Burson Audio Supreme Sound Opamp V6 Vivid

Burson kindly sent a V6 Vivid to give my honest impressions. With that out of the way I can proceed to give you my thoughts on it. The Topping D10, actually already have a socket installed for chip rolling. The original ic was good, and it won me over as a decent dac which really was purchased to convert usb to coax or optical. One upgrade I did to the D10 was a usb cable that split the data and power so the power to the D10 was a separate usb that I plugged into an Audioquest Jitterbug and that into a filtered AC setup. This lowered the noise floor a bit.

With the V6 vivid installed, it remained about the same noise floor maybe a bit lower.

Now for the sound, I did not notice any elevated or more pronounced emphasis anywhere. I tried the D10 on solid state, tubes and a mix up of all tube, all ss and mix and match. I mostly listen to electrostatic head phones so while I do love bass and dynamics, these are the weakest points of them. With the V6 you installed, I noticed the high frequencies had a more detailed attack and longer decay when appropriate. One album I used to test the V6 with is Tubular Bells by Mike Oldfield, many various versions. So the V6 Vivid let the bells and other high frequency instruments shine and shimmer with a detailed air to them. I also use 10,000 Maniacs “In My Tribe”, because this is a bright release, a bit dry and seems anemic all over, but great music. With the Vivid V6 installed, it made little details come out a bit. It also separated everything in an appropriate manner, ie Natalie Merchant in the center and front with the drums behind her, bass is behind and a little to the side and you could hear both the bass and bass drum could be identifiable.

The true bass test for me is John McVie and Mic Fleetwood on the self titled album with Stevie and Lindsay on it. The lead off track Monday Morning has a driving bass that has lots of detail with each string pluck. The Burson chip did not slow the pace or blur any detail. The bass did not overpower the midrange. I did not detect any coloration in the sound on any of my listening.

Now mind you that none of this is dramatically different, mostly subtle improvements. The most notable difference was the dynamics which had an increased maybe 2 dB’s over the stock chip. I should also mention the cables in and out have an influence on sound.

The only drawback is that this chip does not fit in the Topping D10 case which I knew about before receiving the Burson.



The list of equipment used to evaluate includes the following electrostatic headphones

Koss ESP950 with a Stax adapter

Nectar Pollinator

Stax L300, SR-404, SR-002, Sigma Pro and SR-X mk3

Preamps used were an ARC LS7(tube) and an Adcom GFP565(SS)

Amps Cary Rocket 88(all tube), Adcom 8008(SS) and a stand alone Stax SRM 212(SS) with an upgraded power supply.

Various cables were used.

All files were played through Foobar2000 and discs were played on a Sony SCD775.



Music was all digital from cd quality up to SACD (DSD files and disks). And the ones I used:

Pink Floyd DSotM

Linda Ronstadt Heart like a Wheel

Fleetwood Mac Fleetwood Mac

Steely Dan a large variety

Manfred Manns Earth Band Angel Station

10,000 Maniacs In My Tribe

Mike Okdfield Tubular Bells (original, TBII and, TB 2003)

Alan Parsons Project I Robot, Turn of a Friendly Card and Eye in the Sky

Dvorak Symphony No 6 Sir Colin Davis London Symphony Orchastra

Keb’Mo Keb’Mo

Richard Edgar Academy of Ancient Music JS Bach Brandenburg Concertos

Oscar Peterson Exclusively for My Friends

Warren Zevon Excitable Boy

Jeff Wayne’s War of the Worlds





In all cases, I compared more than one headphone for each evaluation music selection to ensure no one set dominated my impressions.


Now with well over 100 hours playing time things got only better. The bass detail is outstanding, the initial note have more detail as does the trailing ends. The high frequencies now have a more detail and volume. The mids are good as you can ask for.

The Topping D10 with the original chip I would give it around 80/100. With the Burson V6 Vivid raises it to a 90/100, and the only way to get more out of it is audiophile grade resistors and caps.

The Burson V6 vivid makes a very good DAC into an excellent budget DAC.

