GreenLeo
500+ Head-Fier
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- Jan 22, 2007
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It’s my luck and pleasure having a chance to listen to the Lisa RS prototype. As promised, I’ll share my impression of the RS afterwards. I guess that more impressions may be coming out so a new thread is started rather than letting the impressions of the Lisa RS buried in the Lisa appreciation thread or the Lisa order thread.
In this part I’ll share my impression of the Lisa RS vs the Amphora of the Isabellina HPA. The amp was received last Thursday(3 Dec) and returned last night (8 Dec). Due to the time constraint, I had only a few hours to listen to the RS and to do the comparison. Please take a grain of salt when reading the following impression.
Hardware:
Transport: Computer: Windows XP SP3->Foobar2k->ASIO4All driver->USB port
USB Cable: RSAD Poimea R-V3 USB cable
Source: Isabellina HPA
IC: 1. internal wiring to the Amphora
2. RSAD Poimea R-V3 RCA cable to the Lisa RS.
Phone: K701 RAL recabled ended with a 1/4” Furutech FP 104
K701 was chosen rather than the ES3X because the ES3X hisses heavily with the Amphora. The 75 ohm APS impedance adapter had been added to the Amphora as a try but still the hisses persisted though in a much smaller extent. Hence ES3X wasn’t used for the comparison.
Matching of the Loudness:
I have no SPL meter. So I used the first track of the CD1 of the musical “Phantom of the Opera” as a reference. The beginning sound of the track is the bombardment of a wooden hammer in an auction. I adjusted the volume of one of the amps to my usual listening level. Then the volume of the other amp was adjusted until their volume levels were similar. During the process, I listened to the volume of the sound level output from both of the amps back and forth until I was satisfied with the volume matching. The volume of only one amp was being adjusted throughout the process. The volume knobs then remain untouched throughout the comparison.
Checking of the frequency response:
Before the comparison begun, I tried to hear a 25 Hz signal and a 16kHz signal from both of the amps using the K701 but couldn’t. This was probably due to the K701 rather than the limitation of my ears. I could hear the same two signals from the Lisa RS when using ES3X.
Time spent for the comparison:
As I knew that I didn’t have much time for the RS, I decided to compare the two amps in four different sessions. 1st session was done the night I received the RS(Thursday night) and the 2nd session is the day after the 1st session (Friday night). Each of the sessions took half an hour. In both of the sessions I just tried the tracks I’s most familiar with. The 3rd session was done the morning after the 2nd session and took an hour (Sat morning). My house was(is) quietest at this time interval. The 4th session was again an hour made a few hours later after the 3rd session (Sat afternoon). So the total time of the comparison was 3 hours. Dividing the comparison into sessions in a number of days was deliberate -- to made the judgment of each session as independent with the other sessions as possible and to avoid hearing fatigue.
Personal Taste:
I enjoy vocals more than instruments and I enjoy live recordings better. So the tracks I’ve chosen were naturally biased. Though I tried to make the balance, no classical music had been tried because I’m not familiar with them.
Tracks used for comparison:
Some of the tracks were from Chinese CDs. For tracks that their name in English is unknown to me, the original Chinese names are given. Next line shows the structure of the CD tracks being listed followed by the actual information of the tracks:
Album, Track, TrackName (purpose)
K2HD Red Cliff Capriccio, 13, Song of Joy (a very fast piece of music)
STS DIGITAL Burn-In CD, 8, Sound library STS Television Production (I’ve heard this track in a professional studio and know what it should sound like)
XRCD Eagles Hell Freeze Over, 6, Hotel California Eagles (for Bass)
皇帝位，39，螃蟹歌 (this track is very good for testing the spatial information)
Live At Blues Alley, 1, Cheek To Cheek Eva Cassidy (voice)
XRCD 蔡琴民歌，7，出塞曲
All my tomorrows--1997 version and the singer was Carol Kidd, 7, When I dream
1-CD version sound track of the film Evita-, 1, Requiem (for background resolution)
Hugo Gold CD, 4, Ambush
The CD2 of the musical雪狼湖, 13, 原來只要共你活一天 (female voice and echo)
The Soong sisters, 1, The Soong Sisters - Kitaro & Randy Miller.wav
Naum Starkman Chopin, 1, 01 Grand Waltz Brilliante Op.18 Chopin (the piano was a Concert Grand Bosendorfer)
Noise level:
I found the RS better than that of the Amphora.
Overall Impression:
As stated in my other post, I really like the sound of the K701 amped by the Amphora. This opinion still remains valid but the sound of the 701 amped by the RS is better. Some of the differences are hard to put into concrete wordings. However, somehow the human voices sound more realistic to me. The sound was richer, the speed and resolution was better and more spatial information was given out.
