[Lorspeaker]

Slurpsss...more pls.

 

[bimmer100]

Hey there, Audio GD is offering a new powerful all in one setup from early this July. Master 11 seems originate from master 7 and master 9 based on A-GD description. 9w@40ohm(class A) and 4 pm 1704 UK from Texas instrument.
It looks like pair well with my he1000. A great bargain for he560s/ LCD series and even Abyss.





My master 11 has been shipped out today. I will post impressions later when I back to state.

 
 
I'm most interested in what you have to say about the M11.
 
Kingwa's Ace up his sleeve has been played.
I didn't expect to be impressed as much as I have been so far. TRANSPARENT!  Surely it's "new toy" phase and maybe it will fade??? no! probably not. This M11 really is freq'n amazing
I could bore a lot of people and tell them basically what they expect to hear... Kingwa states it on his website that this M11 is extremely revealing... quote "It allows users to hear the flaws and perfections of the source recording (matched with a revealing power amp, speakers and headphones ) ."
Sure, it's like that. It's like that to a point it's somewhat frightening. The detail is uncanny.
On another note, I'm still wondering how the sound stage could be so much better than before... I expected an improvement, but In actuality, it's a notable improvement. I would guess it's because it's a fully balanced dac. Twice as many pcm1705uk's? plus the amp being pure class A.  I'm practically crying when I hear some of my music.  Yes, in many of my tracks i've heard some new things i've never noticed before, partially as i'll cranked the volumes louder and have absolute pristine and crisp audio at high volumes. It's insane how good this amp is.
The DAC19 was very revealing, this is a couple notches above, and likely if the DAC19 was paired with a monster pure class A amp then you'd get similar results. or closer.  Being that all these goodies are tightly packed in one box may surely make this a combination that effectively makes for a TOTL end game AIO. If you're into that sort of thing... or go with your separates and get the advantage of later being able to upgrade individual components. But I think there is something to having everything essentially direct and "shortest path" "keep it simple stupid". This design is quite brilliant, and similar to the Reference 10.32. A couple upgrades of course. The amp!!! Double the power - maybe a couple other changes? newer DSP1 software (correct me if i'm wrong) - a volume knob is kinda nice too
 
I thought the power would be comparable to the NFB28 (2015) as each are rated for +16db.  Well, for whatever it's worth.... The M11 has significantly more headroom with power. I'm happy and likely won't be upgrading the volume board to +3db or +6db unless the price is fairly cheap and the swap is fairly easy. I've only encountered a few classical tracks that are somewhat quiet. I managed to get them to reasonable levels by cranking it up.
 
So I can honestly say that Kingwa has made something extremely special. I would like to hear what you think.... since you'd actually owned a M7/M9 and you also have a YGG.
 
serious competition here.
 
And after a week or so of listening I will be sure what I am hearing is indeed it's sweetest, fully warmed up state. 
 
i'll have the Amanero combo 384 upgrades for this and the NFB28 later on this month. 
 
I wonder if any detectable sound difference will take place after upgrading to that USB board.
 
I guess I just hope it's a little more stable with Jriver, or just in general. 

 

[bimmer100]

Oh, another thing.... The M11 doesn't get that hot. FYI
 
my DAC19 and NFB28 seem to get hotter than this thing.
 
no idea.
 
but i'll take it.

 

[Solude]

  Oh, another thing.... The M11 doesn't get that hot. FYI

 
Give it time.  It has a much larger heatsink surface so it will take more time to heat up and settle.  24 hours should be enough though.  That and you'd want to feel the bottom to get an idea of the heat.

 

[bimmer100]

   
Give it time.  It has a much larger heatsink surface so it will take more time to heat up and settle.  24 hours should be enough though.  That and you'd want to feel the bottom to get an idea of the heat.

I figured it would of been somewhat warm, but not really at all.just ever so slightly towards the front and center. It sits on top of an IKEA 1inch block of bamboo. Maybe it's absorbing all the heat? even the underside isn't really barely more than slightly warm at most. It's not "HOT" just very warm at most.

 

[doyouknowSBmean]

   
 
I'm most interested in what you have to say about the M11.
 
