Haha yea it is very, very dark!

Aw you guys...

:chart_with_downwards_trend: Price drop

Excellent condition. Original owner purchased in 5/2023, sold to me a month later. Includes Auteur lambskin pads, Universe hybrid pads, stock XLR and RCA cables, case. Paypal and shipping included in the price. Open to local pickup, New York City.

Ooh, that makes me wonder about capacitor rolling on this thing, which for some reason I had not given even a passing thought to until you mentioned the word "capacitor". Anyone know what are the specs on the unit's coupling caps, by any chance? I rolled the caps on my previous tube amp, and...

Thanks, for me, turning off the logo light had no effect. I've since gotten a replacement unit which has been getting a lot of use, and is behaving fine so far.

Hehe, thanks. I use medium gain on the amps. Compared to using a single amp, bridged mono increases the output by 6dB (even though its power rating increases from 100 watts to 380 watts, lol). And I set the DAC to output at 6 volts. With the Susvara, I set the Bartok's digital volume control...

Dual-wielding AHB2's for the Susvara here. Even though from a power perspective, this is overkill for headphones of any kind, it doesn't sound exaggerated in any way, but rather, just extra-composed and refined. The bridged mono configuration brings out extra depth and separation, and makes...

And the plot thickens...

"a little bit more", lol

Listening through TOSLINK, and comparing it to my vanilla ethernet connection from my home router has been pretty fun, so far. TOSLINK sounds cleaner, more "ordered", and has a dryer, "just the facts" kind of character. Background is blacker. Makes the Susvara sounds more electro-stat-like...

So, first the first time in 2+ years, I'm giving the TOSLINK connection a serious listen. Anyone else tried this?

Lest we forget the $100,000 special edition Utopia. Pic on that page seems to show gold-plated lemo connectors. 🤣

As I've just done some comparisons to a couple other cables (on headphones other than the Utopia 2022), here's a brain dump of my current thoughts on the Lazuli Reference Plus. The summary is that the LRP is more dynamic, has deeper and punchier bass, more extended treble, better separation...

I'm looking for two AffinityCables adapters: 4-pin mini-XLR (ZMF/Audeze) to Lemo (Utopia) 4-pin mini-XLR (ZMF/Audeze) to 2.5mm (OG Susvara/HE1000) Willing to pay two-thirds of your total purchase cost. Or, I can offer in trade one of these other AffinityCable adapters (note, I'm probably not...

If it's any consolation, the $5000 Utopia not only comes with a box, but a carrying case as well.

You know what would be really fun would be a dedicated thread on price gouging. I remember when the original Focal Utopia's 9-foot rubbery cable used to be sold as an accessory on the Focal website for $900. Man, that offended me. Still can't get over it, lol.

Vykari v2!

Oh no, no, I was being 100% facetious. I think it makes a lot of sense for the discussion to turn towards under-valued, high performing headphones, as they are like the opposite side of the same coin.

Wait, I came here for the bashing of overpriced, luxury headphones in the spirit of light-hearted malice and schadenfreude. But the conversation has turned towards something else altogether. What happened? 🤣

So now that Tidal is by necessity transitioning away from MQA, I've deemed it acceptable to re-reconsider Tidal again as a potential supplement to my Qobuz subscription. I spent a little while comparing the Qobuz vs Tidal offerings of dozens of artists I like, some more obscure than others, and...

Anyone else playing Honkai Star Rail? This is easily my favorite Hoyo-Mix/Hoyoverse soundtrack, the Genshin Impact soundtracks notwithstanding. Favorite track: "Wildfire" (naturally). Which works so well in-game as well. Qobuz link

Okay, second try, this time ordering from a dealer and under warranty. "Open box", yet still shrink wrapped (haha). I'm coming from a Denon GC-AH30, which were a $400 ANC headphone at the time when I got them 3 or so years back. Their sound was unfortunately wholly unremarkable (The bathos to...

Ah yea, the Nirvana has good resolution, speed, and separation (and power) while making the Utopia more listenable than with solid state. I know there's been a renewed infatuation with 300B on the forum over the last couple years, but I'm very happy to have made the "lateral" move to EL34's, heh.

Ah, I'm glad you mention this. The Nutopia on my former Cayin HA-300 mk1 sounded excessivly warm and congested, which I found pretty unexpected, since none of the other dynamic driver headphones I ever used reacted to that amp in this way (eg, including the Denon D9200, which is 24 ohms). And...