There was one thing that I found the Amphora better than the RS: sibilance is lighter with the Amphora. The “蔡琴民歌，7，出塞曲” revealed this to me.
A double check:
I used the piano track of Naum as a final check. The track sounded different from the two amps and the difference was easy to discern. Basically, the RS was brighter and the Amphora was darker. I liked the sound from the RS better.
Then I asked my wife, a pianist, to listen to the tracks telling her that she was going to hear the sounds of two different pianos (a semi blind test--to con a term) playing the same melody. She was requested to tell me which piano sounded better aftewards. She found the sound from the RS better. Given that the piano played in the album should be the Concert Grand Bosendorfer. I concluded that the sound from the RS was more transparent than that of the Amphora. (For head-fiers who knows the sound of the Concert Grand Bosendorfer better, please contradict if necessary. It would be great to give more and better information to the head-fi.org)
A little more background of my wife: she knows little about hi-fi nor computers hence she truly trusted that I was giving her the sounds from two different pianos. Few years ago I took her to a studio of a hi-fi magazine to listen to a pair of speakers (Thiel I think) that I intended to buy. We were listening to the same track there and she pointed out immediately that the piano played was a bad one. The system used then was about 10k USD and the staff in the studio was shocked because the piano couldn’t be a bad one. A much better DAC was then used (a Weiss I think) in the session and then the ‘piano now sounded as a piano’--my wife’s wording. So she was/is pretty outspoken concerning the sounds of pianos.
Final words:
I’m not a gold ear. Whether one likes amp A or amp B better depends on lots of things like personal taste, the mood, the environment, … and the opinion is always subjective. I used the help of my wife hoping to give one more or a clearer reference point so that this impression may be more useful to the head-fiers interested in the RS. Thanks for reading. I rest my case here.
Lisa III battery powered by Duracell vs Lisa RS
Hardware:
Same as the above except for the phone.
Phone: ES3X
to my surprise the ES3X didn’t hissed much with the RS and the Lisa III. So a simple 1/8” to 1/4” adapter was used instead of the APS impedance 75 ohm adapter. Hopefully, frequency won’t be much affected as with the impedance adapter.
The Lisa III was battery powered by two fresh 9V Duracell. The comparison took only two hours. It’s reasonable to assume that the draining of the battery would not affect the performance of the Lisa III during the comparison session. I did use other source to feed the Lisa III afterwards and Lisa III amped properly for at least 5 more hours. This could be a verification of the assumption that battery drain did not impair the performance.
Software:Same as the above
Time:Initially I wanted to compare the two amps using the HiFiMan 801 as the source so that I might compare the performance of the two amps on Mon and Tue at my office after work. Also I hated the idea of plugging and unplugging the RCA cables. I was seriously wrong – after plugging and unplugging my BlackMax mini-to-RCA cable few times, it’ broken. I heard a clear left/right channel unbalance with the right channel much weaker. So the comparison was stopped.
As I need to return the amp to my office on Monday, I had only one day left for the comparison, so I used two sessions for the comparison , each an hour long. The comparison was only two hours long so that the comparison could be as detail as desired.
Precaution:
Because the Lisa III was already very good and they share the same DNA, I used the following methodology to guard myself from ‘reading between the lines’. Whenever I felt that there was a perceivable difference between the two amps for the same track, I’d listen to the location that I felt the difference to confirm my perception. If the perception could be repeated consecutively for 3 times, I concluded true difference existed. Otherwise, I concluded that my perception was just natural fluctuations of me being a human.
Conclusion:
The performances of them were much closer for most of the tracks. For some tracks, they are drawn and for some tracks, my perception that one was better than the other flip-flop. Then I concluded them drawn/inconclusive. Given more time, and use a phone that does not hiss with the amps, I might be able to tell the difference between the two amps. For example, when I used “Requiem” with the K701 to compare the RS and the Amphora, I could hear a very weak female voice in the right hand side. Even though the wordings were incomprehensible to me (could be Spanish), I could still sense that the RS was crisper. With the same track, I still felt that the RS was a tiny tad crispier. But the difference was a bit subtle so I dared not draw this conclusion.
Last but not least, I still concluded that the RS was better due to the following two facts:
1.When use the track “cheek to cheek” for comparison, it was more airy in one of the breathing of Eva Cassidy when using the Lisa III.
But the control of the RS was simply better—the breathing sound was not as smeared when using the RS and it sounded more realistic. I repeated quite a few times to confirm this perception and was convinced that the experience was always repeatable.