Kingwa's Ace up his sleeve has been played.
I didn't expect to be impressed as much as I have been so far. TRANSPARENT!  Surely it's "new toy" phase and maybe it will fade??? no! probably not. This M11 really is freq'n amazing
I could bore a lot of people and tell them basically what they expect to hear... Kingwa states it on his website that this M11 is extremely revealing... quote "It allows users to hear the flaws and perfections of the source recording (matched with a revealing power amp, speakers and headphones ) ."
Sure, it's like that. It's like that to a point it's somewhat frightening. The detail is uncanny.
On another note, I'm still wondering how the sound stage could be so much better than before... I expected an improvement, but In actuality, it's a notable improvement. I would guess it's because it's a fully balanced dac. Twice as many pcm1705uk's? plus the amp being pure class A.  I'm practically crying when I hear some of my music.  Yes, in many of my tracks i've heard some new things i've never noticed before, partially as i'll cranked the volumes louder and have absolute pristine and crisp audio at high volumes. It's insane how good this amp is.
The DAC19 was very revealing, this is a couple notches above, and likely if the DAC19 was paired with a monster pure class A amp then you'd get similar results. or closer.  Being that all these goodies are tightly packed in one box may surely make this a combination that effectively makes for a TOTL end game AIO. If you're into that sort of thing... or go with your separates and get the advantage of later being able to upgrade individual components. But I think there is something to having everything essentially direct and "shortest path" "keep it simple stupid". This design is quite brilliant, and similar to the Reference 10.32. A couple upgrades of course. The amp!!! Double the power - maybe a couple other changes? newer DSP1 software (correct me if i'm wrong) - a volume knob is kinda nice too
 
I thought the power would be comparable to the NFB28 (2015) as each are rated for +16db.  Well, for whatever it's worth.... The M11 has significantly more headroom with power. I'm happy and likely won't be upgrading the volume board to +3db or +6db unless the price is fairly cheap and the swap is fairly easy. I've only encountered a few classical tracks that are somewhat quiet. I managed to get them to reasonable levels by cranking it up.
 
So I can honestly say that Kingwa has made something extremely special. I would like to hear what you think.... since you'd actually owned a M7/M9 and you also have a YGG.
 
serious competition here.
 
And after a week or so of listening I will be sure what I am hearing is indeed it's sweetest, fully warmed up state. 
 
i'll have the Amanero combo 384 upgrades for this and the NFB28 later on this month. 
 
I wonder if any detectable sound difference will take place after upgrading to that USB board.
 
I guess I just hope it's a little more stable with Jriver, or just in general. 

Hey I put it simple. Here is two recording from my PCM D100:
 MASTER 11 + HE1000: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B4PVx9vNY674UGtJS2R3RDFvVUk/view?usp=sharing
 YGG+RAG+HE1000:  https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B4PVx9vNY674ZTdYX1JNa2p3ZkU/view?usp=sharing

 

[doyouknowSBmean]

And the same track from Orpheus:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B4PVx9vNY674b2FsY1lIMUh4aDg/view?usp=sharing
 
This is the 4th movement of Mahler's syphony No.1
They are not exactly what I was hearing dirctly from my setup. The bass response is much slower than what I heard.  But you could still hear the difference. 

 

[Chris F]

Downloaded the samples and did a quick listen at work from my laptop with RE-600 IEM.
 
I am biased since I own Rag/Ygg (+LCD-3F) however I find the Master 11 waaaay too dark and with an artificial midbass exaggeration to boot.  Tone/timbre on Rag/Ygg is also better.  The Orpheus has a completely different tone from the HE1K.  Sounds boxy to be honest...
 
Anyhow, impossible to properly evaluate through a recording but for sure the two setups sound very different from each other!

 

[Solude]

Would need to level match them first.  The Yggy file is quite a bit louder.

 

[Chris F]

Should have mentioned it but I already did that with replaygain in foobar which gave:
Master 11 +1.72dB
Rag/Ygg +3.46dB
Orpheus +0.27dB
 
Rag/Ygg was the quietest of the three. 

