Burson PLAY V6 Vivid DAC/Amp
There have already been some reviews of the various iterations of the PLAY. I’ve had mine for a few months now and it’s time to comment.
My foray into the world of headphone amplifiers occurred because I bought a pair of Sennheiser HD280 Pros. I bought them for their isolation and their sound as they were well reviewed. It was at this point that I discovered that the resistance in ohms of a pair of headphones doesn’t necessarily reflect how easy or hard it is to drive them. They are a modest 64ohms but I discovered that they needed a good amp to drive them properly.
So I set about finding amps that would do the job. I bought a couple of passive ones from Behringer which were so-so and while researching for something better I discovered the concept of having a standalone DAC included with the amp. This is very important, especially if you listen via Windows though a PC. I eventually settled on the Fiio E7/E9 combination. The difference this combo made was significant via a direct digital stream (kernel) or ASIO and I was happy for a while with what I was hearing.
After buying a pair of HD580s, I realized that that my Fiio combo was not really going to cut it for these excellent cans. I put up with the Sennheiser ‘veil’ for quite a long time but this year I decided to do something about it. I didn’t want to spend ridiculous money but also wanted quality. There were things out there that met both criteria. This included looking at tube DAC/amps as I realised that amplifier power was vital if I wanted to lift the Senn ‘veil’ and a good tube amp could do this for me. The one that repeatedly came up was the Cavalli CTH/Grace DAC combo but there was disquiet about the DAC quality of the Grace. I thought I’d go for it anyway and was waiting for the next Massdrop when the PLAY came up on the radar. Apparently it had buckets of power, the DAC was good, it was an amazing price, I could roll the Op Amps and……it was Australian!
I got the V5i from an Aussie audio company called Addicted to Audio (it was cheaper than getting it from the US). After a month the power supply died. They replaced the PLAY without a quibble and I got them to send me the V6 Vivid instead. I knew from the V5i that burn in was going to be important, hence the wait before making a review.
I’ll not go into details about the construction of the PLAY except to say that the chassis of both the V5i and the V6 were/are slightly warped. When I put the little silicon feet on, the PLAY rocked from front left to back right. Adding thicker and larger feet has solved this and also moved it up from the surface of my wooden table. This hopefully helps with heat dissipation. The supplied 6.25” to 3.5” adaptor has a flexible entry point which I think is a great idea. No matter how much the cable is moved, the flexible ring compensates meaning almost no stress on the cable where it terminates at the connector. I initially thought that the headphone socket was loose until I carefully looked at how it worked.
I run the PLAY out of a 2012 iMac via USB. My headphones consist of Flare iems (R2A, Pro and Gold), Senn IE80s and the Senn HD580s. I bought the PLAY with the 580s specifically in mind and wasn’t worried about the Flares as they are easier to drive. With all three versions of the Flares I run the PLAY volume control somewhere between 5 and 11. It depends on the type of music and the source. The volume goes up for the 580s and I have had it as high as 27 though I noticed that I could pull the volume down lower as the PLAY did it’s burn in. EDM, Deep House, Trance, and all the modern genres via Tidal and Spotify require less volume. Classical music with the iems through these online streamers requires pushing the volume up a few more notches or even further. I like the fact that this gives me much more control over small volume adjustments and I wonder if some sort of gain switch might have been a good idea or alternatively smaller steps on the digital volume control.
So what does the PLAY do to the music I listen to? I’d like to describe the PLAY as neutral but it isn’t. There is a slight lean towards the warmer side of the sound spectrum but not by too much. I like this but it’s not necessarily a bass centric effect. It depends on the track being played. If the bass is already there then the PLAY will bring it out. If it’s not then it won’t. The same goes for mids and top end. In other words the PLAY is very revealing and poorly mastered recordings will be ruthlessly exposed.
The soundstage is something else. With iems like the Flare Golds the width is there but, more importantly, so is the depth – something I’ve never experienced before. I realise that part of this is probably the quality of the Golds but the source has to have it in the first place. With the Fiio combo it’s hard to hear any depth at all. I also notice it when using the 580s with the PLAY. On a well-mastered chamber music recording like the Pavel Haas Quartet playing Dvorak string quartets you can hear that the musicians are sitting in a semi-circle. This is particularly evident with Golds but the 580s produce it too.
Bass extension is excellent and the PLAY added bass to the Senns that I didn’t think they had. The bass is quick, deep and very accurate with little to no bloom (recording dependent of course).