2.For the Naum track, the RS track was a tad brighter than the Lisa III and I liked the sound of the RS better.
That’s the end of my impression. Thank again for reading.
In this part I’ll share my impression of the Lisa RS vs the Amphora of the Isabellina HPA. The amp was received last Thursday(3 Dec) and returned last night (8 Dec). Due to the time constraint, I had only a few hours to listen to the RS and to do the comparison. Please take a grain of salt when reading the following impression.
Hardware:
Transport: Computer: Windows XP SP3->Foobar2k->ASIO4All driver->USB port
USB Cable: RSAD Poimea R-V3 USB cable
Source: Isabellina HPA
IC: 1. internal wiring to the Amphora
2. RSAD Poimea R-V3 RCA cable to the Lisa RS.
Phone: K701 RAL recabled ended with a 1/4” Furutech FP 104
K701 was chosen rather than the ES3X because the ES3X hisses heavily with the Amphora. The 75 ohm APS impedance adapter had been added to the Amphora as a try but still the hisses persisted though in a much smaller extent. Hence ES3X wasn’t used for the comparison.
Matching of the Loudness:
I have no SPL meter. So I used the first track of the CD1 of the musical “Phantom of the Opera” as a reference. The beginning sound of the track is the bombardment of a wooden hammer in an auction. I adjusted the volume of one of the amps to my usual listening level. Then the volume of the other amp was adjusted until their volume levels were similar. During the process, I listened to the volume of the sound level output from both of the amps back and forth until I was satisfied with the volume matching. The volume of only one amp was being adjusted throughout the process. The volume knobs then remain untouched throughout the comparison.
Checking of the frequency response:
Before the comparison begun, I tried to hear a 25 Hz signal and a 16kHz signal from both of the amps using the K701 but couldn’t. This was probably due to the K701 rather than the limitation of my ears. I could hear the same two signals from the Lisa RS when using ES3X.
Time spent for the comparison:
As I knew that I didn’t have much time for the RS, I decided to compare the two amps in four different sessions. 1st session was done the night I received the RS(Thursday night) and the 2nd session is the day after the 1st session (Friday night). Each of the sessions took half an hour. In both of the sessions I just tried the tracks I’s most familiar with. The 3rd session was done the morning after the 2nd session and took an hour (Sat morning). My house was(is) quietest at this time interval. The 4th session was again an hour made a few hours later after the 3rd session (Sat afternoon). So the total time of the comparison was 3 hours. Dividing the comparison into sessions in a number of days was deliberate -- to made the judgment of each session as independent with the other sessions as possible and to avoid hearing fatigue.
Personal Taste:
I enjoy vocals more than instruments and I enjoy live recordings better. So the tracks I’ve chosen were naturally biased. Though I tried to make the balance, no classical music had been tried because I’m not familiar with them.
Tracks used for comparison:
Some of the tracks were from Chinese CDs. For tracks that their name in English is unknown to me, the original Chinese names are given. Next line shows the structure of the CD tracks being listed followed by the actual information of the tracks:
Album, Track, TrackName (purpose)
K2HD Red Cliff Capriccio, 13, Song of Joy (a very fast piece of music)
STS DIGITAL Burn-In CD, 8, Sound library STS Television Production (I’ve heard this track in a professional studio and know what it should sound like)
XRCD Eagles Hell Freeze Over, 6, Hotel California Eagles (for Bass)
皇帝位，39，螃蟹歌 (this track is very good for testing the spatial information)
Live At Blues Alley, 1, Cheek To Cheek Eva Cassidy (voice)
XRCD 蔡琴民歌，7，出塞曲
All my tomorrows--1997 version and the singer was Carol Kidd, 7, When I dream
1-CD version sound track of the film Evita-, 1, Requiem (for background resolution)
Hugo Gold CD, 4, Ambush
The CD2 of the musical雪狼湖, 13, 原來只要共你活一天 (female voice and echo)
The Soong sisters, 1, The Soong Sisters - Kitaro & Randy Miller.wav
Naum Starkman Chopin, 1, 01 Grand Waltz Brilliante Op.18 Chopin (the piano was a Concert Grand Bosendorfer)
Noise level:
I found the RS better than that of the Amphora.
Overall Impression:
As stated in my other post, I really like the sound of the K701 amped by the Amphora. This opinion still remains valid but the sound of the 701 amped by the RS is better. Some of the differences are hard to put into concrete wordings. However, somehow the human voices sound more realistic to me. The sound was richer, the speed and resolution was better and more spatial information was given out.
