Quest continues on the headamp that will drive the HE-6s close enough to my class A speaker amp.
So far the closest:
1. Audio-GD HE-9.
This thing could pull off some mean mean bass: digging deep down and with lots of body and slam. A bit restricted in soundstage width and height compared to speaker amp, but lots of depth and sounding on the warmer side of neutral, a couple of notches. It made the music sound personal enough, but because of the depth not in your face nor that dreaded solid state left/right soundstage type. Great presentation. The speaker amp can resolve a bit more detail and sounds more airy, open and clear. Overall the HE-9 had a very satisfying, engaging and relaxing sound. An interesting combination of solid state precision, power and tubey liquidity and depth.
However I can't recommend it as I found my version full of issues, including hum, frying DACs and other stuff such as not starting-up properly. I am not sure if those issues affected sound or not, but there should be a question mark there.
2. Moon 430HA.
On the plus side nice body, very good detail and well balanced presentation across the frequency spectrum, very good soundstage width and height, although I would prefer a bit more depth. The transients on this amp can sometimes feel slightly ethereal sounding, a tiny bit like Stax transients. Very interesting, but the other side of the coin is it limits articulation and viscerality very slightly.
What I found wanting: Rolling off slightly on the sub-bass and missing some bass texture, imaging very slightly confused in terms of instrument separation, not as good in articulation as the speaker amp. One of the better headamps, however I still reach for the speaker amp, because I always wonder: how would this track sound on the speaker amp. Invariably better on the latter.
To summarize the Moon 430HA I found enjoyable listening while working. But it never captures my attention away from what I am doing so to get lost in the music.
Other amps I am not including in this list (imo the gap was too big):
- Schiit Ragnarok. With this particular one, it did not do anything too bad, and it certainly had power. The soundstage was a good size, better than the average solid state. However, to me the deal breaker was it has an added layer of smoothness, always present, finely brushing over everything: transients, details, clarity. I can see why it can work in some contexts of bright downstream/bright headphones combos, but imo it is a coloration I am not asking for. My context is that I do not need this, with any headphones. I suspect my Theta R2R DAC is partly reponsible for providing a very balanced, natural sound, with absolutely no harshness. I did swap to a brighter delta/sigma DAC and I still much preferred the amps higher up in the list. Was it a bad Rag sample? I don't know, but other owners who have a good list of amps in their stable, chimed in to some of the traits I am describing.
