olek
100+ Head-Fier
- Joined
- Jun 30, 2008
- Posts
- 246
- Likes
- 48
BTW - just in case any of you with Sennheiser's are interested, bottlehead crack with speedball is on sale right now, bringing its price down from $400 to $300. I could not help to order one since it is known as THE amp for high impedance Sennheisers. Very curious how tubes technology will stack up to H10's solid state.
Ah, and another thing. Got power amp section of amazing TOTL vintage integrated amplifier I am restoring now (Teac AS-200) completely back in shape (repaired, recapped with best nichicon audio grade caps and adjusted), and could not help the temptation to connect it via 'power amp in' (to avoid mess of pre-amp) and compare side-to-side with H10. To my surprise, it was quite similar, with only slightly boomier bass being the difference. No wonder, 400 Ohm output impedance is not really helping to keep bass in check. Changed headphone out resistor matrix to kick impedance down to 10 Ohm, cranked up the volume (40v power rail to the rescue!), tried again, and... wow. Overall sound very similar to H10, a tiniest bit less warm. Going back and forth number of times confirmed amazing similarities, although no miracles - H10 still wins easily on details and transparency, although on bad recordings or lossy music vintage amp can be more 'musical' (by virtue of omission). Still, tonal similarity between them is uncanny. Audio-gd Precision one is distinct in its lushness. And 1020 preamp got very distinct coloration and slight V-shape to its sound. But AS-200 and H10 are like brothers, although 40 years of age difference are easy to spot.
And than, after playing high bitrate mp3 of 'Ar Maen Bihan' by Yann Tiersen on all my amps, I just had to play same thing on vinyl through H10. OMG. This is seriously addictive.
Ah, and another thing. Got power amp section of amazing TOTL vintage integrated amplifier I am restoring now (Teac AS-200) completely back in shape (repaired, recapped with best nichicon audio grade caps and adjusted), and could not help the temptation to connect it via 'power amp in' (to avoid mess of pre-amp) and compare side-to-side with H10. To my surprise, it was quite similar, with only slightly boomier bass being the difference. No wonder, 400 Ohm output impedance is not really helping to keep bass in check. Changed headphone out resistor matrix to kick impedance down to 10 Ohm, cranked up the volume (40v power rail to the rescue!), tried again, and... wow. Overall sound very similar to H10, a tiniest bit less warm. Going back and forth number of times confirmed amazing similarities, although no miracles - H10 still wins easily on details and transparency, although on bad recordings or lossy music vintage amp can be more 'musical' (by virtue of omission). Still, tonal similarity between them is uncanny. Audio-gd Precision one is distinct in its lushness. And 1020 preamp got very distinct coloration and slight V-shape to its sound. But AS-200 and H10 are like brothers, although 40 years of age difference are easy to spot.
And than, after playing high bitrate mp3 of 'Ar Maen Bihan' by Yann Tiersen on all my amps, I just had to play same thing on vinyl through H10. OMG. This is seriously addictive.