7000 and thus have no basis of comparison – perhaps an adapter is in order for the near future. I will say, however, that the Audio GD gear is well constructed (I have a soft spot for components with solid heft and build – miniaturization is overrated), that even my sub-par Logitech speakers sound considerably better when sourced from the DAC19 versus my onboard sound, and that the C2 is a good preamp and makes switching between speakers and headphones an absolute breeze.
Conclusion:
All hobbies suffer from the scale of diminishing returns, and hi-fi is no different. The DAC19 + C2 + D7000 combo costs nearly 15 times as much as my MS1, delivered. Does it sound nearly 15 times better? I am listening to them now as I am finishing this review (Chris De Burgh's "Lady In Red"), and I am adoring what I am hearing. But as brilliant as they are, and as much as I enjoy them, I would argue for an absolute no. In fact, I would be hesitant to say they sound half again as good. For all their strengths, the Denons also clearly present their weaknesses. At the end of the day, is this enough to justify the price?
In making this decision, I agonized for months over the perfect setup at the perfect price. Would I have been better off choosing a reasonably-sized speaker setup, dorm contract be damned? Should I have opted instead for an expensive pair of custom IEMs? Was the entire ordeal worth it? Perhaps. But maybe not. All I can say is that my mother, who has never held any ounce of interest for headphones or sound reproduction throughout her life, and who was horrified upon hearing the price I paid for this rig, now consistently sets aside time nearly every night to listen to my setup. If nothing else, this makes no regrets.
Picture, taken from my iPhone:
