[Bazaar]

Just to be clear I'm not dissing the RME. I almost bought one. The reviews from both the golden ear brigade and the measurement nazis at ASR are great. But you want to make sure the EQ implementation suits your requirements and that it doesnt compromise SQ. I havent tried the chord filters yet. What ive read suggests it makes subtle changes. So it might not give you the bass you want. .

If all that fails and you're still not satisfied you could try other headphones. My audeze LCDxc are spectacular and in OZ cost me a lot less than the Senn 820. In fact the LCDxc are a lot less here than the LCD3s but the performance gap is small. Reviwers say the 820s leak a lot more soung than the LCDxc. And if you don't need/ want closed back there's plenty of other options.

Good luck i hope you find a solution

Thanks, I appreciate the input. Planars are def on the 'want to try' list

 

[BattousaiX26]

Posted this at the Diana thread, but I guess it’s relevant to do it here as well. Brilliant sounding combo

If you don't mind. where did you buy your cable?

 

[normie610]

If you don't mind. where did you buy your cable?

It’s Norne Audio

 

[TomekZ]

I've had the Soloist 3x for going on 5 months. For a few days I had a Conductor 3XR. I really really appreciated the Solist even more after trying Burson's twice (but with DAC) as pricey amp. My DAC is a Denafrips Pontus. This DAC was so much more delicate than the Conductor's Sabre chip implimentation. The Conductor converts all inputs to digital & adjusts gain through the Sabre chip. This colored the Pontus' signal very negatively--flattening the stage & glaring the treble. Thus, if you've a good DAC, I'd highly recommend the Soloist over a Conductor.

 

[Bazaar]

Good to hear some perspective on the Conductor - it gets very favorable reviews, but aside from that I haven't seen a lot about it here. I was tempted as there's one FS right now, and I 'sort of' want to try BT. But I ended up going w/ the RME to pair w/ my Soloist; I figure I can add a good BT adapter if I really want it.

 

[Sam Spade]

I've had the Soloist 3x for going on 5 months. For a few days I had a Conductor 3XR. I really really appreciated the Solist even more after trying Burson's twice (but with DAC) as pricey amp. My DAC is a Denafrips Pontus. This DAC was so much more delicate than the Conductor's Sabre chip implimentation. The Conductor converts all inputs to digital & adjusts gain through the Sabre chip. This colored the Pontus' signal very negatively--flattening the stage & glaring the treble. Thus, if you've a good DAC, I'd highly recommend the Soloist over a Conductor.

I love my C3X and on first reading your comment i thought i'd run the chord Qutest from my Qutest/sparko aries desktop system through it to compare. But it sounds like you are saying I cant just run an analogue signal into it and have it remain analogue?

 

[horatiu]

I've had the Soloist 3x for going on 5 months. For a few days I had a Conductor 3XR. I really really appreciated the Solist even more after trying Burson's twice (but with DAC) as pricey amp. My DAC is a Denafrips Pontus. This DAC was so much more delicate than the Conductor's Sabre chip implimentation. The Conductor converts all inputs to digital & adjusts gain through the Sabre chip. This colored the Pontus' signal very negatively--flattening the stage & glaring the treble. Thus, if you've a good DAC, I'd highly recommend the Soloist over a Conductor.

Incidentally I am upgrading my system to Pontus + Soloist 3xp. I am happy to hear you like it.

 

[TomekZ]

As I understand, the current Conductor series only uses the DAC chip to control gain. (The previous generation of the Conductor had two volume controls: digital for the built in DAC & analogue for analogue input). Digital volume, like on a computer tosses out data when decreasing volume. The way that Burson does it to avoid loss is to upsample a 16 bit signal. See https://6moons.com/audioreview_articles/burson3/7/

 

[JWahl]

An update regarding the pairing of the HE6se V2 with the Soloist 3x. I'm quite happy with the pairing now after both settling on the configuration of SparkoS in the input stage and V6 Vivid in the Volume stage, and replacing the stock cable with a relatively affordable aftermarket cable. I originally did the latter because I didn't like the feel of the stock cable, but it actually fixed a lot of the treble issues I was having before. It now slightly reminds me of when I had the HE-1000 V1 as a loaner about 5 years ago, but with more intimacy and focus. If someone is on the fence about the SparkoS because of price, I recommend just getting a single pair to start with, as you may prefer it anyways like I did. I'll probably end up selling the extra pair eventually, or trading it for V6 classics to try.