The mids are so smooth and stand out well. Someone described the PLAY as producing a V shaped sound but I don’t hear this at all. The midrange, so important for vocals, holds its own and doesn’t appear recessed in any way.
Treble is also excellent and non-fatiguing. It’s very clear but doesn’t suffer from the brightness you can get for some treble centric systems.
Tonal accuracy is something that I value highly considering the amount of classical music I listen to. There are a few instruments that are very hard to reproduce. These include the human voice, stringed instruments from the violin family and, with its complex harmonics, the piano. Of course headphones are going to play a big part in this but once again, if the source of the music is compromised then no matter how good your cans are you won’t get the ideal sound. The PLAY is outstanding in this regard. Its faithful reproduction of some of my best CDs is outstanding and I’m hearing things I didn’t realize were in the recordings.
Back to the beginning, I bought the PLAY with HD580s in mind. Could it lift that ‘veil’ that has been evident for all the time I’ve had them. The answer is an unequivocal YES! The PLAY makes the Senns do what Axel Grell originally designed them to do – sing! The 580s were revolutionary when they came out and still stand alongside today’s open back cans at a much higher price and the PLAY highlights this fact. This alone has justified my purchase. However, as they say in the commercials, “But wait, there’s more” They also improved how my Flares performed which I didn’t think was possible. The added a sense of musicality that has had me enjoying everything I’ve listened to. They increased all of the good things (sub bass, out of head sound stage, clarity, etc) that the Flare GOLDs are known for.
So overall, what stands out about the PLAY for me.
A wide and reasonably deep soundstage giving a lot of the music I listen to a sense of ‘space’ between the instruments.
Outstanding separation of instruments, pinpointing their exact position in the soundstage.
Clarity across the whole audio spectrum.
Great musicality and a non-fatiguing sound.
Tonal accuracy
Power that effortlessly drives all my headphones
It makes me want to keep listening to the music
The PLAY is easily worth the money I paid for it. Many people when asking about headphone amps wonder if it will drive their HD600s/650s. This DAC/Amp is almost ideally suited to these cans but work extremely well on other top end brands. I don’t think I’ll be looking for a DAC/Amp combo for a while unless Burson can come up with a portable version. Now that would be something!
There have already been some reviews of the various iterations of the PLAY. I’ve had mine for a few months now and it’s time to comment.
My foray into the world of headphone amplifiers occurred because I bought a pair of Sennheiser HD280 Pros. I bought them for their isolation and their sound as they were well reviewed. It was at this point that I discovered that the resistance in ohms of a pair of headphones doesn’t necessarily reflect how easy or hard it is to drive them. They are a modest 64ohms but I discovered that they needed a good amp to drive them properly.
So I set about finding amps that would do the job. I bought a couple of passive ones from Behringer which were so-so and while researching for something better I discovered the concept of having a standalone DAC included with the amp. This is very important, especially if you listen via Windows though a PC. I eventually settled on the Fiio E7/E9 combination. The difference this combo made was significant via a direct digital stream (kernel) or ASIO and I was happy for a while with what I was hearing.
After buying a pair of HD580s, I realized that that my Fiio combo was not really going to cut it for these excellent cans. I put up with the Sennheiser ‘veil’ for quite a long time but this year I decided to do something about it. I didn’t want to spend ridiculous money but also wanted quality. There were things out there that met both criteria. This included looking at tube DAC/amps as I realised that amplifier power was vital if I wanted to lift the Senn ‘veil’ and a good tube amp could do this for me. The one that repeatedly came up was the Cavalli CTH/Grace DAC combo but there was disquiet about the DAC quality of the Grace. I thought I’d go for it anyway and was waiting for the next Massdrop when the PLAY came up on the radar. Apparently it had buckets of power, the DAC was good, it was an amazing price, I could roll the Op Amps and……it was Australian!
I got the V5i from an Aussie audio company called Addicted to Audio (it was cheaper than getting it from the US). After a month the power supply died. They replaced the PLAY without a quibble and I got them to send me the V6 Vivid instead. I knew from the V5i that burn in was going to be important, hence the wait before making a review.
I’ll not go into details about the construction of the PLAY except to say that the chassis of both the V5i and the V6 were/are slightly warped. When I put the little silicon feet on, the PLAY rocked from front left to back right. Adding thicker and larger feet has solved this and also moved it up from the surface of my wooden table. This hopefully helps with heat dissipation. The supplied 6.25” to 3.5” adaptor has a flexible entry point which I think is a great idea. No matter how much the cable is moved, the flexible ring compensates meaning almost no stress on the cable where it terminates at the connector. I initially thought that the headphone socket was loose until I carefully looked at how it worked.
