After all that I've learned mucking about with the Zero DAC, I've been pondering a new HP amp that is either all discrete (without opamps) or one that I that had socketed opamps that I could replace with discrete units (HDAMs).
After Audio-gd was discovered by others in the Zero DAC thread, I naturally had a look around their (his?) site and discovered the all-discrete* C-2C headphone amp for about the same price as a Little Dot MKV, at US$330. Hmm...too good to pass that one up, so after Kingwa, the owner (?) of Audio-gd had burned in one for 100 hours, he sent it off to me for $300.
First impressions with my Lavry DA-10 as the DAC are what I expected - a significant step up in SQ -- my HD650s starting to reveal what they are really capable of and my MD5000's bass getting some serious punch. However, the real fun came when I pulled open my MKV and put two HDAMs in place of the opamps. The normally neutral and un-imposing MKV suddenly jumped out with a degree of musicality and detail I hadn't expected.
However, my Lavry DA10 is running in unbalanced mode (the C2C has options balanced inputs though is single-ended in output) as I'm waiting on some nice new XLR and RCA cables and burning in a bunch of HDAMs before I get into any serious evaluation.
We might have found a new benchmark at the $300 price point, if the popularity of the MKV is anything to go by.
This is going to get interesting... (and the SQ and my listening enjoyment is increasing).
*The OPA2134 opamp in it is in the DC, not signal circuit.
After Audio-gd was discovered by others in the Zero DAC thread, I naturally had a look around their (his?) site and discovered the all-discrete* C-2C headphone amp for about the same price as a Little Dot MKV, at US$330. Hmm...too good to pass that one up, so after Kingwa, the owner (?) of Audio-gd had burned in one for 100 hours, he sent it off to me for $300.
First impressions with my Lavry DA-10 as the DAC are what I expected - a significant step up in SQ -- my HD650s starting to reveal what they are really capable of and my MD5000's bass getting some serious punch. However, the real fun came when I pulled open my MKV and put two HDAMs in place of the opamps. The normally neutral and un-imposing MKV suddenly jumped out with a degree of musicality and detail I hadn't expected.
However, my Lavry DA10 is running in unbalanced mode (the C2C has options balanced inputs though is single-ended in output) as I'm waiting on some nice new XLR and RCA cables and burning in a bunch of HDAMs before I get into any serious evaluation.
We might have found a new benchmark at the $300 price point, if the popularity of the MKV is anything to go by.
This is going to get interesting... (and the SQ and my listening enjoyment is increasing).
*The OPA2134 opamp in it is in the DC, not signal circuit.