With SparkoS in both positions the sound is very clean with a little more refined treble, but it seems to lose some energy with macro-dynamic swings. This is a similar reason I preferred the sound-signature of the Modius over the RME, too-flat dynamics. Likewise, V6 Vivid in both positions is too much of a good thing and makes it a little too diffuse and loses some texture. Mixing the two gives the best of both worlds, so to speak, and results in a nicely balanced sound with the HE6se V2. Because I preferred the Modius in this chain still, I've already returned the Neo iDSD, and I'm currently waiting on a replacement Bifrost 2 to arrive, hopefully by next Wednesday. The Neo is still really good if the HD-650 is a primary headphones, but it's just not really "meaty" enough with this particular chain. The HD-650 can be a little bloated below the midrange, so this makes sense.

 

[Bazaar]

Glad to hear it @JWahl, interesting you split the Sparkos amps. I bought my Soloist used with them already installed and like the sound, but I should/will play around a bit.

And, thanks to you, my RME arrived yesterday So far so good; I haven't played w/ the PEQ yet, just left the EQ off. But soon!

 

[normie610]

An update regarding the pairing of the HE6se V2 with the Soloist 3x. I'm quite happy with the pairing now after both settling on the configuration of SparkoS in the input stage and V6 Vivid in the Volume stage, and replacing the stock cable with a relatively affordable aftermarket cable. I originally did the latter because I didn't like the feel of the stock cable, but it actually fixed a lot of the treble issues I was having before. It now slightly reminds me of when I had the HE-1000 V1 as a loaner about 5 years ago, but with more intimacy and focus. If someone is on the fence about the SparkoS because of price, I recommend just getting a single pair to start with, as you may prefer it anyways like I did. I'll probably end up selling the extra pair eventually, or trading it for V6 classics to try.

With SparkoS in both positions the sound is very clean with a little more refined treble, but it seems to lose some energy with macro-dynamic swings. This is a similar reason I preferred the sound-signature of the Modius over the RME, too-flat dynamics. Likewise, V6 Vivid in both positions is too much of a good thing and makes it a little too diffuse and loses some texture. Mixing the two gives the best of both worlds, so to speak, and results in a nicely balanced sound with the HE6se V2. Because I preferred the Modius in this chain still, I've already returned the Neo iDSD, and I'm currently waiting on a replacement Bifrost 2 to arrive, hopefully by next Wednesday. The Neo is still really good if the HD-650 is a primary headphones, but it's just not really "meaty" enough with this particular chain. The HD-650 can be a little bloated below the midrange, so this makes sense.

I haven’t tried 4 Sparkos in Soloist, but I did have the same setup with you, and I liked the sound (I also swapped a pair of Vivids with Sparkos in Composer). Now I’m back to all Vivids in both Soloist and Composer and prefer this setup for the time being. All Vivids setup pushes the vocals back a couple of rows, but upper mids and lower treble sound a bit more natural than Sparkos. Plus it does have better low end impact and fullness (contrary to my earlier findings). Maybe this is an effect of a less pronounced treble section.

 

[BattousaiX26]

An update regarding the pairing of the HE6se V2 with the Soloist 3x. I'm quite happy with the pairing now after both settling on the configuration of SparkoS in the input stage and V6 Vivid in the Volume stage, and replacing the stock cable with a relatively affordable aftermarket cable. I originally did the latter because I didn't like the feel of the stock cable, but it actually fixed a lot of the treble issues I was having before. It now slightly reminds me of when I had the HE-1000 V1 as a loaner about 5 years ago, but with more intimacy and focus. If someone is on the fence about the SparkoS because of price, I recommend just getting a single pair to start with, as you may prefer it anyways like I did. I'll probably end up selling the extra pair eventually, or trading it for V6 classics to try.

