Quote:
You really feel the SRG II is better than the HDP amp enough to make up for the deficiencies in the uDac DAC portion vs the HDP DAC?
The HD800 are fairly picky about what amp you use. I have not compared the two amps directly, as I got my HDP soon after I returned the loaner SRG II, but I explained my logic as to why I said what I said over 6 months ago. I love the HDP but as I recall from memory, the SRG II had better synergy with the HD800. The HDP is not bad with HD800, but it just isn't my first choice. The SRG II is much noisier than the HDP and not good with IEM, and I feel that with most other phones the HDP would be quite competitive.
Certainly the HDP is better than the uDAC or uDAC-2, and using the later to drive the SRG II will result in a little loss of detail, ambience or air vs the HDP's DAC. But the tone of the SRG II suited the HD800 slightly better that I could forgive the negatives. With the HDP I prefer to listen to my HE-5 LE, LCD-2, HF-2 and HD600; but if all I had was an HD800 I'd still be happy to use the HDP, and it's almost half the cost of a uDAC-2 + SRG II.
On a side note my maxed WA6 beats all of these mentioned amps, and I would take it over the HDP and SRG II for my HD800, but with the maxed Blackgates and Vcaps and expensive tubes I have $1250 invested in the amp. I have no idea how the standard WA6 would stand up to these amps, but it's possible that with some nice 6FD7 and a GZ34 rectifier that the stock WA6 could take the top place for a "not too costly" HD800 rig.
Lastly, I have a new Warren Audio X10 cable for HD800 that improves their warmth and smoothes the HD800's upper registers, and I will be trying it with the HDP amp this weekend at RMAF. This cable makes the HD800 very enjoyable on my SAC KH1000 amp, which wasn't nearly as enjoyable as the SRG II or HDP when I had a different cable and compared them. Also, I should note that the original SRG 1 wasn't a good match for the HD800 when I borrowed it last summer - the SRG II is much better.