 

[mk351e]

I used to own a Reference 10.32; for a year and a half. It was simply stunning, and the sound just blows away anything and everything I've ever heard, and I've heard A LOT over the last 2 decades. I recently had to sell my ENTIRE setup though at a MASSIVE loss because I fell on hard times. All I have now is a cheap pair of Denon IEM's. It totally sucks, and to make matters worse, I sold the Ref10 to probably the single most obnoxious member of headfi! I regret this literally every single day. The Ref10 was simply amazing, but I wished it had a volume KNOB, and M11 does; I want this thing so bad!
 
So, to those of you lucky enough to enjoy this, please do, because it's amazing and truly an end game piece; I mean, it actually does EVERYTHING. And for those of you on the fence, there's simply NOTHING like the sound of the PCM1704UK, AND, there's simply no good reason NOT to buy the M11; other than price and the massive size.
 
Sorry for the buzzkill gents, but I think there's a positive message buried in there somewhere 

 

[Solude]

And yet if following the actual metre... its higher  Both are at 0dB peaks though so when I say level match you would do it with pink noise for each rig and then play this song.  Something in the way the Yggy presents dynamics is skewing replaygain.  Or put another way in the quiet passages the M11 is ~15% and the Yggy is ~30%.  Could be the clearly deeper bass of the M11 doing it?

 

[bimmer100]

Should have mentioned it but I already did that with replaygain in foobar which gave:
Master 11 +1.72
Rag/Ygg +3.46
Orpheus +0.27

Rag/Ygg is the quietest of the three. 

Just by listening to them as is my first guess was the m11 was loudest, and ygg and orph was nearly the same but less than the m11. what are you using to record? As this seems to only be a "for fun" comparison and little to no details can be captured in a recording.
I listened to each of these with my fidue a83's about a dozen times each. There seems to be a bit of clipping. The m11 sounds much darker and the bass is authoritive. Yet since the recording isn't the best, it's hard to tell its speed and clarity of the bass.
All the recordings sound muffled to me.
No substitute for actually hearing them in person I suppose. Sure you did use a high quality Sony mic , no denying that. But it's still not able to catch the details imho. I will listen to that track at home on my m11 and try to compare to see what differences i am experiencing.

The bass on the m11 sounds concerning as it seems the overall volume of that particular recording is much louder and has some over extended bass that sounds like clipping. Maybe the mic not picking up everything?
Maybe I don't know what I'm talking about. I know little about recording and little about mics.
I just was quite surprised the sounds of each recording.

What is your opinion on the three, recordings aside. What do you like or dislike about each.

 

[doyouknowSBmean]

Just by listening to them as is my first guess was the m11 was loudest, and ygg and orph was nearly the same but less than the m11. what are you using to record? As this seems to only be a "for fun" comparison and little to no details can be captured in a recording.
I listened to each of these with my fidue a83's about a dozen times each. There seems to be a bit of clipping. The m11 sounds much darker and the bass is authoritive. Yet since the recording isn't the best, it's hard to tell its speed and clarity of the bass.
All the recordings sound muffled to me.
No substitute for actually hearing them in person I suppose. Sure you did use a high quality Sony mic , no denying that. But it's still not able to catch the details imho. I will listen to that track at home on my m11 and try to compare to see what differences i am experiencing.

The bass on the m11 sounds concerning as it seems the overall volume of that particular recording is much louder and has some over extended bass that sounds like clipping. Maybe the mic not picking up everything?
Maybe I don't know what I'm talking about. I know little about recording and little about mics.
I just was quite surprised the sounds of each recording.

What is your opinion on the three, recordings aside. What do you like or dislike about each.

Just back home now. The whole day laundry in lab wasted me out... I like M11 more. Conclusion is short for me.I will sell the schiit combo and keep M11

 

[bimmer100]

I'm listening to the file you sent me and unfortunately those recordings don't come close to doing justice to any of those setups. When I listen to them on my HE560's and m11 I can hear just how bad the recordings of each are. And I think the volume matching is off like solude says. Maybe it's based on averages, and the M11's bass is significant and very full. Yet the YGG is generally louder throughout the rest of the mids and highs. 
I guess there simply isn't a good way to tell the differences. the recording isn't good enough imho. 
 
 
But it surely sounds incredible on the M11 right now as i'm typing this. I doubt any of the three would sound bad. They are all just "different"
 
I'm a fan of good bass...not just quanitity but clear crisp textured quality bass. The m11 delivers.