With SparkoS in both positions the sound is very clean with a little more refined treble, but it seems to lose some energy with macro-dynamic swings. This is a similar reason I preferred the sound-signature of the Modius over the RME, too-flat dynamics. Likewise, V6 Vivid in both positions is too much of a good thing and makes it a little too diffuse and loses some texture. Mixing the two gives the best of both worlds, so to speak, and results in a nicely balanced sound with the HE6se V2. Because I preferred the Modius in this chain still, I've already returned the Neo iDSD, and I'm currently waiting on a replacement Bifrost 2 to arrive, hopefully by next Wednesday. The Neo is still really good if the HD-650 is a primary headphones, but it's just not really "meaty" enough with this particular chain. The HD-650 can be a little bloated below the midrange, so this makes sense.

Is the neo on 1.35v firmware? The updated firmware has more meat than the older firmware on the neo idsd.

 

[JWahl]

Is the neo on 1.35v firmware? The updated firmware has more meat than the older firmware on the neo idsd.

It was. I didn't think it was at first, but it actually shipped with the 1.35 update installed. I would have kept it a little longer since Bloom Audio's return period is a more generous 30 days and I wanted to compare it directly to the Bifrost 2, but some unexpected expenses came up. My landlord stopped using their third-party utility management service, so I had to switch all my utilities into my name and pay all the associated deposits all at once. Mildly annoying, to say the least.

Edit: I should clarify that I still think the Neo is a great DAC in it's price-range, and there's still some things that it does better than the Modius. My formal review still stands. The Modius is also terrific at it's budget price-point, and I'm thinking (or hoping) the Bifrost 2 will likely fit the complete HE-6se centered system better. In this case, it's more about the source's complete musical cohesiveness than the competency of any one isolated part.

 

[qsk78]

Why don't you try burson Composer 3 XP? Nice synergy with the Soloist.

 

[JWahl]

Why don't you try burson Composer 3 XP? Nice synergy with the Soloist.

Partly price, and partly because if I was going to go that route for about the same price, I'd just get a Conductor 3X Reference or the 3XP for considerably less. My personal philosophy toward DACs at the moment is that if they're priced over about $1,000 USD, they need to have some kind of unique "gimmick" to justify the price. Whether that be Schiit or Chord's unique DAC implementations, or the RME's many genuinely useful DSP features. I suppose the swappable op-amps could be considered a useful feature of the Composer as well. Living with the Modius for awhile at $200 also really skews the value perception for everything else in terms of basic delta-sigma DACs. I've also been curious of the Cayin idac-6 mk2 and the Matrix Mini-i Pro 3, but not enough to spend my own money on it upfront. The later has a very nice screen built in and has limited streaming capabilities. The Cayin has an optional tube-buffer stage. They're both just under $1,000 USD. I'm probably a little partial to the Schiit multibit sound since I've owned the Yggdrasil and Gungnir multibit before, so I'm familiar with the "house sound". In contrast, the Soloist 3XP earns it's price premium for me due to its generous power output, relatively compact size, unique volume-control implementation, and tune-ability via op-amps. I can't think of much of anything on the market right now that combines all 4 of those points.

EDIT: One other philosophical nitpick about the Composer. IMO, the decision to use the MCPS (high-quality switching supply) is one that is most beneficial to dedicated amplification circuits like the Soloist, where large and near-instantaneous power delivery is more desirable than the potential trade-off of harmonics generated beyond the audible spectrum. In the Composer, that makes less sense versus a true linear power supply. Although, I can understand the benefits of doing so from a business economics standpoint; it's more efficient to have parts which can apply to multiple product models and the design process is more streamlined. What might be more interesting to me, especially given that I liked the Neo with the TI 1793 DAC, would be one of the older Conductor units as a DAC or maybe even the older DA-160, both of which used linear power supplies and are available with the 1793 DAC. The DA-160 only used the 1793, whereas the older Conductors had the option of that or the Sabre DAC. The only downside to those is no balanced output. I suspect the older DA-160 might benefit from a modern USB-SPDIF interface, though.

https://6moons.com/audioreviews/burson6/1.html