Most Recommended!

~

Disclaimer:

John Burson -after having seen my posts in the Zishan Z1 thread- contacted me & offered me a Burson
opamp of choice to try with the player. I picked the V6 Classic Dual with DIP socket extenders, but due
to some logistical difficulties that ended up being a non-option, so I gladly accepted his offer to send me
a V6 Vivid Dual instead. (in exchange of nothing, but my honest opinion of course)




The test setup:

For the past year I've been happily using my Zishan Z1 with the 49720HA opamp. I used to think I was quite the
hipster to use something like this, but compared to the V6 it's just tiny.


Since right now I don't really have anything else to test the V6 with of course I used the Zishan Z1 with my trusted
& well respected HD600 cans.

Since I've read another reviewer disregarding the V6 vivid + Z1 combination I started thinking what could've been
the cause of this. Upon some reflection I think I may know why. A long time ago, when I bought this player on a
impulse I was really disappointed with it, because it sounded pretty bad with everything & it did not take very long to
find out that it's due to it having a really high output resistance. (close to 100 Ω I think) What this means in practice
that with this player it's basically impossible to achieve perfect electrical coupling. (It is recommended to try to have
an output resistance no higher than 1/8th of what your headphones or earphones have) As such after realizing
that the player sounds horrible with all of my IEMs I just relegated it to 'burn in rig' duty. This has only changed when
on a whim I listened to the player my HD600s that sounded thin & dead with all of my daps and this is what prompted
the first opamp upgrade to the 49720HA & what made this review possible. I also used the Xiaomi Graphene
Headphones for testing briefly, but I gave that pairing up very quickly, since they are not a good match with the Z1 in
general.

Fitting the V6 inside the player is of course impossible, so I used a Burson DIP-socket extender to make this work
with an external fit. (as pictured below)

----

My honest opinion on the sound:


I'm no good audio reviewer material, listening back and forth, trying to find minutiae of differences is not something I cannot really do. So after some burn in, I just listened to to music -in shuffle mode- over the past couple of days, while doing a little back and forth with my previous opamp. Before the burn in I thought the sound resembled entry level Naim gear the most, meaning overly engaging sound with boomy -even for the Z1+HD600 combo worse than normal- bass and a pleasantly smooth top end with great sparkle, all that with a better and more realistic midrange / vocals than before. After the -off the head- burn in period of 50+ hours the sound felt completely elevated across the board. Yes it's still a very engaging listen, but it doesn't sound like Naim anymore. Now the sound is close to uncolored with a touch of extra brightness and bass energy, so The Vivid naming is apt. I suppose the main point is that the V6 powered player has reached a level of high fidelity, sophistication and technical ability that I did not think possible with just opamp rolling, at least not without other modifications. The HD600s are not great cans for testing staging, but the soundstage felt perhaps a touch better than normal, with great ambience. Orchestral pieces sounded really amazing & just ehm grand. (that description is probably not very good, oh well) Another horrible description incoming, you've been forewarned! I really like the sound of 'crying' accoustic instruments, if you don't know what that is, then listen to Wu Bai's 'Last Dance' on Youtube & you'll know. Anyway I feel that those crying string sounds are absolutely amazing with this opamp and I could say that the emotional delivery in general is very good. I think it goes without saying that the opamp is still too engaging for a laid-back, relaxing listen though.

TLDR: The sound is great, I'll continue using the Z1+V6 combo for the foreseeable future.

Is it worth the $70 asking price?

Now this is an interesting question! I think for the Zishan Z1, as much as the performance has improved, I don't think It's easily worth the $70 + import taxes to get there. Though considering that I like using the HD600s everywhere, at least where their open nature is not a problem It's tough to say. Maybe it's possible that I would go for it, since realistically I don't think I could spend $100-150 and get a player that sounds better with these headphones. (Luckily I don't have to, since I get to keep the V6 for free, imagine that!)

