I've realised I left this hanging. Now the heatwave is over and temperatures are back to normal the V280 gets very warm (about thirty-five degrees if I put a cheap thermometer on top), but not excessively hot. The Quad 306 in the same rack gets hotter and that's lasted 20+ years, so I'm not...

Thanks everyone, it is a mini-heatwave at the moment but its in a well ventilated rack. I'll check with Violectric and see what they say.

Hi all, does anyone find their V280 gets very hot? Mine doesn't quite reach the 'too hot to touch' stage, but it's decidedly toasty when I put my hand on top. The volume control also gets very warm as well. It takes a while to warm up, so its not an instant thing, and then it stays constant...

The shoutiness has gone now and there's no weakness in the bass any more. It's a more controlled low end compared to the NAD, without the bloom that the NAD applies to everything. That's both good and bad, depending on the recording quality, but I'm hearing more details in the music than I did...

The balanced adaptor is on its way, although I don't want to lose too much bass (I say hopefully). I had the Schitt Mjolnir before (a year or two ago), so I was always planning on going that way. I just have 2x3pin cable at the moment, which appears to have fallen out of favour with...

Thanks, 30-60 hours isn't too painful. Of course then the adaptor will have turned up and that'll need to run in too :-)

Hi all, I switched from headphone listening to speakers a few years ago, so on the rare occasions I used my HD800 it was on 1970's receivers and 1980's integrated amps. They all had a big, rich, mellifluous sound that I liked, but they lacked the precision or refinement of a good headphone amp...

  I've been buying a lot of vintage kit recently, mostly gear I couldn't afford when it came out 20+ years ago but is now someone's hand-me-down.   I've therefore ended up with a Theta DS Pro Progeny and a Chroma 396 (non-HDCD), amongst others.  Apart from age and the output level on the...

Thanks for the feedback, that's very helpful.  I'm still tempted to stick a DAC option in there to complete the buttons, but it would be a bit of a waste.  Do you know what the 24/192 DAC is comparable to (i.e. V800 - probably optimistic)?

Chalk me up as interested.  I can't get the violectric.de site to work properly though, as the 'links' in grey at the bottom don't appear to be links.  Does anyone know if Violectric offer a 30 day returns policy and what the rules are?  I could order from Thomann but they may not have the right...

I've also joined the PanAm owners club!  I saw the sale and decided to risk it even though I've seen mixed reviews with the HD800s.  I got the Passport as well and they should be arriving on Monday.  I originally ordered the black version but apparently that's discontinued, so I ended up getting...

My 'final' set-up was Sony PCM-D100 -> Chord Hugo -> Earmax Pro (RCA/Mullard) -> HD800, with sysconcept optical cable, Cardas Golden Reference interconnects and Cardas Clear Light headphone cable.  That wasn't a set-up I was perfectly happy with however as the Earmax lacks a little in low end...

Has anyone compared the Bakoon with Red Wine Audio amplifiers?  I'm particularly interested in how they handle the HD800s.

It's been a little while since I reported on the D100 and its been playing merrily away in the background for much of that time.  The batteries in playback mode are lasting a good amount of time and I don't really notice them now, just switching over to the next set of rechargeables every now...

  I've tried using an online UPS, which was completely consistent, but the sound quality didn't meet my needs (HD800s are rather demanding).  I've also tried filters, balanced transformers and a variety of other stuff, most of which brought significant improvements but I've never reached 100%...

I have really bad mains quality which affects all of my kit and I'm slowly going off the grid, with just the amplifier left to go.  I'm looking at options such as RWA and Bakoon, but I'd really be interested to know if I could bypass parts of the Mojo's power circuitry and feed it directly from...

Amplifier/speaker matching is all about synergy and that's just as true with headphones. Just because the Hugo has an amp section doesn't mean it's necessarily the best amplifier to drive every headphone. What I'd really like is a modded Hugo with a car battery driving a beefed up output stage...

I wish it was the perfect combo, I really do, as it would save me a crap-ton of money. It doesn't quite do it for me though so I'm going to need that amp.

Thanks for the feedback. Once I've got my amp sorted and sold all my redundant kit I'll take another look at cabling. I have the horrible feeling I'll want to replace my interconnects too...

Yep, I went for the Cardas Clear Light and had to buy blind as there's no way to test these. I'm very happy with it, but I don't know what I'm missing! If indeed I'm missing anything. What did you think of the Clear?

You have two excellent products that aren't quite as excellent when used together, at least without another excellent product in between them. :-) It goes to show how important system matching is. I would recommend selling neither and getting a decent amp, but I don't know how you use them so...

The HD800s can truly rock, even in a neutral system, so long as they have a powerful and refined amplifier behind them. I'm talking all that speed and transparency combined with bass you can feel in your bones. The best results I got out of mine was from monoblock speaker amps, with the...

  Stick a beefy amp in-between the Hugo and the HD800s and the HD800s can really party.

I've been away on holiday so haven't done much testing.  I took the Sony with me to record some audioscapes but ended up using my camera instead, mostly because it was blowing a gale whilst I was there.  The weather has improved notably now I'm back at work, which is par for the course.   Over...

  Thanks for the heads up.  I only have one 24/192 album but I figured I'd try it again and what do you know, it worked this time!  I checked both internal memory and SD card and both work fine.  Oh well, it was either a burn-in issue or user error.  I suspect I know which.