Check this answer from Axel Grell, one of the creators of IE800. Source: http://gizmodo.com/5949316/ask-one-of-the-worlds-top-headphone-engineers-whatever-you-want What's was the biggest challenge in designing the IE 800s? The biggest challenge was to design a transducers that covers the...

  kovacs: "The Grado SR80 on the other hand sounds terrible in combination with the Dragonfly, lots of hiss, pops and clicks, really unlistenable. Anyone know why ? I tried to connect the Dragonfly to a Jitterbug to see if this was something the jitterbug could help with, but it didn't change...

  Yes, you could say it's built different. It consist of higher quality material as in it's silver plated (solid 5% silver conductors and direct-silver plated male USB contacts). Still it's built to be transparent as in not coloring the sound at all. Then again at that short length a generic...

  I find it lacking some bass (even the K7XX which should have more bass) so that is why I wouldn't call it 'very neutral'. Anyway that term is vague and everyone has an opinion on what's neutral. For me a hp that has a good balance of bass, mids and treble is neutral (not in extremes like...

  Post 138 "I'm quite disappointed. Lots of hype over months, the sound was promised to improve enormously over 1.2. I used to hear with dragonfly 1.2 and AQ jitter bug on PC and could not wait for the new Red to appear. Well the difference is, the Red has more power, is louder, at he same...

  Cables are always a delicate subject. But why would you take his reviews with a heaping bowl of salt because of that single review. He doesn't gain anything in promoting that and why would he put his reputation at stake promoting something that is not good at all. As far as I know he hasn't...

  You make it seem like there is a night and day difference between redbook lossless and Spotify Premium 320 lossy. There is a difference but it's very subtle depending on how complicated the music is. I have most of the DACs mentioned and can hear a clear difference between them all by using...

  On paper 9018 should be better, but that doesn't say much. It is all in the implementation, the white papers you see are theoretical values (best possible). Depending on the implementation perhaps you can get pretty close to these values. For a long time I couldn't understand how ODAC with an...

  There is nothing strange about someone prefering Dragonfly over Mojo. There is no magical device that will make everything sound perfect. Have in mind that there is always Dac/Amp <> Headphone synergy. Some combinations will sound special, some 'meh'. And furthermore everyone has there...

Impressed by the Dragonfly Red. You get a of lot performance for the money, especially when using it together with the Jitterbug (everything it does good gets a little better). To me it's on the same level as a HERUS+ which is twice as expensive DAC/amp. With the Dragonfly Red I would say you...

Using this iPurifier 2 has a couple of benefits. The one that stood out the most for me is soundstage. It´s more "3D"-like to me (depth/width). And this is out of a headphone that I didn't think had that good soundstage in the first place (Focal Spirit Pro). Combining it with Audioquest...

  I have several Furutech cables and they are very high quality cables. I do hear an improvement, but not sure if I could pick out the Furutech from the original in a blind test (haven't tried). Normally when I have the same volume level on the amp and just switch cable it's like the OCC cable...

Have read about others experiencing channel imbalance with this headphone - either bass or vocals. Recently got these and experienced it myself. Channel imbalance for me is very frustrating so I thought maybe I got a bad pair or something. Normally I set the headphone so my ears is in the center...

More testing/impressions: Had a 1st gen Meridian Explorer I wasn't using much. It's the first version which has output impedance of 47 ohm - which later on was substituted with a 5 ohm version. I never bother to send mine in and have it exchanged for the fixed version with lower output...

Have tried more dac/amp combinations and have come to the following conclusion: * T90 seem to benefit from receivers/amps with higher output impedance   Even their own amps like Beyerdynamic A20 has an output impedance of 100 ohms. Almost no one uses that high output impedance on an design...