With more expensive desktop gear though I think it can be totally worth it. If one way or another you have the opamp switching option in a $1000+ dac or preamp, adding a number of these could bring more than enough improvements to justify the extra 10-30% spent, well that's what I think anyway, though component matching and mis-matching can also be a factor.

Battery:

The Z1 lasts 7 hours with the V6, this is barely shorter than what I normally get with the 49720HA. Overall this is a very reasonable performance for my aging battery, so I can safely say it's fine, there is nothing to worry about.



What would you think if you saw someone pointing this thing at you on the train?

First of all: I am a foreigner so my english may not be perfect.

Equipment used:

PC Sound card: EVGA NU Audio Pro

Headphones: Audio Technica ATH-AD2000x

Music used: 1995 Chesky Records - The Ultimate Demonstration Disc (FLAC's); lindsey stirling -- Home album (Flac's); Eivor albums Bridges and Slor; Haggard album "And thou shall trust seer", Finntroll albums

Opamps:
Burson V5i-D (bought myself)
Burson V6 Dual CLassic's (bought myself)

Burson V6 Dual Vivids (sent by Burson in exchange for a honest review).Packaging was great.No complaints here.





The review will be done on an Nu Audio Pro and to improve the sound i decided to go Opamp route.I bought a pair of Burson V5i-D and they are ok but ... not enough.I was really curious about the top of the line V6'es .I read the description on the website to choose between vivids and classic. I listen more violin, piano nowadays so i thought classics would be more suited for me.Finnally i bought a pair of classics.The stock opamps on the Evga Nu Audio Pro didn't stayed too long on the board.I wouldn't turn back to stock opamps.I have been spoiled. Thank you ... burson !

Burson offered me to choose one of their opamps.I choosed the V6 Vivids because i already had v6 classics.


So after playing with V6 classics and V6 vivids back and forth i had some intersting realiazations.In the past i had been a rock guy with bands like Haggard, Rammstein, Iron Maiden, Rotting Christ.I was in agressive music and funny enough i realized that the V6 classics i choosed initially are more suited for agressive heavy rock music.

This is how i described the V6 classics:
The sound overall is more agressive.The voice feels like it wants to agreesively take the front stage over the other instruments.My ears hurt a bit with V6 classics..The soundstage is smaller and feels unnatural.It feels squeezed artificially.The heavy metal rock songs on the other hand are perfectly at home with V6 classics.The v6 classics bring much detail in the heavy metal rock instruments.The instruments are nicely separated and detailed.The agressive signature of the songs is brought forward by the v6 classics natural agressive tone.The punchiness of Finntroll band is awesome .

THe V6 Vivids:
The sound is more soft and sensual.Is not hurting the ears.
The Ana Caram track "Correnteza" (from Chesky Records album) feels so much natural and soft and airy on Vivids.It brings a natural sound like this "how it was meant to be played by the artist".Emotion and sensuality is emanated with the V6 Vvids.The V6 Vivids are softnening the sound of the heavy metal songs.I listened to Haggard that have parts of heavy metal/death metal voice and parts with orchestra, female soprano and classical music.

The overall conclusion is that the Vivids are great for specific music.The unfortunate situation is if you sometimes want a more agressive song you don't know what you miss because you may don't know how the V6 Classics deliver this parts.

The V6 Vivids are worth buying at the price but it is a luxury/premium item after all.In PC market most people use onboard sound let alone changing opamps.At 130 euros these are more expensive than the sound cards that vast majority population buy.Also those sound cards under 130 euro usually don't have replaceble opamps.


The other point is the comparision between V5i-D vs V6. I do feel if you are pleased with a more mediocre sound or if you listen to many podcasts the V5i-D are great and cheap relative to V6.The voice clarity on V5i is great.Voice in music is great too but they fall short on the rest relative to V6.It has a deeper/clearer bass than stock opamps.Another advantage with v5i is that they are small enough to not have problems fitting physically in sockets.This are very good for begginers.

Conclusion:
The V6 line is for people that are really interested in sound.For them the V6 prices are worth it.