Didn't have my mainline when I picked up Utopia. I've learned though, that Utopia is happiest with very very low output impedance (amp). I'd say no more than a few Ohms at the most. Don't remember the specs for mainline 'Z' out, but amps with low output impedance tend to drive Utopia better.

I'm running a Norne S2 with HE1KV2 - stellar cable. Quite a bit more expensive though. Stock cable is pretty good IMO - but sonics can be improved with a cable upgrade. Take care though - not all silver cables perform in a similar fashion, and are generally to be avoided if your chain tends...

wow.

There are a handful of things that can be swapped or upgraded (output resistors / caps come to mind). You don't need to (the amp is well designed, and the BOM is solid), but you can if you want to squeeze more out of it. I went with custom Silk power and output transformers - c-core. Don't have...

^ What he said :-)   Glad you mentioned the case - didn't want to 'out' your efforts; cause if I was reading this, building this amp, and you weren't making it for me.... I'd be dogging ya! 

Not Sceleratus, but I'm pretty confident he (and Tom, the designer provider of this information) wouldn't mind. I've built the same amp, and Sceleratus and I but implemented the same basic 'LPAD' circuit that Tom provided. I've attached it below. This allows us to switch between speaker taps and...

Thought it proper to chime in here regarding the new S2 cable, as it's possible I may have the first one in the wild. As a user of the Silvergarde S, I was curious if the S2 would address the few 'nits' I had with the Silvergarde (which itself was the best silver cable I'd heard to date). My...

@sceleratus  - awesome work! It's gonna be great to see this come together; thanks again for taking it on!

I've owned Silver Dragons, and now own a Norne Silvergarde; I can tell you with certainty that one of these is not like the other one (sonically). Nornes pure stranded silver cables are a cut above, with none of the thin, brittle, harsh sonics that other silver cables often bring.

Hey!   Apologies - Not sure what's going on communication wise. I sent you an email a couple of days ago asking for your shipping address. Also, just checked my junk folder; nothing in there from you (or anyone) unanswered. Anyway, glad yo posted here. Please verify you're emailing to...

There isn't a better choice out there in this price range.

Heh. Yea, I was scratching my head on that one too.

Awesome Tom! This amp is unique (sonically, design), and non-builders should have a chance at it.

Cool. Early impressions are welcome too - we wouldn't hold you to them :-)

The kit is available.

Hmm, thanks Doug. T3 must be quite an amp - I've heard L2 a few times and really liked it. I'll take your advice though, T3 it is.

Hey Doug - I'm thinking about picking up your L2 MB as a build over winter. Would I be correct to assume that the custom Cinemag OPTs would work with the L2 also?

I have a couple of khozmo balanced attenuators for sale at diy audio dot com.

My player (Audirvana Plus) uses iZotope for the conversion and does a very good job of converting DSD to PCM for Yggy. Much of my library is SACD too, and sounds wonderful through Yggy (limited by source recording quality, of course).

Thanks a bunch for rounding this up Steve (Asr)!   Just got back from the airport; had to leave a bit earlier than I wanted to pick up the wife.   Bottom line: great meet! I have some photos I'll upload sometime this weekend.

This impression has only strengthened with more listening. Further, I believe many of the early reviews / conclusions will change or evolve as we recalibrate our assumptions / expectations - which frame our listening experience. Don't want to get too abstract or conceptual here, so I'll just say...

Agreed. I re-terminated my Silver Poison (Silver, Gold infused) last night and it's an improvement (IMO) over stock.

I think some actual beta testers are struggling a bit with describing how this headphone performs. The combination of driver surface area, extremely low mass, new / optimized magnet structure - we're experiencing a headphone that can respond extremely quickly to impulse, without the 'edges'...

Well, another data point then; I have the HD800, listened to the HE-6 for years - I do not hear the HE-1000 as slower than those. Here's another way to think of it; for this headphone to handle sub-bass as it does with the very high level of detail in mids/highs; it has to be pretty damn fast.

  There's nothing remotely slow about the HE-1000; it's lightning quick.