There was one thing that I found the Amphora better than the RS: sibilance is lighter with the Amphora. The “蔡琴民歌，7，出塞曲” revealed this to me.
A double check:
I used the piano track of Naum as a final check. The track sounded different from the two amps and the difference was easy to discern. Basically, the RS was brighter and the Amphora was darker. I liked the sound from the RS better.
Then I asked my wife, a pianist, to listen to the tracks telling her that she was going to hear the sounds of two different pianos (a semi blind test--to con a term) playing the same melody. She was requested to tell me which piano sounded better aftewards. She found the sound from the RS better. Given that the piano played in the album should be the Concert Grand Bosendorfer. I concluded that the sound from the RS was more transparent than that of the Amphora. (For head-fiers who knows the sound of the Concert Grand Bosendorfer better, please contradict if necessary. It would be great to give more and better information to the head-fi.org)
A little more background of my wife: she knows little about hi-fi nor computers hence she truly trusted that I was giving her the sounds from two different pianos. Few years ago I took her to a studio of a hi-fi magazine to listen to a pair of speakers (Thiel I think) that I intended to buy. We were listening to the same track there and she pointed out immediately that the piano played was a bad one. The system used then was about 10k USD and the staff in the studio was shocked because the piano couldn’t be a bad one. A much better DAC was then used (a Weiss I think) in the session and then the ‘piano now sounded as a piano’--my wife’s wording. So she was/is pretty outspoken concerning the sounds of pianos.
Final words:
I’m not a gold ear. Whether one likes amp A or amp B better depends on lots of things like personal taste, the mood, the environment, … and the opinion is always subjective. I used the help of my wife hoping to give one more or a clearer reference point so that this impression may be more useful to the head-fiers interested in the RS. Thanks for reading. I rest my case here.
Lisa III battery powered by Duracell vs Lisa RS
Hardware:
Same as the above except for the phone.
Phone: ES3X
to my surprise the ES3X didn’t hissed much with the RS and the Lisa III. So a simple 1/8” to 1/4” adapter was used instead of the APS impedance 75 ohm adapter. Hopefully, frequency won’t be much affected as with the impedance adapter.
The Lisa III was battery powered by two fresh 9V Duracell. The comparison took only two hours. It’s reasonable to assume that the draining of the battery would not affect the performance of the Lisa III during the comparison session. I did use other source to feed the Lisa III afterwards and Lisa III amped properly for at least 5 more hours. This could be a verification of the assumption that battery drain did not impair the performance.
Software:Same as the above
Time:Initially I wanted to compare the two amps using the HiFiMan 801 as the source so that I might compare the performance of the two amps on Mon and Tue at my office after work. Also I hated the idea of plugging and unplugging the RCA cables. I was seriously wrong – after plugging and unplugging my BlackMax mini-to-RCA cable few times, it’ broken. I heard a clear left/right channel unbalance with the right channel much weaker. So the comparison was stopped.
As I need to return the amp to my office on Monday, I had only one day left for the comparison, so I used two sessions for the comparison , each an hour long. The comparison was only two hours long so that the comparison could be as detail as desired.
Precaution:
Because the Lisa III was already very good and they share the same DNA, I used the following methodology to guard myself from ‘reading between the lines’. Whenever I felt that there was a perceivable difference between the two amps for the same track, I’d listen to the location that I felt the difference to confirm my perception. If the perception could be repeated consecutively for 3 times, I concluded true difference existed. Otherwise, I concluded that my perception was just natural fluctuations of me being a human.
Conclusion:
The performances of them were much closer for most of the tracks. For some tracks, they are drawn and for some tracks, my perception that one was better than the other flip-flop. Then I concluded them drawn/inconclusive. Given more time, and use a phone that does not hiss with the amps, I might be able to tell the difference between the two amps. For example, when I used “Requiem” with the K701 to compare the RS and the Amphora, I could hear a very weak female voice in the right hand side. Even though the wordings were incomprehensible to me (could be Spanish), I could still sense that the RS was crisper. With the same track, I still felt that the RS was a tiny tad crispier. But the difference was a bit subtle so I dared not draw this conclusion.
Last but not least, I still concluded that the RS was better due to the following two facts:
1.When use the track “cheek to cheek” for comparison, it was more airy in one of the breathing of Eva Cassidy when using the Lisa III.
But the control of the RS was simply better—the breathing sound was not as smeared when using the RS and it sounded more realistic. I repeated quite a few times to confirm this perception and was convinced that the experience was always repeatable.
2.For the Naum track, the RS track was a tad brighter than the Lisa III and I liked the sound of the RS better.
That’s the end of my impression. Thank again for reading.
