beyerdude
100+ Head-Fier
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- Mar 8, 2013
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With all the good reviews here I just have to ask:
Has someone made a blind test with those opamps? Would be interesting to hear from people whether they could separate between the opamps just by listening, not knowing which opamp is built into the system
I cant believe it has such a drastic effect on the audio output since there are a lot of voices that say discrete opamps are
-not as good as normal IC opamps, just a lot more expensive
-dont change the sound at all.
-any sound difference is just an illusion because your brain wants you to hear that it is better. All the money and effort has to have a positive effect, right?
-all reviews I have seen just describe the Opamps with very subjective adverbs like more natural, clearer, and so on...
Has someone made some real measurements of the effects the Burson V5 have on the equipment?
I was playing with the thought of buying some V5s just to give it a try, but having a look at threads like below, I highly doubt there will be any improvement of sound.
http://personal-view.com/talks/discussion/8987/op-amps-horrible-truth/p1
http://nwavguy.blogspot.de/2011/08/op-amps-myths-facts.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpTv2jAree8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BYTlN6wjcvQ
In some cases I would agree that there are small differences between op-amps (they do change the sound - I tried many combinations with the E12DIY and the differences were there) and there is a lot of hype around certain 'classic' variants (OPA 627/Muses etc) (Both of which I have and like very much) - Its also very hard to tell small differences A-B ing unless the changeover is very quick and you are accustomed to 'memorising' the sound, even if the switch over is nearly instantaneous - I had a Metrum Hex and Octave and a switch over would reveal a similar sound signature (same source, both plugged in to same preamp and with certain headphones they sounded exactly the same - however with further listening and better headphones the difference was night and day - a quick blind test does not always reveal this.
My observation from updating my equipment from the stock opamps to 'better' opamps and then the v5's is that between opamps alone there are small (but quantifiable) differences and these in some cases are debatable - the top opamps (Muses especially) gave a clear improvement over stock.
- the differences between the v5 and standard opamps is however SO noticeable that any thought of A-B tests or blinds tests go out of the window. I also think that when people resort to 'technical' reasoning as to why something cannot sound better (CD vs Vinyl is a classic) due to it being inferior due to design or technical reasons the argument is lost - there are so many examples where this simply does not hold up (Vinyl/Tubes/Class D amps etc). It depends on whether you are in the camp of 'it looks good on an oscilloscope so it must be better' or 'I don't care what the measurements are I will trust my ears. I have heard plenty of duff equipment which measures well but simply has no 'soul' or involvement, equally I own and thoroughly enjoy a reasonable amount of equipment that uses outdated 'inferior' technology that is a joy.
The reason people (myself included) used expressions like 'clearer' and 'more defined bass' 'clearer treble but not boosted' is because that is exactly what we experienced. I was one of the early people to buy and review the v5's and tried them through a $5k set of speakers and corresponding amp/preamp source - the differences were significant and easy to hear. To me the v5's were small change, the DAC was a bargain (broken and then fixed by me) EE Minimax and hence my 'expectation bias' was non existent. To me the change over turned it from being 2 dimensional sounding with metallic/artificial treble and well and truly in the under 1k price bracket (5 years ago) to something that was a joy to listen to and had some of the hall marks of a more expensive DAC.
Hope this adds something to the debate