Intro Gustard Audio is a Chinese Audio Company known for making decoders and amplifiers. In the past few years, Gustard has introduced some quite popular and well-received products like the U16 audio interface, the intro level beast X16, re-clocker C16, and its predecessor X26Pro-- X26. X26Pro is the newest modified/upgraded version of X26 which was announced in 2019. Unfortunately, I was not able to get my hands on X26 before it is discontinued. But according to Huang (the lead designer and founder of Gustard), X26 Pro has all-around improvements...

Summit "Guilty Pleasure"—MMR Thummim Review Disclaimer MMR Thummim is loaned from Musicteck.com in exchange for my honest review. MMR Thummim is now available at Musicteck.com. Intro MMR, Metal Magic Research, a new company formed by our old friend Joseph Mou—the man behind Jomo Audio and now MMR. My journey with Jomo Audio was full of pleasant surprises. Samba, Flamenco was my all-time favorite BA IEMs; Trinity refreshed my cognition towards electrostatics drivers. So, when I heard about MMR for the very first time, I was compulsively...

Intro Luxury & Precision is a relatively young Chinese high-end DAP manufacturer. However, this young company had made some well-known DAPs like LP5, L5Pro, and the luxury limited editions: LP5LTD and LP6ti. In 2020, Luxury & Precision announced their new P-series after the L-series and the flagship LP-series. According to Luxury & Precision, P-series will purely focus on sound performance. The key objective of P-series is to deliver an ultra-analog sound to the customers. P6 is the first and the flagship DAP of P-series. In this review, I will...

I received the Meze Empyrean back to late April as a part of the Empyrean tour. I was supposed to finish my review in the middle of May. However, I was extremely busy for the last 2 months, I don’t even have too much time log into my head-fi account. All the scheduled review was delayed in these two months, including the earlier Solaris review, which I received the AMP in February, but the review was done till the end of June. Luckily, I have written a review outline and took enough notes during the testing session which can help me to complete this...

Intro Audiovalve has been a long-time member of the headphone community. I have tried Audiovalve rkv back to the days when I just built up this hobby. It was a great honor to meet with Mr. Becker – the man behind Audiovalve—during Canjam NYC and had a very nice conversation with him. To be honest, I wasn’t intended to buy the Solaris initially, because I have owned Cayin HA300, and I love it. After about 20 mins on spot listening, I decided to buy the Solaris, it is simply amazing in terms of sound quality and versatility. I will introduce more of...

Intro The original Final D8000 was one of my favorites headphones. I was planning to write a review about the original D8000, however, when the review was scheduled I saw this brand-new beauty coming up and so I made my immediate purchase purely based on how much I love the original. After 2 months of experience with D8000 Pro, I can finalize my thought and share some of my impressions with the community. This impression will mainly focus on sound impressions as well as some comparisons with the original D8000 and some other high-end headphones...

Intro Cayin is one of my favorite brands in making amps, dacs and portable players. My experience with Cayin starts from 2014—my first flagship portable player N6. Later, I owned Cayin I5, portable dac C5, and off course my personal favorite HA300 tube amp. In a way, I am one of a few Cayin fans who has witnessed the revolution of Cayin’s tuning ideology. Back to the date, Cayin N6 to me was a crystal clear but cold and sharp reference machine. I5 on the other hand was an extremely warm, meaty but a little muddy player. However, both of them have a...

Intro Last week I was asked to do a review of Sendy Audio Aiva—a new comer planar headphones to the mid-range market. To be honest, I have never heard of neither Sendy nor Aiva before, and I was out of sub $1000 headphones quite a while, so by all means I was not that excited about hearing them. When Aiva was still on the way to my home, I did a little bit research online about Sendy Audio and Aiva. Sendy Audio is a new Chinese headphones manufacturer, Aiva and her litter sister Aiya (a planar IEMs) are their first two products. Aiva is a full-size...

New Standard of Reference Tuning Flagship IEMs—QDC Anole VX(s) Review Intro In recent years, more and more hi-end IEMs came out to the market. With the technology improvement, nowadays hi-end IEMs are able to deliver a sound as good as full-size headphones. Meanwhile, since JH audio engaged “the game of switches” more and more brands like 64 Audio, Jomo, UM as well as today’s star QDC started their own way of developing sound adjustment systems which give customers to adjust their IEMs closer to their preferences. With more and more experiences in...

Intro I've been in the Head-Fi for years, but this is my first review. I decided to choose ProPhile 8/8s(pp8) as my first review because I got plenty of questions from other members about this great headphones. Therefore, I think it might be a good idea to write a review to explain everything I know pp8. However, this might not be a full or serious review, since English is not my first language, but I will do my best to explain everything clearly. Also I don't have a great camera to take fancy pictures, so if you want to know how pp8 looks like, go...