And with a different DAC and/or amplifier, the sound would be different again. This is the hurdle the audiophilic faces and his/her sense of hearing is not always constant and can vary because of all sorts of factors like health, tiredness, alcohol or other substances. ....... I've had albums...

IMHO there is no "best" but I've no doubt there are many top units which will yield great analog from digital. One which I'm using is the LKS DA-004, now superseded so possibly available used at an enticing price. The other I've had success with (and A/B comparisons found the sound identical...

Your observations reflect my experience. Yes I do prefer the Utopias but the difference is not great and not observable on all music. I have a different balanced cord coming for the Clear MGs so it will be interesting to see if it improves the (already good) soundstage. I particularly dislike...

I just received this bit of fiction in an email so did some Googling and came across this interesting research https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3406203/ So we can relax although careful hygiene is undoubtedly helpful.

Very reasonably priced, top quality and a wide variety to choose from - I prefer the multi copper leads. www.lunashopsd.com

POSTSCRIPT: I've listened to these new toys for some time now and can detect a subtle difference between them and thr Utopias, and that subtlety might not be evident on all systems. It could esily be masked by the DAC, cabling, ... The difference I can detect is in the sound stage. It is more...

OK. here is a more complete review: It is interesting to compare these to the much admired Utopias, something I’m currently doing and finding little difference. This might sound crazy but look at what is going on a little more closely. Focal have engineered a masterpiece of headphone...

OK guys, to clear up a point raised earlier - why would Focal design the Clear Mg to be as good as the Utopia? My take is to increase sales as the Utopia is reaching saturation to those idiotes like me who bought into them. Well not really idiotic as the Utopias are superb BUT, on first...

I have a pair of these Clear Mg Professional headphones on the way and will be inrterested to decide how they compare to the Focal Utopia ones already here. They will ultimately reside in a third headphone system with Roon feeding from a Aurilac G1 to a modded LKS DA-004 -> SMPL SP400 amp. But...

You have hit on its weakness - not great sensitivity. To hear it at full tilt requies better than average output from a DAC.

I purchased one of these after reading glowing reviews and must say it is excellent value. I had intended to do an A/B comparison with my Audio-gd Master 9 taking feed from an Audio-gd R8 DAC but found the sensitivity too low so it went where it was finally intended, into another room with an...

Auralic’s Aries G1 Transport – How Important is the Bridge? Maybe more Important than the DAC? I’ll answer that question first up by admitting that for me, the G1 has been far more important than I previously realized in my pursuit of audio quality. You could find the same – it depends on the...

Not really a multiroom jittery set up. The G1 bridge is in the same room as the headphone setup and a 4M length of quality Canare cable goes from the amplifying splitter near the G1, to the headphone setup. I think the previous noise was caused by a faulty cable. All systems in the house are...

Point taken and agreed to. I'll make no further comment until April and will enlist some other ears to help..

I’m not having any problems at the moment but do concede it is unfair to compare a well run in LKS to a relatively new R8 so should hold back further comment until the R8 had another few hundred hours on it. Currently I find it very difficult to distinguish between the sound via the LKS and the...

My prejudice has been that well controlled SPDIF is superior to USB but concede that output from USB has improved in the last year or so so might now be as good.

The situation is puzzling. Another hint is that using the splitter reverses the left and right channels on one of the outputs - easily fixed. And yes I have now reinstalled the Canare passive splitter without problems, using different cabling and a different two Canare outputs (of the three)...

The setup here does not make USB input possible as the headphone setup is in a different room to the one housing this PC with ROON and music files on board. Further than that I requested Kingwa remove USB and HDMI inputs in favour of a full clocks upgrade with AEC and SPDIF the only inputs that...

Agree, and that is why I have only used high quality Canare balanced cabling everywhere in this house. I used to be ignorant about this until in conversation with a Canare engineer.

Yes, I saw that and discounted it. I dislike any postings that are completely negative and have nothing positive to say. That site has been disparaging of other products in the same manner - unimpressive and, to me, ultimately unreliable.

My R8 arrived here yesterday as a replacement to a Rick Schultz modded LKS DA-004, So of course I was anxious to compare them to see if there was an AQ improvement. I fed the balanced digital input via AES into a CANFORD 3 way splitter so a signal could be fed simultaneously into the R8 & LKS...

A further note about this amplifier. One of the hardest instruments to reproduce is the harpsichord - it generally sounds a bit of a jangled mess on systems BUT it comes through with beautiful harmonics with the LKS/audio-gd combo feeding into the Focals. What has inspired me to post this is...

Yes and that is not rubbishing the V281 - a very fine unit. It is simply outdone by the audio-gd and those units can be purchased direct from the manufacturer at a very reasonable price. They delivered to me from China to Australia in less than a week which is faster than delivery within this...

And a couple of diagrams to illustrate the pinnacle of my headphone audio addiction.