I run the PLAY out of a 2012 iMac via USB. My headphones consist of Flare iems (R2A, Pro and Gold), Senn IE80s and the Senn HD580s. I bought the PLAY with the 580s specifically in mind and wasn’t worried about the Flares as they are easier to drive. With all three versions of the Flares I run the PLAY volume control somewhere between 5 and 11. It depends on the type of music and the source. The volume goes up for the 580s and I have had it as high as 27 though I noticed that I could pull the volume down lower as the PLAY did it’s burn in. EDM, Deep House, Trance, and all the modern genres via Tidal and Spotify require less volume. Classical music with the iems through these online streamers requires pushing the volume up a few more notches or even further. I like the fact that this gives me much more control over small volume adjustments and I wonder if some sort of gain switch might have been a good idea or alternatively smaller steps on the digital volume control.
So what does the PLAY do to the music I listen to? I’d like to describe the PLAY as neutral but it isn’t. There is a slight lean towards the warmer side of the sound spectrum but not by too much. I like this but it’s not necessarily a bass centric effect. It depends on the track being played. If the bass is already there then the PLAY will bring it out. If it’s not then it won’t. The same goes for mids and top end. In other words the PLAY is very revealing and poorly mastered recordings will be ruthlessly exposed.
The soundstage is something else. With iems like the Flare Golds the width is there but, more importantly, so is the depth – something I’ve never experienced before. I realise that part of this is probably the quality of the Golds but the source has to have it in the first place. With the Fiio combo it’s hard to hear any depth at all. I also notice it when using the 580s with the PLAY. On a well-mastered chamber music recording like the Pavel Haas Quartet playing Dvorak string quartets you can hear that the musicians are sitting in a semi-circle. This is particularly evident with Golds but the 580s produce it too.
Bass extension is excellent and the PLAY added bass to the Senns that I didn’t think they had. The bass is quick, deep and very accurate with little to no bloom (recording dependent of course).
The mids are so smooth and stand out well. Someone described the PLAY as producing a V shaped sound but I don’t hear this at all. The midrange, so important for vocals, holds its own and doesn’t appear recessed in any way.
Treble is also excellent and non-fatiguing. It’s very clear but doesn’t suffer from the brightness you can get for some treble centric systems.
Tonal accuracy is something that I value highly considering the amount of classical music I listen to. There are a few instruments that are very hard to reproduce. These include the human voice, stringed instruments from the violin family and, with its complex harmonics, the piano. Of course headphones are going to play a big part in this but once again, if the source of the music is compromised then no matter how good your cans are you won’t get the ideal sound. The PLAY is outstanding in this regard. Its faithful reproduction of some of my best CDs is outstanding and I’m hearing things I didn’t realize were in the recordings.
Back to the beginning, I bought the PLAY with HD580s in mind. Could it lift that ‘veil’ that has been evident for all the time I’ve had them. The answer is an unequivocal YES! The PLAY makes the Senns do what Axel Grell originally designed them to do – sing! The 580s were revolutionary when they came out and still stand alongside today’s open back cans at a much higher price and the PLAY highlights this fact. This alone has justified my purchase. However, as they say in the commercials, “But wait, there’s more” They also improved how my Flares performed which I didn’t think was possible. The added a sense of musicality that has had me enjoying everything I’ve listened to. They increased all of the good things (sub bass, out of head sound stage, clarity, etc) that the Flare GOLDs are known for.
So overall, what stands out about the PLAY for me.
A wide and reasonably deep soundstage giving a lot of the music I listen to a sense of ‘space’ between the instruments.
Outstanding separation of instruments, pinpointing their exact position in the soundstage.
Clarity across the whole audio spectrum.
Great musicality and a non-fatiguing sound.
Tonal accuracy
Power that effortlessly drives all my headphones
It makes me want to keep listening to the music
The PLAY is easily worth the money I paid for it. Many people when asking about headphone amps wonder if it will drive their HD600s/650s. This DAC/Amp is almost ideally suited to these cans but work extremely well on other top end brands. I don’t think I’ll be looking for a DAC/Amp combo for a while unless Burson can come up with a portable version. Now that would be something!
